HAYWARD, Wis. — A Wisconsin man who was one of two survivors in a shooting spree that left six fellow deer hunters dead recalled his narrow brush with death Monday in the trial of a Minnesota man claiming self-defense in the incident.

"In a split second, I felt a burn and ripple through my body," Terry Willers said, describing the gunshot that entered the left side of his neck and exited through his back. "I remember thinking, this was it."

Willers' scar from the shooting was visible to a courtroom audience as he was sworn in to offer testimony in the trial of Chai Soua Vang, who faces life in prison on six counts of first-degree murder for killing the hunters, including Willers' daughter, on Nov. 21, 2004, the second day of Wisconsin's deer hunting season.

Vang, 36, also faces three counts of attempted murder for injuring Willers and his friend, Lauren Hesebeck, who will testify Tuesday in Sawyer County Circuit Court.

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The jury of 10 women and four men appeared attentive to Willers' account of how an annual gathering of extended family and friends quickly descended into carnage in a matter of minutes.

Willers testified that at about 11 a.m., he was on the 80-acre property he owned with friend and victim Robert Crotteau, walking to the cabin the men had built with the help of their children, when he came upon Vang perched in a tree stand that belonged to Crotteau's son, Carter.

"I told him he was on Bob Crotteau's and my land and that he was trespassing," Willers said, recalling that he could tell by the trespasser's stature and the brown skin visible through his ski mask that he was Hmong, an ethnic Asian group highly concentrated in St. Paul, Minn., where Vang lived.

After apologizing and asking for directions, Vang began to head off in a slightly different direction than Willers had advised him to, he testified.

Meanwhile, Willers radioed back to the camp that he had gotten rid of the "tree rat," or "a person from Minnesota who comes up to Wisconsin to hunt," he explained, and Robert Crotteau indicated his interest in having words with Vang.

Crotteau, his 20-year-old son, Joey, and two others piled into a four-wheeler while another, Mark Roidt, hopped on his ATV in pursuit of the trespasser.

When they caught up with Vang about 500 yards from the cabin, Willers testified that they stopped in front of him and Robert Crottreau told Vang that "tree stands don't grow off the sides of trees," which should have been a clear indication that he was on private property.

"He said he wanted to see some ID and repeated it several times," Willers said of Crottreau, insisting that no one touched or threatened Vang, physically or otherwise. "There was no reply, so at that point he said, 'Forget it, let him go.'"

As Vang was departing, Willers testified that Robert Crotteau suggested they get his "back tag number," or deer hunting license number, which by law a hunter must affix to his orange jacket, so they could report him to the Department of Natural Resources.

Vang, a seasoned deer hunter and former National Guardsman who had registered in Minnesota and Wisconsin to hunt deer for several years, was in full compliance, and Willers took note of the number by scratching it in the dirt on the hood of the four-wheeler.

Had he not, Vang may never have been identified, or at least not as quickly.

Willers calmly testified that he had watched Vang walk about 30 yards when he saw him drop his backpack and lift his gun.

"Believing he was going to shoot me, I pulled my gun around and said, 'Don't shoot at me, you son of a bitch,'" Willers testified, in his first admission of directing a profanity at the defendant.

Willers said he dove to the ground but was unable to avoid the second of two gunshots, which paralyzed his left side and rendered him unable to move.

"The only thing I could think about in the second was that I couldn't help anybody," Willers testified. "Then I heard the shootings toward the others."

After Vang opened fire on Willers, the six men scattered across the woods.

In a matter of minutes, Vang had killed the two Crotteaus, and friends Mark Roidt and Dennis Drew. As Terry Willers' daughter, Jessica, rode by on an ATV with friend Allan Laski, Vang fired multiple gunshots at them, killing them instantly.

Vang claims that he felt he was under attack and fired only to protect himself. The state has maintained that the force Vang used exceeded the necessary measures for self-defense.

Investigators testified Monday that they found a total of 14 spent rounds at the crime scene, but the number of gunshots sustained by the victims suggests a higher count.

The disparate locations of the rounds, which were matched to Vang's SKS semiautomatic rifle, also could suggest that Vang moved around, possibly to chase down his targets.

Under cross-examination, Vang's attorney attempted to show that the group had accosted Vang in a more hostile manner than Willers had described.

"Was Mr. Crotteau's voice calm or would you describe him as angry?" defense lawyer Steven Kohn asked.

"Did you ever hear Mr. Crotteau use the term 'Hmong asshole,' or if he said, 'If you keep it up, I'll kick your ass?'" Kohn pressed. "Did you hear Mr. Crotteau use 'f---' a lot?"

"I could hear voices, not words." Willers said, noting that he did not accompany the group from the cabin.

Willers, the only person in the group carrying a gun, according to prosecutors, denied opening fire on Vang at any point during the standoff and rejected the suggestion that Joey Crotteau intimidated the defendant by refusing to let him pass.

As Vang fired off at least 20 rounds into the backs of four victims, Terry Willers' son, 23-year-old Brandon Willers, listened unconcerned from his own tree stand a few hundred yards away.

"I've heard quite a few shots like that before," said the younger Willers, who works for his father's business, T-Bird Concrete, named after both father and son. "I thought a big buck had come up."

It was only after he heard over the radio that his father had been shot, and went to rescue him, did he realize that the shooting was not a hunting accident.

With the same stoic composure as his father, Brandon Willers calmly described the last time he saw his sister Jessica alive, as she rode with Laski on an ATV to help.

"We stopped for a second and said, 'We're going to take Dad in,'" Brandon Willers testified. "He kept saying it was stupid, what happened was stupid."