Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[browning2480]

Picture a 10 year old Odin laying prone in full head to toe green woodland BDU style clothes complete with Boonie hat and trusty 760 Pump Master carried sideways across my arms. I was doing my best to emulate Carlos Hathcock as I crawled down a deep gully at the bottom of a valley. The gully started about 6' deep with steep sides then slowly became more shallow which was perfect to cover my movements so Charlie wouldn't see me as I eased toward my objective. I squirrel and rabbit hunted these woods daily mainly just enjoying the woods and to pass time. As I neared a house that aligned with the wash I knew that I would soon run out of room and would have to reverse course back toward home. Just as the shop behind the house came into view I heard a shot. My first thought was cool, maybe I'll meet a new friend to hang out with. Then back into sniper mode I decided to sit tight and see what happened. Soon, I heard foot steps coming my way in the dry hardwood leaves. Things were about to get real as I prepared to have to explain why I'm hunting here because I had no idea who lived there although I'm sure they knew my parents. I'm still a little too deep in the wash to see outside so I just wait and listen for the footsteps to get closer. Then I see a black bag land in the wash about 20 feet in front of me and then the footsteps begin going away from me. I do what any 10 year old would do and crawl toward the bag. When I get to the bag it is obviously a black trash bag. I'm laying there with my head only inches away from the bag. I guess I was hoping there may be some alcohol or adult reading materials inside. I poked the bag with my barrel and it seemed like whatever is in it was soft and flexible. I reached out and began looking for the opening of the bag. I begin rolling the bag and the object finally fell out exposing a bloody mouth complete with a large fang about 8" from my face. For a split second I remember thinking I had met my end. I don't think it would have scared me had I not been laying down and the fang so close. It turned out to be just a large black housecat that had crossed this neighbor. He never knew I was there and that's definitely the scariest thing I've found in the woods.

I wonder how many here know who Carlos was.

 

[TxxAgg]

I wonder how many here know who Carlos was.

I do.

 

[Delta21]

I do.

Ol Arkansas boy..

 

[Curhunter]

Heard and saw a lot of stuff at night running hounds. About 20 years ago a couple buddies and I were out training dogs. We used to hunt by an old cemetery quite a bit. This night it was around 2am in the summer time. The dogs were running an old coon track down in the river bottoms. It was a crystal clear night where sound travels well. All of a sudden we heard people arguing by our truck which is by the cemetery. We were a little over a quarter of a mile away and I got to the truck as soon as I could. Didn't want anyone messing with our ride home. When I get there no one is around, no dust where someone left and not a sound. Can't say that we were scared about it but we did call the dogs in and went home. Hunted there many times after that without anything happening again.

 

[Yarak]

One more
Back years ago I was in this deep hollow digging ginseng and in my mind I hear something moving ever so slightly through the leaf litter
I move on and keep hearing something step as I step or at least that’s what I think I hear
The idea hit me to stop abruptly to see it I hear steps…..surenuff I stop and I hear a couple steps then it stops
Something is stalking me and I have no firearm but I do have my digger that looks like a small pick axe
I decide to make my way to the truck instead of just digging and waiting to see what it was
I cross the creek and get to the top of the hill where I can see my truck
Something splashes across the creek headed my way
I’m a good 100 yds from the creek and decided to hightail it to the truck rather than see what was coming up that hillside
My best guess is that is was a big cat
Though very rare down this way they are here

 

[Billogna]

I wonder how many here know who Carlos was.

That's easy!! He's the baby from the movie "The Hangover"

 

[gwtravis]

When I was in sixth grade we had a deer lease in Pipe Creek, Texas, that encompassed Polly’s Peak.

The hill was named for Policarpo Rodriguez and he is buried in the cemetery on the property. It’s a cool place with a chapel he built and an old stone house foundation whose bottom level has gun ports in the walls.

This is his autobiography. He was an interesting man!

And a second link to Polly’s Chapel

Anyway, one early season morning I was dropped off near a clearing with a large overlooking oak tree. I shuffled nervously to the oak and climbed up rotten 2x4 rungs nailed on the trunk to a perched board and waited for sunrise. I should add this was my second year to hunt alone so the nerves were alive in my young self.

It was a clear sky when I settled in but a morning fog which sometimes sets down in this area arrived with the late chill.

Soon two dim lamps appeared across the shrouded field and slowly drifted my way. Halfway to my position they stopped. I felt my heart start to slowly beat again.

There they stayed until the morning sun peeked out and burned the fog away. As the sun rose higher my confidence soared there was nothing there.

About noon I heard dad’s truck coming down the road. I climbed down the tree and curiosity hurried me to the spot the lamps had been.

There in the tall grass was a mound of weathered limestone rocks which could only be an old lost grave.

I never hunted that spot again!

 

[svivian]

When I was 15 I bailed early from school to go elk hunting as I had plans for the weekend. I had permission from a land owner to go through his property to access some public that I knew had some elk. I was booking it up the trail checking for tracks to cut in the snow for a mile or two. I approached a group of does feeding and worked my way around them and back on the trail to not disturb them. A few minutes later the deer are running past me up the trail at full sprint. Suddenly in the oak brush I could hear one get taken down and make a horrible death scream. I quickly said F*** this and jogged back down the trail towards the truck. As I'm going down the trail I look and see Mountain lion tracks IN my boot prints. Come to find out that bastard followed me for almost a mile before it got distracted by the deer....

 

[Meshnasty]

I don't have anything too crazy, but I'll add mine as I do enjoy reading these right before I go on a solo hunt so I can stare at the roof of my tent at night and wonder what that sound was.

Story #1 - Bigfoot?
It was a couple years ago when my wife and I drove down to the Gila to hike and look for sheds. We didn't hit the forest road until around 10:30pm and we found a spot we wanted to camp at around 12am. We ended up about 8 miles from the pavement. We had actually driven past this spot by 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile and turned around to go back to it since we didn't find anything better.

We had just finished getting everything in the tent and set up. It wasn't windy, but I figured I should put a few guy lines out just incase. I found a rock near by and started to pound the stakes in since the ground was hard. I had just finished with the 2nd or 3rd stake when I heard a tree knock about 100-125 yards away. I asked my wife if she had heard it as well and she did. I immediately decided I was done with pounding stakes in the ground. The rest of the night was uneventful.

There were no roads for 2+ miles in that direction. The next day we didn't hear or see any vehicles and hiked through the area seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

Story #2 - Dog Man
I was bow hunting deer in a wilderness area that borders private land. The FS had recently came through and cleared the fence line on the public side so I was using that as an easy way to get to where I was going and I could glass into all the canyons along the way. I had made it to the last canyon and didn't see anything I was interested in so I turned back around with the intent to glass a few of the canyons again on the way back out.

I didn't make it too far when I saw all the deer stand up on a hill side and a little while later I heard a guy yelling up in the next canyon. At the time I figured someone had come in behind me and was trying to get their friends attention. I stayed low along the fence line and made it to the canyon where the guy was. He was still yelling, but I could understand him now.

"Help, help, help!" "Come here!" "HEYYYY HELP! "Get over here!" None of his yelling sounded desperate though. He sounded mad. I doubted that he could have seen me since I was below him and using the tree line as cover from any deer. His yells for help then turned into profanity.

I walked out to an open spot where I could see better with my binoculars and started glassing the side of the ridge, but I couldn't see him. The yelling stopped and he fired two shots. I backed into the trees again, but stayed in the binos. He finally came over the top of ridge where I could see him. He was wearing a matching outfit of military camo and a fully loaded matching backpack with a shovel strapped to it. He was still yelling when his dog, which looked like a malamute or big husky, ran up to him. He then yelled at his dog, telling the dog things no one should tell a dog they like.

I now had no intent to interact with this person, but I'd have to cross through an open area about 100 yards long to keep going to my truck. He was a couple hundred feet up in elevation from me, but only ±250 yards away now. I could see him as I was moving through the opening. He saw me and started yelling again. I was moving in high gear now and could see him coming down the hillside toward me.

Just past the end of the clearing was a steep section where a rock ridge came down almost all the way to the fence line, but you had to basically scramble up to the top. When I got to the top I looked behind me and the guy was in the clearing with dog coming towards me. He was yelling directly at me now, "don't you dare cross that fence you son of.. etc. etc." I went over the top and dropped into the next gully. Once I was in the bottom I press checked my pistol, I always have it loaded, but I wanted to be ready based on the guy's actions and demeanor. I tried to move as fast as possibly by only stepping on rocks or areas void of snow so I didn't leave foot prints. I did that for a couple hundred yards as I kept cutting up towards the mountain where it was thicker. I kept checking behind me, but never saw him again.

I made it back to the trailhead and was happy to see that a truck of a guy I had met the day before was still at the trail head. Once they came back I talked to him and his brother about what had happened. They were previously warned by another local about a guy that harasses people out there. I was planning to camp there that night, but they invited me back to their camp. They were very nice people who I am still in contact with.

I called the local CO later on. He apologized for me having to go through the incident and said the guy is a known issue/nut job. He pops up every other year or so and has learned to walk the line of legal/illegal. The guy lives off grid in that area and is notorious for running people out of the area. If they have to go to his place they will not go in until all the area agencies are available to roll in together.

 

[Dos Perros]

I wonder how many here know who Carlos was.

Always wanted to add a white feather to my garb.

 

[Coldtrail]

Since there is a hound story, I'll add to it:

About 15yrs ago I was running cats in January and there was a hard to get to block that if the river was frozen the cats and hounds would cross and end up in no man's land that was really tough to access if you didn't want to go swimming in January. I had been in this spot once before a couple years earlier and the chase broke up and I was able to call my dogs out, it was always pretty rare that they ended up crossing the river. They came running back out, one had a minor injury from what looked like a stick but I didn't think too much of it as they get beat up a little running through the brush.

Fast forward a few years later and I have a great race going but they went cross country like a bat out of hell and right to the river, I can tell they crossed into no mans land and I hike in to make sure. I look and the ice is really terrible so I can't follow. I give it about an hour and the dogs go out of hearing and are sort of circling one spot but not treeing. This goes on for another 30min or so and I decide I need to go in. I get to a hill and call friend who lives nearby to see if I can borrow his snowmobile to save me about 5mi of walking and time if something weird is going on, he says no problem so I grab the sled and go in coming from another direction that is an old logging road. I'm able to get within about 1/2mi of the dogs and get to hiking in closer to where the dogs are. As I snowshoe in I could tell one of my dogs ran to the snowmobile right away which is fine, I knew he would stay with the machine. I hike into the other two and they are running all over but not really doing anything but I see them covered in blood. I call them over and both dogs have single puncture wounds about as big as my finger and perfectly round, one dog has it in her chest and the other in the rear part of her ribcage. I call them over and we start hiking back to the snowmobile, I can hear my 3rd dog howling where the machine is parked. I get closer and I can see my male dog standing on the snowmobile seat and blood running out of his chest....he also has a perfectly round puncture. I get all three dogs to sit on the snowmobile and I ride out back to my truck. They are bleeding like crazy all over the machine and the front of my hunting coat and pants is also now soaked from having a dog riding on my lap. I get the snowmobile back to my buddy and he sees the dogs and is wondering what the hell happened and his snowmobile has blood everywhere. I give the dogs what antibiotics I have, plug the holes a little, and get them to the vet wondering if they have been shot or what the hell happened! The vet looks the dogs over and is clueless, just says they were obviously punctured with something, but whatever it was didn't break off inside or stay put and it was clean so something likely man made. I tell my buddy about it and that I'm really clueless but something weird went on back there. Drove me nuts, we got significant snow that night so it covered up most of their tracks but I was able to track where they went and found nothing obvious that they would have run into and no human tracks anywhere. There is however deep snow so there is a pretty deep trough where the cat and dogs ran & it would be easy for tracks to blend into that with fresh snow covering them.

Fast forward a year and a half later, my buddy who let me use his snowmobile is hunting bear in that same area with some friends. The bear crosses the river into no man's land and the dogs end up deep into the woods there in exactly the same area, circling all over but not treeing. They figure out a way to hike into the dogs, get in there and 6 bear dogs are running around with perfectly round puncture wounds bleeding everywhere. Take them to the vet, vet says no idea what happened, clean hole like somebody just ran up and speared them.

 

[streetdoctor]

Had a shitty experience this year elk hunting in September. Due to a fire closure we had to leave trucks about 15 miles from our area. We headed in on dirt bikes on a really gnarly jeep road that went from about 7500' up over 11000 and back down. We started our ride in the dark (about 8pm) and as soon as we left the trucks it started to downpour. Coming down the backside of the mountain in a blind corner we ran into about 200 sheep. Slowly moved through them until they cleared enough we could see the other side. Rode through and around another corner and encountered another big group of sheep. This time with sheep dogs. We couldn't go forward or backward and were on a steep slope downhill in mud. Hammering the throttle of my 300cc 2 stroke had no effect on the half a dozen big ass dogs that were biting at my legs at this point. Ended up hammering it into the sheep and made it away from them. When on the dirtbike I usually carry a Glock 43 but it did not have enough ammo to take care of a half a dozen pissed off dogs. Can only imagine the outcome if I dumped the bike. Infuriating they're allowed to pull that shit on public land. Forest service couldn't care less. Ruined a pair of first lite pants from the encounter but they didn't draw blood. Not messing around in the future with those asshole dogs, carrying my Glock 19 from now on. Generally consider myself a dog person as well as we have 3.

 

[Coldtrail]

I was hunting bear with my hounds and tried a new area that was a swampy area that surrounded a kettle lake. There is low land on the west side and a high ridge on the east and south, and sort of a flat recently logged forest to the north. It's a pretty neat spot and nothing really leaves the area so it's a nice place to hunt. I cut a track and turn 4 dogs out, they run in and find the bear and the race is on, bear trees almost immediately so I'm thinking the dogs did great and I'll come back to hunt.

I come back again and turn out my four hounds, they again jump a bear and the race is on, the chase goes some distance and suddenly it sounds like I have a pack of 20 dogs, I hear what sounds like faint yips and barks like crazy. I'm in the low end of the swamp so sounds are muffled, and am thinking I am getting an echo from the ridge or stirred up some coyotes.....and it actually sounds really cool but also quieter than the individual barks from my dogs. The dogs circle around again, tree a bear and we take some pics and release and all go home happy. I hunt here a couple more times and always hear the same echo so assume it's the lay of the land making the barking bounce around.

I run there again and take a friend with me, I tell him about the echo on the ridge and that he should get to the top of that ridge and he will really hear the noise coming from the dogs and it will sound like 20 dogs joined the chase. He goes and sits on the ridge, I turnout dogs again and within 10-15min the chase is on. I can't hear much because it's a little windy but figure my buddy is getting all of it. After a few minutes my buddy calls me on the radio "Hey, are you hearing that?", I tell him I can kind of make out the dogs but can't hear the echo today. He radios me back "This is really freaky". On this day it turns out the bear ran out of that area and we caught up dogs and met up on the road.

I ask my buddy about the echo and he says he could hear what he thought I was hearing plain as day, he tells me "what I heard wasn't any kind of an echo from the dogs, coyotes or wolves... it sounded exactly like a bunch of people being killed" A little research showed that at one point in history there was an Indian camp on the north side of that lake....unknown what may have taken place there.

 

[Moserkr]

K remembered one more thanks to the worry about black bear thread. Back when I first started solo backpack hunting, I worried about black bears more than I should. I respect them, but ime now they are much more scared of me. Hadnt been around them enough to understand em back then, and Ive had one try to come into my truck camp before.

I found a new area which is now one of my honey holes, and set up camp along the edge of the meadow where I found a really cool tree that made a natural seat in its s-shaped trunk. Was also 20’ from a little creek with good water so it was a perfect spot. Had a little fire, made dinner, set up camp, and went to bed.

During the night I was sleeping pretty good. Grass wasnt too dry around camp and with the creek trickling nearby, I couldnt hear much. Im sleeping in a big agnes seedhouse tent, with the rain fly on it, staked down well, and the weather is dead calm. Middle of the night I “wake up” to a “bear” sticking its head under my rain fly on the side of my tent! Or so I thought? I never woke up really, just brushed it off as a dream, and when it happened I kinda grumbled “get outa here” or something to the “bear”.

Slept the rest of the night without issue, thinking I just had another one of those weird scaredy cat dreams. Woke up the next morning and as Im coming back from watering the grass, I notice one stake from my rainfly is completely pulled up out of the ground. And it is exactly where the “bear” stuck its head under…

To this day Im still 50/50 that it actually happened. But the stake out of the ground in that exact spot sure is a pretty big coincidence. I later learned that where I camped is actually a fairly popular corridor the bears use to travel, and 99% of the time, its at night according to my trail cams.

 

[Mojave Kid]

My first post on Rok Slide. About 10 yrs ago, I took my brother and friend with my 2 dogs quail hunting and found a trail leading from the desert up into a feeder canyon in the southern Sierra Nevada. I parked the truck at the trail head and there were a couple of run down abandoned cabins on either side of the trail. We were all strapped with handguns and we announced ourselves and approached the cabins, one of them had a real cool old attachment shack made of rocks against the slope of the hill. None of us got any bad vibes and the dogs were fine so we split up and started hunting. Now at one point I started chasing a covey away from the cabins in the direction that we came and I noticed in my peripheral vision a man with crossed arms off my left about 40 yds away and when I did a double take all I saw was a Joshua tree in that same spot so I kept after me dogs and birds and I again felt someone looking at me from a different spot but on the same side of the mountain and again when I turned it was a Joshua Tree. The real strange thing is that later that morning I went hunting past the cabins into the canyon and my brother was on the slope about 150 feet above me looking for chukar . He later told me that when he saw me by the creek thicket below him a grey mist/cloud moved down the canyon and went over me and my dogs between him and me and he said that made him feel real uneasy. Nothing else happened on the trip, but if I believed in ghosts I would say that some miner is guarding his stash up there. I have tried to go back to that spot over the years but the wife and kids get mad and have said that I'm going to bring back some bad mojo if I go so I let it be. Every summer on the way to Bishop, I look off towards the Sierras and see the haunted canyon far off in the distance.

 

[cacklercrazy]

I do.

I do and his book is a great read!

 

[Peregrine1]

https://www.rokslide.com/forums/threads/creepy-experiences-in-the-backcountry.137245/post-2409374

Hammock camping never seemed like the best option to me but I think this just positively solidified my conclusion for life.

 

[JasonWi]

Another experience I’d forgotten about. This was August of 2020, my sister and I had backpacked into the Trinity Alps in Northern California and setup our tents beside Echo lake.

Middle of the night I’m sound asleep and something sticks it’s nose right up to my RT ear of my Akto and starts sniffing loudly…sounded exactly like my dogs when they catch a scent ..I yelled get the hell out of here and whatever it was left…then I fell back asleep.

My sister the next morning said “you must of had a bad nightmare, you were yelling to get the hell out of here!”

 

[jaredg]

OK, I've got two. You guys pick one. Neither are mine, but they both come from the same person. I trust him. As far as I know, I'm one of about 3 people he's told either story to. So pick, Bigfoot or the Devil himself???

 

[Braaap]

OK, I've got two. You guys pick one. Neither are mine, but they both come from the same person. I trust him. As far as I know, I'm one of about 3 people he's told either story to. So pick, Bigfoot or the Devil himself???

Dude you gotta tell both!