Plot

Two groups of armed men eye each other across a body of water. An deadly incident ensues and the first group returns to their town in fear of the consequences, which never come.They realize that far greater danger is offing.

When boredom, pride and a mad second of misjudgement leaves a hunter shot dead by one of five combat veterans also hunting in the Canadian hills, it is expected a police investigation will follow, but when the veterans discover the incident has not been reported, the leader of the team, Major Rex (Cliff Robertson) suspects the other party maybe plotting revenge. Convinced that he, his party, and their families will be targets themselves he decides to beat his suspected assailants at their own game, grouping together more army comrades and stocking up an arsenal of weapons for the forthcoming battle.—Warren Hawkes

A group of friends, also National Guardsmen are out hunting. They emerge from the forest and see a similarly clad and armed group looking at them across a body of water. A protracted and increasing suspenseful interlude builds as they stare across that water at each other, one member of the other group suddenly fires a shot at them and one of their party returns fire, felling and presumably killing a member of the other group. The men return to their homes in fear of the the legal consequences, which never materialize. They begin to suspect that more dire and deadly consequences could be in the offing. Cliff Robertson, one of the hunters and the leader of their National Guard Unit begins to organize his men without completely making them aware of his intention to prepare for further confrontation. They investigate other communities, sending out reconnaissance parties to those communities and initially it seems as if they had imagined that a man had died, but eventually learn of a funeral being held for the man they killed, but there is no mention of him being murdered. Eventually, Cliff Robertson leads his well armed men back into the woods, now snow covered, and they once again emerge to look out over the water towards the other bank, which is devoid of people. Many members of the unit, originally skeptical and uncooperative of this expedition into the winter woods now begin to openly question Cliff Robertson and it begins to denigrate into loud arguing when across the water, white camouflaged men pop up out of covered pits with far heavier weapons than possessed by the original group and slaughter them.