What’s your spookiest hunting experience?

[fta0303]

So I had hiked in about 5 miles to a spot I had spotted a nice whitetail buck. After a long day of no luck it was time to go. Darkness had set in but the trail back was good and I had one of those headlamps on so off I went. The trail was on a heavily forested and steep hillside with dense trees above and below me. About halfway back to my truck I hear a bird chirping on the uphill side of me. Strange I thought, doesn't sound like any bird I've heard out in the dark. As I continue to walk the bird seems to be following me chirping fairly regularly. It started to weird me out. Now I'm turning around abruptly thinking something's following me and starting to get scared because the d@mn bird is still following me! I got back to the truck eventually and left thinking myself a fool for over reacting. The next day at work I'm telling my buddy about it and he just chuckles a bit while he's tapping on his phone. He holds it up and asks "is this the bird?". A soundtrack plays and I say "Yup, that's it man let me see!" It was a female Mountain Lion chirping away! Apparently they do so when they have kittens. That's when the chills came.

all non-roaring cats chirp at times...to sound like a bird. Often used to communicate with kittens....

 

[fta0303]

Forgive me, this is a fishing story, but worth sharing I think….
I was walleye fishing with a friend and his son on Upper Red Lake in northern MN. It was a dreary gray day with an occasional sprinkle and on a few occasions we could hear a very distant rumble of thunder.
We were anchored in about 12' of water and were jig fishing. My friends son Jacob decided to take a break and reeled his line in. While having a snack he noticed his fishing line started to buzz. When he touched the rod he got a shock. On closer inspection you could see arcing between the fishing line and rod eyelets (like a spark plug). At about the same time my buddy Paul had casted his jig about 20 yards off the side of the boat and his monofilament fishing line hung suspended about 6' off the surface of the water. Our hair also began to stand on end. Needless to say, we pulled anchor and quickly got off of the lake. I think we were moments away from being struck by lightning.

always pay attention to those rising hackles....

 

[fta0303]

I don't understand how someone from Michigan has only had one spooky experience and it wasn't even in Michigan? Are all the stories that I have heard about the UP not true or maybe you can't remember any abductions that you may have had?

well, they probe you unmentionably, then use that MIB zapper to make you forget...

 

[fta0303]

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.

Through practice, I learned to make the night my friend. Not moving you aren't detectable except by smell (making bears a problem...). I never met anyone in the woods who scared me, mostly I was off-trail so didn't meet others. I did meet an old man while trail hiking, he was just out for his health, having been so counseled by his doctor. Another time, I was on the Cascade Crest trail, coming up high from the East onto the actual crest, in my usual Mtn. garb: wool whipcord pants, a wool shirt, my 100 mile cowboy hat, Reichle boots and S&W 4" Model 29 on my hip. I come across a guy wearing tights, light hiking shoes, a down vest and goggles, using ski poles as hiking stick. He's come up fom the West (Seattle) side... I made him pretty nervous, I could tell, a bit of culture shock. My revolver spooked him, but then he was ten miles in with no weapon, in bear country, country inhabited by characters out of Deliverance, like me!.

 

[fta0303]

I've got a couple good ones.
1) The one theat scared my pops the most was a hunt in the southwestern NM boothill curca 2007-8. In NM after the draw due date the state raffles off the unsold game tags to NM residents. The caveat to this is they are hard, rural units. Well i got lucky and drew. It's is a hot desert unit bordering Arizona to the west and Mexico to the south the NM boothill. It was after 10am where we spent the morning watching a water tank with fresh sign to no avail. We decided to go back to camp because it was getting hot. During our drive out we rolled onto a border patrol truck, white dodge 2500 iirc. We waved and said hi and went on our way. Later that day we ran into another border patrol truck as we said hi he asked if we had seen anyone else, my pops said we only saw the other border patrol truck. He asked us to describe it and point out on the map where we saw him. The border patrol guy told us casually that they were not borderpatrol they were cartel. My dad bugged out.

2) cat story I was in my early teens on a desert mule deer hunt between Roswell and Artesia NM. We walked into a arroyo/draw with steep sides. The wind was with us so we casually picked out steps. My dad mentioned that he felt we were being watched. We kept on going we came upon a strong urine smell so we stopped to listen. I **** you not 15feet away was a blockhead mountain lion watching us from his/her den. It never moved. My dad has a 35mm photo of it. It was a very big cat head perfectly camouflaged. We both puckered and backtracked out of there fast.

3) full moon at white sands
This is fun. White Sands is a cool place. 100% surrounded by Government military reservations. Trinity Test site to thr north, NASA base due west and Holloman AFB to the East. A couple years ago the wife and I decided to camp on the full moon. When we got to White Sands there was no camping that nite because of a Missle test going over area. So we got a permit for the day after the full moon to camp. The camping area is a 1/2+ mile hike in hike out camping area. We set up camp and watched thr sunset to the west and shortly after watched the full moonrise from the east. It was a super pretty nite we were enjoying ourselves when all of a sudden 8 or 9 lights turned on in the sky. It tripped me out I mentioned this to my wife and she said you mean the light tower lights along the ridge. I EXCLAIMED to her that we were looking down a valley and there were no towers there. As i was explaining this to my wife, under the lights, a Rocket?!? shot horizontally in the sky it's flame trail sputtering out. I was hooting and hollering and my wife said she did not see that!!! I was loosing my ****, seriously cool things were happening and my wife was oblivious. After another minute another Rocket?!? shot across the sky. That one my wife saw, which made me feel not as crazy lol. A few minutes after that the lights above us went off. I joke about it being big brother testing some Marvin the Martians toys. Instill can't explain the sideways rocket. I talked with a retired AF guy about the story he said that the lights in the sky were most likely flares, he stateed that we know when the soviet ( his words) satellites are over head and we put flare above places where testing happens to blind their satellites.

My money is they are some sort of drone because they did not float thru the sky like flairs and all turned off at once.

4) Southern Oregon Bigfoot watcher?
I think about this woman alot. I was in the Siskiyou Mtns part of the cascade range right along the Ca/Or border. There was a old fire lookout that I was heading to. I was in my 91 toyota 4x4 pickup. It was a rough slow road. After several miles I drove into a clearing. There was a obese lady sitting in the meadow on a folding chair. I waved and she waved back and smiled. I saw her car a toyota camry parked at the other edge of the meadow. This was not a maintained road in any way. I stopped and wanted to ask the lady if was OK. I remember seeing her wave and smile and he car didn't look beat up so I figured she came the opposite way I came. I figured maybe the road was better going the other way. The road was not improved in anyway going the other way.
When I got to the fire tower I told the lookout what I saw he chucked and said she was a Bigfoot watcher. When I drove back she and her car was gone. I would have liked to pick her brain. Lol.


.

ALways assume your bigfoot is friendly...

 

[Bob Milek]

He was about seventy five yards behind me, he said that whenever I would turn my head to listen he would lay down real quick. His dark green uniform just blended in. He was about ten yards behind me as I was getting into the truck. He was a sneaky SOB. But I guess that is job description for game warden.

Tell him he should read the Patrick McManus books- several have stories about the game warden Sneed. Think he'd get a kick out of them!

 

[340Wby-4-everything]

If I'm in the woods I have a firearm.

Yep, much better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6 or eaten/killed by 1

 

[fta0303]

Elk hunting eagles nest wilderness about a decade ago, had hiked in 2 miles from I-70 and set up a spike camp, opening morning hiked in another mile or so to the top of a ridge.

Was sitting there, glassing, was very quiet , no birds squirrels nothing ,i got a little spooked decided to get up and move to a new spot on looked over and saw this.

Who knows how long its been out there, 50 years maybe, figured someones buried out there in the middle of eagles nest.

That's not a crude backcountry cross, but nicely crafted one. Brought in, not made on the spot. At least so it seems. A skilled man could have made it with a camp saw and a knife...

 

[victor3ranger]

Are we distance cousins or something. Any Coles, Grindstaffs or Shoupes in your family?

lol I don't think so

 

[Turpentine21]

I would pay to see that!

Closest I ever got to rodeo riding. It is tough to stay on a hog

 

[fta0303]

When I was a 16 or 17 I climbed down out of my climber and started for the truck after dark. About half way back I started hearing something following me. I stopped and shined my light. Nothing. Started again, it started again. I stoped and looked nothing. I started it started so I sped up. It sped up. Stop shine nothing. So I started running my butt off with it hot on my tail. When I got to the truck I jumped in as fast as I could. I sat there waiting to see something. But nothing, no more sound.
So I got out and started to put my stuff away. Only to find my rope for pulling up my bow had come undone and picked up a small stick. I was dragging that stick through the fall leaves making it sound like something behind me.
Scared the crap out of me. Im 42 now and still laugh about it.

Wonderful story ! Reminds me of when I was a kid, maybe 12 years old. I was out at the barn after dark, to feed the horses.I was afraid of the dark then. I was always tamping down the fear, just barely keeping from losing it when feeding the horses after dark. Only about 50 yards from the house. One night, just stepping away from the barn, I did lose it. Full panicked sprint toward the house, which was two 5.5 ft corral fences away. I half climbed half vaulted the first one, saw the gate on the second one, dove through between the two bottom 2 x 8s on that, did hurt my ribs! Raced to the house. I'll never forget the horrible fear as I fumbled trying to open the door.... Your own mind can be your worst enemy !

 

[marksman1941]

Closest I ever got to rodeo riding. It is tough to stay on a hog

My brother raised a pig for 4H one year (and only one year). He went up to the barn to work with the pig, and I heard him start hollering. I looked out off the porch just in time to see his pig hauling butt down the hill towards the house, my brother sitting on its back facing backwards, yelling and whacking its butt with his cane. Turns out when he opened the gate to go into the pen, the pig made a run for freedom and tried splitting my brothers legs. He was short enough that it lifted him just a bit, and he got the ride of a lifetime out of it. He stayed on for far longer than I expected him to do before getting pitched off in a hard corner.

 

[fta0303]

If you're out enough sooner or later something will happen that's just strange. I've enjoyed reading this thread so thought I'd share the strangest that's happened to me.
The first part of this happened when I was a senior in high school. I'd just started bow hunting and was trying to make an honest effort to scout ahead of elk season. I'd found an area near the SW corner of the Crater Lake Park that seemed to always hold elk. I'd been in a few times and decided at the last minute to make one more run in there. I called my buddy I usually ran with, but he had conflicting plans and didn't want to go. Told him where I was going to park, and was planning on it only being a day trip.
The next morning I was up before the loggers, made the drive, and was in the trees before I started hearing the log trucks echo through the hills. Walking to an outcropping overlooking a smallish clearing I sat down to watch. I didn't own binoculars, but carried my mini14 always in hopes of ventilating coyotes. It had a cheap 4x scope.
As I sat there I started seeing movement in the far edge. Sure enough some elk were feeding toward me. I watched them for quite a while, long enough my heart rate had returned to normal. They were feeding toward a small spring/wallow and calm for the most part, but every so often one would jerk its head up and look toward a big downed Doug fir.
I started watching where they were looking expecting to see a cat. Minutes ticked by and then I realized I could see this mountain of a man peaking over the root ball. No hat, looking like a scraggly longish brown hair. I was surprised anyone else had walked in that far out of season for one, and that I hadn't heard any other vehicles that morning walking in. While watching him and him watching the elk I just held still, my silhouette covered by the sun rising above me and the rocks at my back. He stepped out, moving toward the trunk in the direction the elk had disappeared. He looked to be wearing a big coat even though it wasn't cold, like a Filson tin cloth or something. He stepped over the tree and quickly made his way into the trees. I felt confused, why was he wearing so much of a coat? Why didn't he have any stuff with him?
I eventually walked to the wallow but it didn't look like it had been disturbed. Circling back I went through the opening and was looking at the down tree. It was bigger than I thought. When I walked up to it the trunk was tall enough I would have had to use both hands to hop up far enough to swing my legs over. The tracks were to dry to leave good prints, but what grass there was smashed big enough my boot fit inside it like a little kid walking in dad's footprint.
When I got back and told my buddy about it he just laughed at me.

A few years later, I was just out of the service and restless. Decided I'd hike into a small lake to fish for a couple days.
These mountain lakes have an actual yuppie trail to them now, but back then there was still enough people that knew about them that it wasn't all that uncommon to see someone else, though most of the time you're alone.
I parked at a turn out on a logging road below one of the lakes. It was a much steeper route up, but shorter by far than the easy route. On the way up I stayed on game trails for the most part. It has rained a little the night before, everything was wet, but smelled great. About 400 yards before topping out at the lake there was something that caught my attention ahead of me but off the trail in the thick young firs. Watching it as I walked, I brought the mini14 down to more of a ready position and got ready to toss my fishing pole. All of a sudden a young woman gets up up from under the tree and nearly runs at me, sobbing, barefoot, dressed in underwear and a tank top. She's soaked. I was shocked at what I saw.
When she got to me she wrapped her arms around me crying and talking at the same time.
I finally understood she hadn't seen her friend since they ran out of their tent during the night. When trying to find out why they ran all she kept saying was that a big man was pushing the tent down. I put my wool shirt on her, and gave her my dry socks. She didn't want to let go of me as we walked up to their camp. Sure enough the tent was down at one end, there were a few things laying around, and she was shaking scared and crying. Kept saying "he got her" over and over. She finally told me her friends name and eventually started helping call her name. About 20 minutes later here comes her friend, dressed about the same, just as freaked out.
I helped them pack up and they wanted me to take them back the way I came. We walked out, no unusual happenings. I drove to where they parked and asked them if they needed me to stay with them. I followed them out to the highway and to a little roadside place that had a phone. The sheriff was called, I waited, wasted the rest of the morning answering questions.
I went home, never went back to fish that lake. The lake isn't terribly far from the first incident, and after listening to the girls story and the outright terror in their voices, the description of what they thought they saw wasn't to different from the mountain man I'd seen years earlier.
Some things can't be explained easily.

Good story. Mine is a little less threatening. High Cascade deer hunt, central Wa state, camped on top of Cathedral ridge above Salmon La Sac. I used a USMC poncho to make a shelter; snug, but it left an opening at the front which I usually covered with my coat at night. Forgot my coat this trip. Luckily, I found a 20 x 20 piece of clear Vizqueen folded and crammed into the notch of a tree. I unfolded it and spread it over my shelter and retired. I woke in the middle of the night to a rustling sound, seemed to be 5 feet or so off to the right of my shelter. I stewed and worried about this, couldn't see out due to my breath condensing on the Vizqueen. I spent a miserable night ! When it got light in the morning, to my amazement there were strips of paper spread all around my head undeer the Vizqueen. I'd been eating small bars of Hershey's candy bars through the night, but hadn't shredded the wrappers. It was chipmunks, gnawing apart my candy bars, the rustling sound was them moving around on the cellophane bag that contained the candy bars! I guess I was lucky they weren't a bear!

 

[JakeC]

Man there's some good ones in here, i found it a week ago and I still can't get through a quarter of these stories. I've never had one massive one, just a lot of little things that don't seem weird until months later. Some things get to you over time, not right then.

In reverse chronological order: One day in the Uintas I kept hearing laughter in the trees behind me for a chunk of the afternoon. It sounded like a couple teen boys carrying on about 150y away. It sounded distinctly like the type of exaggerated laughter you hear on a school bus, echoing through the trees. Same region, same year, I was camped a few miles back and I couldn't sleep. For over an hour between 2 and 3 AM I could hear what sounded somewhat like a poorly timed ambulance siren on the edge of my hearing. It would go on for ten minutes, then be hard to hear for a little bit while it moved, then be clearer and closer. It sort of moved into and out of my range over the course of maybe 90 minutes. I was 2 miles in, up and over the hill and down the valley from any road, and it was coming from a direction with no roads whatesoever.

Different state, maine, long time ago, we came across a giant apple-filled turd in the middle of the path about 400 y from my mom's house. Human-like or dog-like, but almost golf ball diameter. No tracks coming or going. My mentor said oh that's bear and started to walk on, but then he got quiet and stared at it a long time and said "well, jeez that's awful big... human..." Then we went on with a few more double-takes at the olympic-sized scat. Same general area, different day (can't remember if it was the same year) and a half mile farther in, me and my adult cousin were a few dozen yards apart covering a log trail intersection. Thick evergreens growing into the old road where a hardwood stand came down to a bottom. We're crouched into the hemlocks, super still afternoon and chilly. We're sitting for an hour maybe and there's absolutely no noise, not even mice or needles falling. Then a shrill yell breaks out from the thicket adjacent to us, thirty yards away. It sounded a little nasally like a peacock, and it started in a tenor and went UP! into the high range of a soprano. High but not Mariah Carey high, not birdy or screechy, just nasally. just a smooth even crescendo in pitch and volume. From the volume of a crow to a peacock to the volume of an aggravated stallion. Just one yell, then its echo, then nothing. Whatever it was was there the whole time or it snuck in and out without even rustling a leaf.

So again, not anything you can't shrug your shoulder at at the time, but stuff that you're never comfortable explaining.