Years ago several of us were walking out from hunting back in from Adirondack hunting camp when we heard something big pacing us just like you but really close. We were on a trail we cut thru dense cover to shorten walk in mixed heavy white pine thicket and some hardwood so leaves were crunching. We stopped, it stopped. I hand signaled for guys to move forward slowly. As they moved, I got down on hands and knees and looked under the pines and crap. Maybe 18" of space under trees at most. Animal moved and then I saw a head look down and over to me. Nice black bear maybe 30' away and its eyes got huge, huffed and took off like runaway D9. Oh wait, got mixed up, that was me at 19 years old. Have to say Depends would have been nice....
What’s your spookiest hunting experience?
- Thread starter marksman1941
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Balls of steel to be the one to "stay behind"
carpassasin
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Yea something about those long walks out in the dark , especially when your alone !
marksman1941
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I feel like we all assume we are fairly stout, capable humans. But when darkness falls there's a lizard brain that comes out and says "you should not be here…"
Last year I shot a black bear about 40 minutes before dark. By the time I got to him and got him prepped and quartered, it was well past dark. Thankfully I had a buddy to carry half and help with the prep work.
The moment darkness fell, I got so unbelievably uneasy that I was trying to cut corners with the field dressing. My buddy kept me on the right path and helped me keep my wits, but man I didn't like it. Once we started moving back to the truck it was better, but I was very uncomfortable until we made it back. The year prior I had an elk chase that turned into a late night hike back to the truck that was just a debacle, and I think that put some anxiety in me about being out after dark. Definitely gave me some pause about how tough I really was!
memtb
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One of my wife's last young 6x6 elk was taken at near dark in a light falling snow in an area well know for Grizzly. By the time we completed a "gutless" field dress and loaded two quarters onto our little sled…..it was "dark-thirty". It was only about 1/2 to 3/4 miles back to the truck, but when using headlamps with falling snow and every breath making a brief period of fog you couldn't see thru. We made it back to the truck without being mauled. Then we had to turn around and make the trip again! 
A few days later we returned to the kill site, the carcass (pretty heavy with all internals intact) had been drug about 20 or so yards into a little creek bottom. By this time the slight snow had melted-off and no distinguishable tracks were left. Pretty certain it was moved by a bear ……just don't know what flavor! memtb
A few days later we returned to the kill site, the carcass (pretty heavy with all internals intact) had been drug about 20 or so yards into a little creek bottom. By this time the slight snow had melted-off and no distinguishable tracks were left. Pretty certain it was moved by a bear ……just don't know what flavor! memtb
Ah Yes. Pat had a way with words that would have you laughing with tears in your eye, some times making you relive some of your own similar adventures. I really missed him when he quit doing Exit Laughing in Outdoor Life. Thank You Pat, if you by chance are reading this, for all the fun I had reading your adventures and stories.
Turkeytider
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As a rule, we are not creatures of the night. The acuity of our senses drops off rather dramatically. I asked the question in another post, if we're REALLY being honest, how many of us can truthfully say we've never had a feeling, when in the night woods, of something akin to, " I'm really not sure at all that I should be here right now." ?
marksman1941
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I have never NOT had that feeling after dark. A feeling of "I'm not built for this, and no amount of head lamp will make me feel comfortable". Fear of the dark is an inherent, natural survival instinct that makes perfect sense when you realize how many creatures function well in the dark while humans just… don't
marksman1941
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Pat has shaped so much of my childhood, my early memories of the outdoors, and my current sense of humor. I recently picked up a box set of his early books to read to my wife, who has never heard of him before, in hopes she'll get more of my references.
Rick Richard
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I will admit there is really no reason to fear the darkness especially when armed with a rifle and usually a sidearm,….but I still get that very uncomfortable feeling…maybe a bit SCARED.
Seems that cats have become quite the delicacy as of late!
Buddy of mine who did a lot of lobster hunting was on SCUBA near an island where the cliffs drop off vertically to about 100 feet deep. Was poking through some rockfalls when a GWS took an interest in him. So he clung to the bottom to reach the cliff face, then stuck to the face all the way up. Don't recall how he got to the boat, maybe flagged his brother to pick him up after his brother finished his dive (yeah, they have been diving seperately for decades). This was back before the loonies gave white sharks protected status.
Being curious, I pulled up tracking data and found a tagged shark there while he was diving. Now these tags have data loggers that transmit when the shark surfaces. After the encounter, this shark proceeded to cross the Pacific Ocean at depths to 10,000 feet. Prior to this, it wasn't thought possible for a shark to go straight across ocean for lack of food, rather than following coastlines. They discovered that at great depths the ocean is essentially chock full of marine life. This is significant, because rather than one dimensional coastlines or two dimensional farms, 2/3 of the earth is a three dimensioal food source, enough to feed a population of trillions. Currently, however, most developed nations are in a state of catastrophic population decline, such that there are already places like Japan where there are not enough younger people to care for the elderly. Even China is now paying parents to have children...
Anyway, long before bass boat cameras and similar I put a video camera inside an underwater flashlight case and tethered it to a very long waterproof sprinkler cable, and streamed video to a laptop on the boat. Attached is a (interlaced) screenshot of a video made 400 feet deep at footprint bank, rising up from very deep water. The whole place is teeming with rock cod to the limits of the light source. There are three of them in the lower left of this frame.
Attachments
That brings back the memory of a close call I had. Actually for me a non-experience, but the could-have-been still lingers in my mind as a cautionary thought. We had gotten my partner's bull in close quarters on the edge of a place we call Lost Meadow more than a week before, but I still had a tag to fill. At sunrise we had glassed some elk headed into timber to bed, below another meadow on an adjacent ridge, about where it joined Lost Meadow. The game trail into Lost Meadow would have been my normal trail up into that area, having better stalking cover and a good climbing grade, but as I stood in the bottom of the drainage between the two adjacent finger ridges something told me to take the left, more open ridge up. I listen to those gentle nudges I get out there.One of my wife's last young 6x6 elk was taken at near dark in a light falling snow in an area well know for Grizzly. By the time we completed a "gutless" field dress and loaded two quarters onto our little sled…..it was "dark-thirty". It was only about 1/2 to 3/4 miles back to the truck, but when using headlamps with falling snow and every breath making a brief period of fog you couldn't see thru. We made it back to the truck without being mauled. Then we had to turn around and make the trip again!
A few days later we returned to the kill site, the carcass (pretty heavy with all internals intact) had been drug about 20 or so yards into a little creek bottom. By this time the slight snow had melted-off and no distinguishable tracks were left. Pretty certain it was moved by a bear ……just don't know what flavor! memtb
As I climbed the badlands-looking open ridge toward the base of the cliff where the elk had been, I kept feeling a something that kept me a little on edge. There was a good game trail, but the rocky ground gave no clue of what had passed before me other than the toe prints of elk here and there. About when I got to the junction of the two finger ridges I was mulling which way to skulk and was considering making a course adjustment when I decided to check in with my partner. When I made contact he told me that a young friend of ours and his buddy had just come down off Lost Meadow, wildeyed, describing the encounter they had just had with a large, dark grizzly! No shots fired and no damage to anyone, but very up-close. That bear was in the vicinity of where we had left that carcass 10 days before, and had probably been tending what was left of it. They didn't know whether the bear had gone left (toward me) or right (off into a large drainage with thick timber). Either way I didn't like the situation; it could even be coming toward me a I stood on the faint trail I was climbing.
Suddenly the lack of cover on the ridge I was on seemed like a heck of a good thing. I turned around and retreated back down the way I had come. Knowing there was a now agitated grizzly bear in there somewhere ahead was not a comforting thought. That was too close for comfort. It could have been me, alone, facing that bear running at me, but for some instinct or premonition that turned me on a different trajectory that morning. I was lucky that day.
fta0303
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Always listen to your instincts.
AussieWriter
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Especially when they are screaming at you.........
