What’s your spookiest hunting experience?

That makes me angry and sad. I will never let myself get that bad, but I could only imagine what it felt like to know that was my last hunt.😢 I know what happened is way bad don't get me wrong. I just can't imagine what that man felt like for both reasons mentioned.
I agree. I wouldn't want to end my hunting "career" like that, but thankfully nobody was hurt.
 
Hopefully I would know my career was over as far as hunting and stop sooner. It would just be unbearable to end my hunting career by killing someone.😢
When you can't tell the difference between a person ,a 1966 Bronco and a elk , l think it's time too just go along for the adventure or wait for someone too identify what you supposed too be shooting. Getting old ain't for wimps
 
My best friend, who I spend most of gun deer season with have made a promise to each other that if either sees the other do something unsafe we will tell its time to hang it up. We're13 days apart on birthdays, and we joke that it takes both of us to make a almost healthy man. Our wives won't let either of us hunt alone unless we're hunting around our houses, Or together. We're both lucky to have great hunting out our back doors. I'm thinking another decade is about what we're looking at. Then set around the fireplace in the winter telling lies to the youngsters.
 
I will add this as a closure to my previous post :

When my anger had subsided after this incident , I really felt bad for having lost my temper .
And remembering the look of fear on the old man's face , not at my anger , but fear in the realization that he could have killed one of us , is something that I will always remember .

DMP25-06
 
I have never had a problem at night in the woods after two tours in Vietnam. I will admit that I am hyper aware at night and always ready to react to a threat, but I am always calm. I have had a deer step on my feet and a possum try to climp my leg among other encounters . I like the woods at noght. I am scared to death of other hunters, however. The most unnerving episode I have had was during turkey season a few years ago. I had had a hip replaced and was pushing the recovery period too much. I found that I had to get back to the car while I was still able, and the most direct route was through heavy brush and leaves. My exit ruined a nice setup for a couple of guys as I stumbled past them. They were mad and I was apologetic. When I was about fifty yards away one of them fired over my head and I could hear the shot going through leaves above my head. I went prone on instinct and was prepared to fire back but then I realized they were laughing and calling out that I should respect them in the future. I finally decided it was safe to get up and head out. They packed up and caught up to me during the mile walk out on an old road. They thought it was OK to joke around with me on the way out, but I did not trust them, and they probably never realized that I was locked and loaded and ready to pull the whole way out...... Another time I was standing in light brown brush at the bottom of a brown leaf hillside wrapped in an old brown burlap blind waiting for a hog when I heard movement nearby in some heavy new green growth. After a bit two young guys worked their way out toward me with shotguns ready and I just knew that if I moved, one of them would shoot. I waited until they were about ten feet away and facing away before I spoke up. You would have thought I fired the way they jumped..... Another time I'm wearing orange and working my way out through heavy brush when I look up and see some idiot tracking me through his scope from a tree blind and I know I'm three pounds of accidental pressure away from being shot.
Night exersizes @ Ft Benning cured me of that fear CW.

CW, humans are the assholes of the wild sir. While I didnt want to share this story as its a stupid human one.

While on private land in PA, I was warned to not cross a certain fence line. I did come up on it, and sort of tacked my still hunt up to the line and back, and had been for at least 150 yards when I came upon a gate. Four fellas on the other side call out to me and WARN ME not to cross. I told the "MASTERS OF THE OBVIOUS" that they can check my tracks in the snow, " i resepct property". Well they don't let up, and then ONE of the mopes decides to lower his rifle from "port arms" to make it point right over my head.

THATS IT! I said.......... " OH YOU MOPES WANNA DANCE DO YOU!? I opened my my orange outer cover to expose my .44. Unstrapped the .44, held my draw hand at the ready... and called out.. " YOUR DRAW MOTHERF$$$$S~! " Candyasses retreated - imagine that. I was ready to drop my prize 1950's Model 70 .243 lightweight and FAN my new fan's straight across their chests.

I might advise folks to treat other with courtesy out there; as ANY good hunters do. Don't want to run into a Army SF-trained BAMF and push him too hard with STUPIDITY. Flipping the switch into an adrenaline -fired machine is still much too easy for some of us Vets. Iceholes bring out the BEST IN ME!

CW, your "friends" may have ended up "garroted" to a tree. I TRULY TRULY avoid humans out there if i can. But when I do, I am as courteous as can be....and usually THEY are as well, thank G^D. The assholes will get theirs eventually.

I was with my step dad, and two other "old fellers" ( my age now! ) during that trip, and I sensed they thought I may have gone too far. Nope, properly measured response is how I saw it. Of course, ....

RUINED my hunting day with non-Zen human jetsam. :( I'm sure the Great Spirit even was not pleased.
 
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I always felt that at at the core, human beings are the most dangerous creatures out there. They have emotion, abilities, and purpose the cannot be accounted for or counted on. This would have made me take notice.
Especially "evil" human beings who have no regard for human life. Next would be humans with mental issues and no conscience. But imho, it is a new strange event in the wild ( or even in ones home) that spook me.
 
Ranger Rick, you simply have to believe that you are the baddest MF in the woods is all. "LORD AND MASTER OF ALL I SURVEY"! Stupid Army crap taught to me. But it works!

In more recent years, traveling with a notion of "orenda", I try and tap into the "Great Spirit" and all those "tree angels" , so I have a different, more natural sense of , well maybe not protection, but belonging there in the first place. Once you aren't so much a visitor mentally speaking, the woods are more your home. And they tend to reveal their secrets more with that mind set on.

Goofy, but there is an old Steppenwolf song that says " Life goes on around us, in so many different ways" that I am actutely aware of while " alone" amongst the oaks and maples.
 
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My military career causes many of my experiences that could be spooky to some, not be unsettling to me. However, being from Pennsylvania originally, and becoming an alligator trapper in Florida was "fun" at times. I generally hunted them by myself, often at night. Sometimes walking along a waters edge in waist-high or higher plant-life one would explosively leave its hiding place just a few feet from me and land 5 feet or so out in the water. Those usually got a hook in them as soon as they came up to see what was going to step on them, but they all gave me the little adrenaline rush that made me like the work so much!

However, based on others who occasionally hunted with me, I should have been running away and screaming like they did....and somehow that made me "weird"! LOL!🤣🤣
 
Ya DUDE!!!! :eek:

I respect your total badassery but sheesh! 👍


Hey TG I even got a Ukrainian flag helmet outta that comment!~ DIGGIN IT. ( PS no politics, but dad was Ukrainian freedom fighter post WWII and Army OSS got him ( ME!) here in the 1950's = he would've truly appreciated your badassery! he was one high speed BAMF)

BACK TO HUNTING/OUTDOORS TALES.....!

Y'ALL those triple twister in unison dust devils and moving lights may make me crap my drawers in the middle of the woods........not to mention smelling a bear's breath!
 
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Couple of friends and myself hunted South west of Meeker Colo. Near Twenty mile gulch. If anyone here knows where it is. One of my buddies came back to camp one night saying he saw a guy on top of one of the bluffs and looked at him with his binos. The guy was looking through a scoped rifle at him. This is early archery season. Not supposed to be guys on the BLM land gun hunting. Spooked him pretty good.
We have overlapping seasons. We have hog hunters, coyote hunters, dove hunters out all during bow.
 
Maybe 20 feet later in my headlamp all I see is talons and a huge wingspan right in my face. It didn't even make a single noise, just a stealth attack. Luckily I reacted quick enough to avoid this big owls attack, as the photos I've seen online of owl attacks don't look like much fun!
I was hunting a grass field edge when i was about 14. Towards dusk I'm looking across the field and it feels like something is moving towards me but i can't focus on it. All of a sudden an owl is bearing down on me about ten feet away. I flinch and raise my arms and it darts away at the last second.

It was a few of them and they kept taking turns. I could barely see but they would coast straight at me about right on the horizon from 400 yards out. Never batted their wings and all you would see is their eyes when they were close enough to focus on.

I got back that night all freaked out. My older brothers were laughing...."owls? Hahaha!!"

The next night my brother came with. Getting towards dusk.... and same thing happens... you should have heard him shriek," f#%$$ owls trying to pluck my eyes out!!"
 
I realize this could go a few different directions, but I know we all have some stories that left us freaked out or weirded out.

I have two, both deer hunting in Northern Idaho. Hiking down a skid road when I heard the most insane yipping and cayaying. It was heading right at me at speed, and I went from confused to fully assuming I was about to be whacked by coyotes/wolves/feral dogs. My hind brain took over and I dove behind a stump and threw my rifle across it, just in time to see a pair of Barred Owls come zooming through the brush, just making the most godawful racket you've ever heard. Took a few minutes to calm down after that.

Second was weirder and still unexplained. I packed a small muley about 4 miles back to the truck, arrived around 9pm, and found another guy waiting by my truck. Super nice, said he was just making sure I made it off the mountain cause it wasn't the safest area (his words). I asked him why, and he just put his finger to his lips and said "sit and listen". I was wrecked so I was happy to sit for a bit. After about 5 minutes, on the opposite side of the canyon I heard what I can only describe as a wounded elk squalling. Half bugle, high pitched, but changing tempo and pitch oddly. It went straight to the spine and made me want to bail. Right as that sound ended, the same type of call lit off on the mountain I had just came down. A third call answered the second from back to the west a good ways. These three calls went back and forth for all of 15-20 minutes before they just stopped with no warning. The other guy and I hadn't said a word the whole time we listened, fairly transfixed. Then he just smiled and me and said "this is why I waited. Not a good mountain to be on after dark". And off he drove. I have no idea what I heard that night (I'm not a big foot believer) but it was the most eerie, hair raising communication I've ever heard. I moved shortly after that (graduated from school and moved home) and I've never been back up there.

That brings to mind, a close friend of mine to me he's heard that several times and come to the conclusion that it was Sasquatch communicating.
Also told of a uncle that hunted and trapped in the swamps in Lake Maurepas area. He was (his uncle) back in there and something scared the bugheebies out of him. Told them it wasn't safe to be in there after dark. From that day till his last, the Sun never set on him in the swamps.
 

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