What’s your spookiest hunting experience?

A few years back I was hiking back to the truck in the dark, after chasing elk all day. It was in pretty thick timber with quite a bit of snow on the ground so the snow definitely helped with some ambient lighting. I was about a mile or so from the truck and it had gotten quite a bit darker so I busted out the old head lamp. Needless to say when I started looking around, I started getting glimpses of eyes glowing in the dark on both sides of me. They proceeded to follow me almost all the way to the truck.

Went back the next morning and there were multiple sets of wolf tracks, some bigger than my palm, that had followed me. I'm guessing they did it out of curiosity. Made sense why I never saw any elk.
" eyes glowing in the dark on both sides of me." ? Nope. I would most definitely have put a round in the air up high.
 
Kindof enyoyed diving at night for lobsters, never got that spooky feeling or worried about it. My buddies do it from the beach, one freedives it, but the islands have much better visibility and less surge from the waves. It is also typically very calm and glassy. The typical scenario is poking around under large boulders and looking into crevises. Had a close call when reaching for a bug in a hole in a big wall. Turns out his roomate was a moray eel.
The worst episode was diving outside a harbor breakwall on the opener, which starts at midnight. There was a lot of surge and chop and there were boats lined up using hoop nets. I was diving from a boat just off the breakwall and poking around in the boulders for bugs. Managed to get a limit of 7 and was headed back to the boat underwater. My buddies on the boat were hooping for naught. Anyway, many ignorant hoopers think the divers are robbing their hoops, which is the last place a diver would look. One of them saw my bubbles headed towards our boat and roared around ovehead, big props spinning. I had to follow the anchor line up to the bow, then slide back to the stern, and dump the limit of 7 into the transom well, right in front of the guy. He started trash talking but the harbor patrol was just around the jetty. I should have asked him if his hoops were still attached to the bouy lines ;)
I have heard of people having trouble with torpedo rays. According to sources, they cruise about 6' off the bottom and guys are too busy looking down for bugs to notice, especially with the tunnel vision afforded by a mask. They pack a 400V punch and can paralyze part of all of a diver for a time, probably not good underwater. I never bothered to look out for them.
Most of the fish are asleep at night and I swam right up to a drifting black seabass once, maybe 200 pounds.
The only downside is that bug season is in the winter and the water gets very cold with the northern currents that dominate during the season.
 
Back in the early 90's, I was Elk hunting with my wife and a friend from back home, off of the Smith's Fork in Lincoln County, Wy. We had stayed on the ridge until last light, and started down on a well used trail to the Smith's and the adjacent road.

It was near pitch dark, but I prefer to travel a trail without light if at all possible…..I like my eyes to be adjusted to the darkness, rather than be totally blind for a while if the light fails, ect.

When we got to the Smith's Fork, we had to walk along the creek side for about 100 yards to our crossing point. The path had a lot of horse traffic, and could best be described as resembling the inside of a corral……very soft, loose dirt. Very quiet, with any noise made…..being covered by the sound of moving water.

I was following behind the other two, when I sensed more than heard something behind me…..very close behind me. I quickly turned facing something that was so close that I could not bring my rifle around to point the barrel at it. It was much wider than me, and it's head and shoulders well above me, I'm 6 ft tall. It was about 8 ft. tall, well silhouetted in the very poor light.

My heart was in my throat, I could only make a loud, guttural grunt …..which startled the heck out of my two hunting companions.

It only took a moment, for me an eternity, to realize that a horse with rider had nearly walked up my back. The rider of that horse was just a kid, asleep in the saddle….followed by several other riders.

When everyone realized what had happened, the laughter started. Everyone was laughing their @$$e$ off, well almost everyone…..I was pretty embarrassed with my reaction to being attacked by……..Bigfoot! memtb
It's hard to understand an animal as big as a horse can be so quite. They can be sneaky.
 
It's hard to understand an animal as big as a horse can be so quite. They can be sneaky.
Yeah so took my wife elk hunting for the first time in CO. Setup on a ridgeline with her on one side and me on the other. Shortly after dawn heard a single rifleshot from her direction. Went to investigate, and on approaching could hear a heated argument. The wife was vociferously insisting 'That's MY elk, MY elk!!!' On rounding the bend saw this cowboy pleading with her. 'OK lady, OK, it's YOUR elk. But please, PLEASE, can I just get the saddle off her?!'
 
Yeah so took my wife elk hunting for the first time in CO. Setup on a ridgeline with her on one side and me on the other. Shortly after dawn heard a single rifleshot from her direction. Went to investigate, and on approaching could hear a heated argument. The wife was vociferously insisting 'That's MY elk, MY elk!!!' On rounding the bend saw this cowboy pleading with her. 'OK lady, OK, it's YOUR elk. But please, PLEASE, can I just get the saddle off her?!'
That's hilarious, but you need to repost it in the humor section.
 
my cousin and I were spring turkey hunting years back. Hiking up a hill chasing a few turkeys including a little Jake. We didn't know how to turkey hunt so we thought we could run them down; turns out, turkeys can run faster uphill than we could AND they can fly back downhill when they hit the top of the hill.

So we chase the birds up, birds fly down the far side, we gave it up and went back downhill. In our tracks are some of the biggest black bear tracks I have ever seen, and placed there not more than 10 minutes prior. They were at least as long as my size 9.5 shoes.

I understand that black bears are rarely aggressive, but that doesn't affect your gut feeling when you know that there's a bear VERY close by, and you are armed with a couple of turkey loads. We hightailed it back to the truck asap and chased birds on a different mountain.
 
my cousin and I were spring turkey hunting years back. Hiking up a hill chasing a few turkeys including a little Jake. We didn't know how to turkey hunt so we thought we could run them down; turns out, turkeys can run faster uphill than we could AND they can fly back downhill when they hit the top of the hill.

So we chase the birds up, birds fly down the far side, we gave it up and went back downhill. In our tracks are some of the biggest black bear tracks I have ever seen, and placed there not more than 10 minutes prior. They were at least as long as my size 9.5 shoes.

I understand that black bears are rarely aggressive, but that doesn't affect your gut feeling when you know that there's a bear VERY close by, and you are armed with a couple of turkey loads. We hightailed it back to the truck asap and chased birds on a different mountain.
I always carry a few slug loads, just in case......
 
Don't get caught with slugs in your pocket turkey hunting around here . Also don't get caught with lead shot in your pocket hunting waterfowl .
All too true. But if it comes down to being able to protect myself if or when Mr Bruin or Mr Cat takes a hungry look at me, well let's just say I will do what I must to assure my survival. Nuff said!
 
You wait until you can smell it's breath……then those #4's will be real impressive! 😉 memtb
As in point blank range? Naww, I'll pass. A bit more separation distance if you please. I experienced an overly curious mountain lion at less that 50 feet considering my buddy and me for dinner (no weapons in hand) and that really rattled me. Can you say"never again"?
 
Top