I honestly this glowing orange ring could be related to the "Horse On Fire" road that people are reporting that the road is haunted and will set your horse on fire if you ride through it. I think you can see it at night, or somehow he got to see it. I'm not sure if this is a rare bug to see in the game or not.
We are currently doing testing on Ads at the moment, so they might be a little annoying for right now. Guests will see the banners including the footer ad and logged in members will see the banners but not the sticky footer unit.
Out of all the times I played, I never had this issue surprisingly. The one problem I once had was when I went to call my horse, it was a completely different horse/breed. The horse I had before might have died or got lost somehow.
Maybe there is a camp in the area, and you need to get rid of them. That should fix the issue. Also, maybe travel to the hotel or your camp and sleep until morning, and go back to the location.
I believe you can only carry one type of hatchet. Go to your horse and see if you have the other hatchets on hand. If you have all of them, then you probably can only carry one type on foot.
Leave the area and return later. If an area is not used for a while, it gets overwritten in memory by the game, and will "re-roll". The lowest time that's worked for me was 2 minutes.