340Wby-4-everything
Well-Known Member
Some don't believe it, but if you ever smell fresh cucumbers in the woods (at least in VA) where you know there are none, Mr. Copperhead is very nearby
What’s your spookiest hunting experience?
- Thread starter marksman1941
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I have to say this has been a fun and interesting thread to read. It sure has reminded me of a number of startling, scary, and funny (sometimes all three) incidents I have had afield either hunting, working, or otherwise recreating.
Some startling ones were when I was working as a field biologist.
Topping the list was when I was radiotracking with static-filled headphones on, walking backwards in knee high brush. Suddenly something was slapping my leg, and I looked down to see my boot planted on the head of a large prairie rattlesnake. The rest of the body was thrashing around smacking me in the lower leg. It must have been asleep when I stepped on it. Yeep! There were other close brushes with snakes.
An incident that could have gone really wrong was with a very large, mature, ****ed-off mule deer buck during the rut. Maybe he had just lost a fight or something. I was walking a creek bottom survey transect when he trotted down a steep hillside to the creek and crossed about 25 yards from me without looking at me. I was walking, so I am sure he knew I was there. He stopped in a broken off treetop. Figuring he would move off when I resumed walking, I took a few steps, only to see him turn nearly black as all his hair stood on end and his ears laid back! Crap! He was on the fight, and didn't care that I was a human! He would have punctured me through and through if he had charged me. I have done enough necropsies on gored deer to know the damage they do to each other. With one hand I covered my vitals with my 3 layer aluminum clipboard and with the other held my jacket out to look bigger as I sidestepped across the creek and to higher ground to get a positional advantage. After some very tense moments, he called it a draw and stalked off into the brush, still looking black as far as I could see him.
Funny but heart-stopping, I had a mallard hen launch off her nest between my feet in tall pasture grass, slapping me in the face with a wing as she passed. Someone passing in a car saw that and later asked me what had made me leap backwards into the air like an Olympic jumper.
One early fall I was elk hunting near Yellowstone, and the grizzlies and chokecherries were plentiful. There were elk around but they were quiet, probably because wolves had been in the area for a decade or more. I was up pretty high in dark timber, and dropped down into a little drainage right where there was a nice little spring. I was starting to think this would be a nice place to find an elk when I suddenly got a 6th sense alarm that went off. As I stepped into an adjacent meadow with dense forest and impenetrable shade beyond it, I suddenly focused on the crushed paths in the grass that looked as if someone had been dragging beer kegs through the meadow! Holy smokes! I had just blundered into a busy bearhole. Boy did I back out of that area fast. I still think that warning bell came from a bear holed up in the dark beyond that meadow. I will admit that I was still a little jittery as I walked back to the truck. At one point a bunch of robins flushed from a chokecherry thicket a few yards ahead, and I was up and on them with my .338 in a heartbeat. A little over-gunned for that game, eh?
There was also a time elk hunting, not far from the Tetons, after the wolves got established. I was hunting an area where the snow said the elk had been hanging out, but then I found fresher sign where a pack of about 7 wolves had been hunting right where I was working through. Well dang, might as well go elsewhere. So I cut across this big open meadow, no elk here anyway, and about when I got to the middle in knee deep snow, I got this creepy feeling of being watched, assessed. There I was alone, out in the wide open, no cover or trees to back into for defense, and because of my bad knee, limping like vulnerable prey. Creepy. I scanned the treeline around the meadow with binoculars, but detected nothing. I went through a quick inventory: 4 in the .338 Mag, 6 in my .44 Mag, and my knife on my belt. Well, if it was wolves I could shoot a wolf or two, the rest would probably leave. I plowed on, keyed up, and nothing happened, but I have never forgotten that feeling of being potential prey to something.
OK, I'll put it out there, the sasquatch encounters were the spookiest and creepiest experiences. Yeah, scoff and laugh if you want…until you have your own experience. I know there are others on here who know, because they have had experiences.
To the OP @marksman1941, maybe you don't believe in Bigfoot, actually that is a butt of joking and derision because it has been made fun of and even taken advantage of for profit by "Bigfoot" groups. But you may well have had an encounter with actual sasquatches that night the guy waited on you. Sounds like it. He knew.
Some startling ones were when I was working as a field biologist.
Topping the list was when I was radiotracking with static-filled headphones on, walking backwards in knee high brush. Suddenly something was slapping my leg, and I looked down to see my boot planted on the head of a large prairie rattlesnake. The rest of the body was thrashing around smacking me in the lower leg. It must have been asleep when I stepped on it. Yeep! There were other close brushes with snakes.
An incident that could have gone really wrong was with a very large, mature, ****ed-off mule deer buck during the rut. Maybe he had just lost a fight or something. I was walking a creek bottom survey transect when he trotted down a steep hillside to the creek and crossed about 25 yards from me without looking at me. I was walking, so I am sure he knew I was there. He stopped in a broken off treetop. Figuring he would move off when I resumed walking, I took a few steps, only to see him turn nearly black as all his hair stood on end and his ears laid back! Crap! He was on the fight, and didn't care that I was a human! He would have punctured me through and through if he had charged me. I have done enough necropsies on gored deer to know the damage they do to each other. With one hand I covered my vitals with my 3 layer aluminum clipboard and with the other held my jacket out to look bigger as I sidestepped across the creek and to higher ground to get a positional advantage. After some very tense moments, he called it a draw and stalked off into the brush, still looking black as far as I could see him.
Funny but heart-stopping, I had a mallard hen launch off her nest between my feet in tall pasture grass, slapping me in the face with a wing as she passed. Someone passing in a car saw that and later asked me what had made me leap backwards into the air like an Olympic jumper.
One early fall I was elk hunting near Yellowstone, and the grizzlies and chokecherries were plentiful. There were elk around but they were quiet, probably because wolves had been in the area for a decade or more. I was up pretty high in dark timber, and dropped down into a little drainage right where there was a nice little spring. I was starting to think this would be a nice place to find an elk when I suddenly got a 6th sense alarm that went off. As I stepped into an adjacent meadow with dense forest and impenetrable shade beyond it, I suddenly focused on the crushed paths in the grass that looked as if someone had been dragging beer kegs through the meadow! Holy smokes! I had just blundered into a busy bearhole. Boy did I back out of that area fast. I still think that warning bell came from a bear holed up in the dark beyond that meadow. I will admit that I was still a little jittery as I walked back to the truck. At one point a bunch of robins flushed from a chokecherry thicket a few yards ahead, and I was up and on them with my .338 in a heartbeat. A little over-gunned for that game, eh?
There was also a time elk hunting, not far from the Tetons, after the wolves got established. I was hunting an area where the snow said the elk had been hanging out, but then I found fresher sign where a pack of about 7 wolves had been hunting right where I was working through. Well dang, might as well go elsewhere. So I cut across this big open meadow, no elk here anyway, and about when I got to the middle in knee deep snow, I got this creepy feeling of being watched, assessed. There I was alone, out in the wide open, no cover or trees to back into for defense, and because of my bad knee, limping like vulnerable prey. Creepy. I scanned the treeline around the meadow with binoculars, but detected nothing. I went through a quick inventory: 4 in the .338 Mag, 6 in my .44 Mag, and my knife on my belt. Well, if it was wolves I could shoot a wolf or two, the rest would probably leave. I plowed on, keyed up, and nothing happened, but I have never forgotten that feeling of being potential prey to something.
OK, I'll put it out there, the sasquatch encounters were the spookiest and creepiest experiences. Yeah, scoff and laugh if you want…until you have your own experience. I know there are others on here who know, because they have had experiences.
To the OP @marksman1941, maybe you don't believe in Bigfoot, actually that is a butt of joking and derision because it has been made fun of and even taken advantage of for profit by "Bigfoot" groups. But you may well have had an encounter with actual sasquatches that night the guy waited on you. Sounds like it. He knew.
The sasquatchs are one thing, but it's the dumb humans that terrify me.
C-130-Dude, I have to agree.
Scariest experience while hunting was coming out of the forest at dark after a day of elk hunting in Colorado. I reached the place I had parked to find a group of guys also parked there poking at each other for not getting anything. As one asked me about my custom-looking rifle, I overheard another saying to a pal "Hey Charlie, I coulda' taken you out any time I wanted. I had you in my scope for an easy shot, heh, heh." My blood ran cold! That dangerous #^% of a $*&^% probably had me in his scope too! That was heard with the constant memory of learning what a "sound shot" was during my very first year deer hunting. When I experienced that, I was learning to hunt on my own in the deciduous woods of Vermont (way before blaze orange), and had a bullet whizz past me in thick brush. Being quite young, I yelled some bad words at that expletive idiot and departed the area. There have been a few other unsettling incidents. These days I might go identify the shooter. Now I wear a lot of orange, and carry hope that fellow hunters do the right thing. I also seek uncrowded places in WY.
WOW! Not sure if you read this, but this is one of scary moments I posted on this thread a while ago:
I've had the horrible occasion to be confronted like this twice. The first time was duck hunting in ND. I stumbled into a blind while trying to work my way to the other side of the pond. I had stepped on a soft spot I thought was solid and fell through the ice. My chest waders filled up. 22°F outside. I was freezing. I never thought waders could weigh so much. I caught myself on the way down with my 12ga and pulled myself out. I took out my knife and cut slits in the wader shoes to drain the water out. My dad taught me to do this if necessary. You must keep any warmth you can. No way was I going to lay down and let the water drain out the top of my waders. I was moving as fast as I could back to my truck. I had about 1/2 mile to run. The hunters in the blind were very pi**ed off at all my noise and started shooting at me, I was about 125 yards from them at this point. I was more frozen than angry at that point and kept running. When I got home, I pulled off all my cold weather gear. I found several hundred #6 pellets in my waders, coat, and hat. I never got hit bad, just a few pellet welts on my neck and real frozen. Frostbite on 6 toes and both feet. But all ended ok I was alive, but I needed new chest waders. Lessons learned.
One of the reasons you should wear a chest-high belt just below the top of the wader opening. Can you spell.....LUCKY, LUCKY, LUCKY???
I did have this belt. Its also hard to get it tight enough. When I fell through, I went up to my ears. But the longer I was below water, the more water filled up. Took several minutes for me to pull myself out. Waders filled up quickly. One of the biggest lessonsI learned here was to not go hunting in dangerous areas (bottom slough bogs in winter) without a buddy to help if needed. I'll never go alone doing this again by myself. Yes I said never!
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As a steelhead driftboat guide had a couple scares....
.....side drifting bait in a big swirly hole..boat sliding along a big jagged boulder..guy on left decided to lean over to the left side of boat..chine catches a sharp piece of the Boulder and swings the bow of the boat to the left..raising the left bottom of the boat..while the right side takes 15 gallons of water over the side...I had to jump to the left to allow the right side up......about 3 seconds is all that took........
.....motoring up through some shallow water to get back to boatramp....
grounded the motor out in the gravel....shallow fast water threw us into low hanging willows......didn't break any rods......took a lot of limbs in the head and body......
.....a client and i rescued some guys off a Boulder in a shallow nasty spot.....their driftboat was sunk right in the eddy of
the boulder......had to go past them...hike back up the riverbank...tossed them end of rope and tied it around themselves...
glad the guy I had with me that day was big...played offensive guard at OSU(Beavers).....we told the guy to jump towards us as far as he could as we jerked him to within 5 feet of the riverbank.......he still went in over his head but didn't get sucked under the current....
Next guy did the same....I guess the third guy floated down around the corner.....got out......
Their boat got really lucky to...was winches up the 70' hill....that night it rained hard enough to raise the river 20'....
.....side drifting bait in a big swirly hole..boat sliding along a big jagged boulder..guy on left decided to lean over to the left side of boat..chine catches a sharp piece of the Boulder and swings the bow of the boat to the left..raising the left bottom of the boat..while the right side takes 15 gallons of water over the side...I had to jump to the left to allow the right side up......about 3 seconds is all that took........
.....motoring up through some shallow water to get back to boatramp....
grounded the motor out in the gravel....shallow fast water threw us into low hanging willows......didn't break any rods......took a lot of limbs in the head and body......
.....a client and i rescued some guys off a Boulder in a shallow nasty spot.....their driftboat was sunk right in the eddy of
the boulder......had to go past them...hike back up the riverbank...tossed them end of rope and tied it around themselves...
glad the guy I had with me that day was big...played offensive guard at OSU(Beavers).....we told the guy to jump towards us as far as he could as we jerked him to within 5 feet of the riverbank.......he still went in over his head but didn't get sucked under the current....
Next guy did the same....I guess the third guy floated down around the corner.....got out......
Their boat got really lucky to...was winches up the 70' hill....that night it rained hard enough to raise the river 20'....
I'm pretty sure Alabama has had its third consecutive season of no fatalities from hunting, either falling from tree stands or gun related. Didn't say we had no idiots, just no dead idiots.
Greengt88
Well-Known Member
I missed crossing paths with a black bear in the dark by about 45min.
Checked trails cam after the morning hunt and had a bear in one photo.
Checked trails cam after the morning hunt and had a bear in one photo.
Maybe it followed you home. Has your refrigerator been raided?
Had another client(local pharmacist) that I fished occassionally....he and a buddy decided to use their sit-in float tubes to float downriver and fish for steelhead...he came into a shallow area that was really swift and it also ran up against a bank of
low growing willow limbs.....he was doing well until he wasnt........one of the limbs hooked his tube and turned him upside down in the tube..in the brushy area....he wasn't thrilled about it...but he got out...
He told me to "never mention this to Rosie".......he got really lucky that day....neither he or his buddy used the float tube again......
low growing willow limbs.....he was doing well until he wasnt........one of the limbs hooked his tube and turned him upside down in the tube..in the brushy area....he wasn't thrilled about it...but he got out...
He told me to "never mention this to Rosie".......he got really lucky that day....neither he or his buddy used the float tube again......
Not wearing a LPU? Not good. Lucky.
