Creepy experiences in the backcountry

Wiley coyote said:
Dec 31st 2012 I was finishing a floor, putting in the transition strip when the home owner brought out his carry pistol to show it to me. I never asked to see it. We had been talking guns, one upping each other in a way. " I have my ccw"... "I got my hunting license when I was 8 yrs old". Well fast forward a couple weeks and here I am the last few minutes of the job, and dude brings out a little black plastic pistol. In my stupidity I assumed he was safe with firearms. When he racked the slide I could hear it was loaded. I thought oh God please don't,, bang! It was pointed perpendicular to me about 16" away from my body. It ricocheted off the flat side of a stud at the end of the wall where I was standing in the opening. It scuffed dudes boot and went into the floor. If it had blown out sideways I'd have likely been killed. I took the gun from him as he told me " it's clear now". It was stove piped with 2 live rounds. After I cleared it I threw the gun at him and screamed at him for at least an hour. I wanted to break his nose, but I really needed my job.
Click to expand...
Happens every day. I think most cases, as opposed to ignorance, are a fulfillment of the old adage, " Familiarity breeds contempt. " The things that can prove fatal if that adage seeps in are just about limitless.
 
Turkeytider said:
Happens every day. I think most cases, as opposed to ignorance, are a fulfillment of the old adage, " Familiarity breeds contempt. " The things that can prove fatal if that adage seeps in are just about limitless.
Click to expand...
I understand what you mean, but this was a case of an inexperienced idiot handling a weapon.
Anyone with safe handling skills knows if you want to hand someone a firearm, you do it with the action open. Racking the slide and pulling the trigger shows the level of incompetence this man had
 
Wiley coyote said:
I understand what you mean, but this was a case of an inexperienced idiot handling a weapon.
Anyone with safe handling skills knows if you want to hand someone a firearm, you do it with the action open. Racking the slide and pulling the trigger shows the level of incompetence this man had
Click to expand...
No argument from me in your case. Too many people just buy a gun and learn " on the fly " . No instruction. A prescription for a catastrophe for sure.
 
Aside from abandoned cabins and collapsed mine shafts....

We were above a remote mountain valley that was quite difficult to access. No real trails, in rough Alberta mountain country.

Late in the afternoon we spotted two hikers way down below. We made ourselves visible and these hikers became absolutely frantic. Yelling and running about. One tried scrambling up the cliff bands and loose rock trying to reach us.
Clearly they needed help so we worked our way down.

We were shocked to see that it was an old lady and her adult son. The son was mentally handicapped. They only had windbreakers and half eaten lunches.
More than lost, they had no clue where they were. “Where are you now?” On the map they pointed to a place that was far away. It was like they had amnesia and didn’t know how they got there.

It was a long slow hike out.
We escorted them to the road and eventually their car.
To this day I still wonder how they ended up in such a remote spot. Worse yet what might have happened if no one was around...
 
On my dad's property in the foot hills below the yolla bolly there was a couple indian burial sites. His friend thought it would be a good idea to take a couple bones home. The following week he fell off a twelve foot ladder. I remember see him with both his legs in a cast up to his hip. About a month later when he was well enough to travel he returned the bones to the site. Some things you just don't mess with.
 
A couple weeks ago the family and I went camping on Manhattan creek in the Roosevelt NF. We dispersed camped so we weren't very close to anyone, maybe half mile to next camp. I stayed up there the first night alone and something woke me up in the middle of the night, actually early morning at 2:17a(checked my phone when I woke up). I sat there for a few minutes, felt like 20 was realistically maybe 5-10 minutes. Just about the time I was about to fall back to sleep I heard it again, a giggle is the best I can describe, but I have kids and it wasn't like a kid, more like a drunk woman maybe. I wasn't scared, I have had a lot of run ins with Colorado hippies in this area so I thought maybe the shrooms were kicking in for someone and they were lost. I also didn't want to let someone be lost, so I opened a window on the camper and said are you all good, do you need help. I got the sound of running footsteps leaving camp through all the brush and fallen trees instead of down the road. In the morning I found some footprints, size 7ish, compared them to my wife who wears a 7. Still not sure what was going on, still think it was the drugga's, but whoever it was ran off into the forest in the worst direction for travel. Not creepy but helped make sure the awareness was up.
 
Far and away my favorite thread on RS.

While I didn't start seriously hunting until about 12 years ago, I have always been into backpacking and fly fishing high mountain lakes across ID, WY, UT, and CA, spending hundreds of nights in the woods without anything too crazy happening. I have had run ins with black and grizzly bears, an irate cow moose, and a few close encounters with fresh lion kills that made the hair stand up on my neck. Back in 2015 I was on a short backpacking trip in a remote area of the LPNF in central CA with a buddy (lifelong rural Maine kid, also super at home in the woods) scouting for the A-zone archery opener in early July. We hiked a quick 4.5-ish miles from a very remote trailhead just before dark into an area that I had been many times. We made camp in the pines on the backside of a ridge from where we hoped to be glassing for blacktails at daybreak overlooking the basin below us. The coastal fog rolled in right around dark and reduced the visibility to less than 50yds. Spooky, but still fairly common even at 7,000ft.

After a late dinner we were sitting around a small very well concealed fire at maybe 11pm, quietly shooting the shit when the most sickening feeling of dread came over me. Like turn your stomach inside out, get up and move NOW kind of dread. For no apparent reason that I could see, hear, or smell. I foolishly tried to ignore it and continued quietly chatting with my buddy while simultaneously trying to make sense of what I was feeling. From what I could tell nothing was out of the ordinary on his end... At the time I was approaching my mid 20's, running 30 miles a week, and 6 months into a predeployment workup that involved a whole lot of shooting so I was pretty confident in my ability to handle myself in just about any situation. Then my buddy got real quiet...

We exchanged a look, and his eyes told me that he was now feeling what I was feeling. We were both looking around trying to identify the source of this super uneasy feeling and after maybe another minute had passed, nothing had entered our little sphere of visibility around the fire. Wtf. My lizard brain is still telling me something is very wrong so I start scanning with the x300 white light on my g19. This didn't work as well as I had hoped in the fog but I could at least confirm that there wasn't a skinwalker behind the closest trees at 10yds. Now it has been several minutes waiting for the shoe to drop, but it hasn't so we collectively decide that now is a great time to break camp and GTFO. I continue scanning with the light as my buddy does not have a light on the sp101 that he was carrying at the time, while he packs up two tents and all our stuff in record time.

At this point nothing has happened, and we haven't died yet but SOMETHING is still telling us that we REALLY need to get off of that ridge so we start bombing downhill to the trail and pretty much don't slow down until I realize that we had completely missed the trail in the fog and have now lost way too much elevation to traverse back to the truck. Dang it, back uphill towards the devil still walking with pistols in hand until I cross our tracks from the walk in and we reorient ourselves, finally making the truck around 1am. During our scramble back to the vehicle the fog had gotten so thick I couldn't see 5ft past the hood of my truck, forcing us to descend the mountain at a walking pace for one final kick in the grapes.

To this day I have no idea what caused that feeling, but the fact that my buddy and I both arrived at it independently without ever saying a word to each other makes me very certain that leaving was the right call.

That's my story about the time I got scared off a mountain and I'm sticking to it!
 
Alright, some free time available. Been a wood rat up in the U.P. my whole upbringing, hunting all the critters and fishing when ever I could. From the age 12 when I was in the deer stand alone to 15. Everytime I walked out of the swamp at night I feel like i somehow got into my head that some wild animal (bears around in the spring time, totes, bigass owls) was going to get the best of me so I was always super alert, hair standing up, that uneasy feeling of constantly being watched .. nothing ever happened leading up to or during these years.. I know there was nothing that was going to get me.. Probably something that happened in a different life of mine and these are just the carry over effects.. the feelings went away when I just started pushing them down. That they were made up, ECT ECT... Age 16, We get another stand refurbished in the back of an old growth cedar swamp. It's about a 1/2 mile of zig zag root wad jumping, tree walking trail. Didn't want to be shinning a light all over down there so we marked the trail with reflective tape and tacks. I got given a little pen light to shine the tape and lead me on my way.. as well all know, in the swamp or woods. It gets dark and it gets dark quick.. looking down my shooting lane one night, and my mind start playing tricks on me. Seeing movement down by the bait pile, looking like deer. Put up the binos, no deer.. wtfff.. this happened almost every time I sat down there.. another time the trees on both sides of the shooting lane start moving like a kaleidoscope after seeing the made up deer movement.. Continues for what seems like 15 minutes. Would close my eyes thinking it would stop, nope.. still going.... Walking out along my chest level red/white reflective tack trail.. sometimes they would line up to look like a pair of eyes. Just side step and they would separate.. well This one time they didn't... Thought my mind was tripping me because U.P cedar swamp voodoo. Took the light away and as soon as I brought it back, this monstrosity of an owl takes off. And Im not sure if I had an out of body experience but it sure felt like it....

Sitting in the other cedar swamp on the property around age 15.. It's a nice vehicle trail into the spot with a 10yard walk to the stand.. walk in the 1/8th mile. No one else is anywhere. The shack is 15' in the air and the door is an older hollow closet door... It's probably getting close to 4. Starting to get dark. Listening to birds, squirrels, the swamp doing it's ing. All of a sudden there's a smack on my door. Like take your hand and smack a cabinet door as hard as you can.. made me jump outta the seat and try to look down via the windows. Mind is thinking that it's actually bigfoot, the legends are true and it's my time. So naturally I grab the 270 and mentally prepare to open the door and investigate.. one last quick look out of the windows, fling the door open AND.... nothing, nada. No bird feathers, no sticks. Nothing on the stairs or on the door..

pSA.... I know these are grammatically flawed..
 
After living in the U.P until I enlisted, I got stationed out in Spokane, where I took up bass fishing and bought a boat. I spent every opportunity I could on the water. In both Washington and Idaho. I always expected to find something disturbing at some point while out there because that's how things work.... Anyways Nov. 2, a buddy and myself decide to take my boat out to lake CDA to go chase winter smallies. We launch and I go to move the boat with the trolling motor. Doesn't work..WTF. so we decide to stay and fish how we can. Motor to a few spot and drift fish like the pioneers did.. as he's fishing I try the battery connections, still no dice. End up redoing the connectors with my multi tool.. still doesn't work. I spend 2 hours messing with everything... I give up, grab a rod and make a cast.. look down and I noticed there's not the usual bump on the side of the foot control.. power switch to ON, hit the button and the trolling motor works... F.M.L. we both laugh and can concentrate on fishing... Deciding if we should go inside the log book and fish the deeper dock, or fish the outside and hit the deep edge of the weeds... We decide to head inside, and as we enter I see a tarp floating in the water.. no biggie as I've seen loads of tarps and whatnot in the water. Blew in from a house on the shore.. we get closer and there is some shape to it... For context, this was the day after Halloween, and for decoration, we had made a body bag out of plastic bottles and that shit looked lifelike. (Base cops asked a few questions when we put it on the tree with the spiders).. this tarp in the water was looking exactly as my bottle body... Again..Im thinking ohhh, it's just a Halloween decoration that blew into the water. Or kids playing a joke.. we get closer, still fishing our way by. And we can't stop looking at the tarp. So we decide to get right next to it. My buddy thinks it a body, I think it's a decoration.. we get 5 feet from it and I see a hand down in the water.. nawwww man, that's just a doll decoration that some kids put out to play a sick joke. Looked fake as hell.. so we go past it.. each make a cast... Then each look at each other and give the look of 'we should probably make sure ". So I back the boat up to get him as close as possible... He pulls back the tarp and sure enough, it's a dead girl, white long skirt, red shirt, dark hair like the ring chick. Rope around her feet... so we call the cops and are told to wait for them. .. talk about a quiet sit as We hung out in that log boom area for 2 hours before they showed up... They take pictures, we give statements and go on our way afterwords. Went home as we didn't catch a single fish.. turn out she was part of a prostitution/drug ring and got killed by two other chicks. A few folks in the fishing group were long time friends with her. Had 4 court appearances to talk about it. Then they ended up confessing to it and another one that was found in another local lake 6 months prior.
 
Here's another one that just popped into the noodle.. circa mid 2000s... an older cousin of mine had moved out to Colorado. He had been living out there for a few years. He was a hiker and a hunter. We had found out that he was missing with no trace.... No one knew anything about what happened, extensive searching and nothing turned up... lo and behold about 5 or so years later, we hear from my uncle that the cousins remains were found by some hunters in the mountains of Colorado. With a bullet hole in his head... Sh!TS kinda wild.
 
Not terribly creepy or weird but sumping what I have.

Camped in Yellowstone for 3 nights with the wife as 4 kids on a trip from WA back to the U.P. got into one of the camp areas, started filling out paperwork when the camp host comes around and start BSing a bit. He said to make sure you lock up your food and what not because there was a grizz poking around and that two days prior, some poor lady was in her tent at night..sleeping and this grizz chased down an elf calf and murdered it not 5 feet from her tent 😂..

Our next spot we stayed for two days. Had seen some bison in the field across the road and a big black bear roaming the edges of the camp ground. No big deal.. have the kids setup in the middle of one text annex and the ol lady and I are in the cots along the edges of the other... I wake up around 06 to something nudging my head from outside the tent and heavy breathing... It snorts, and wakes the ol lady up. She gets all wide eyed I I put the finger over my mouth to tell her to be quiet and mouth B I S O N. He moseyed over to her side then milled around camp for about 5 minutes. Then meandered off into the field. Kids got a cool hair sample from that.
 
Last edited:
Couple that got on my nerves. One was middle of the day, wasn't expecting much, just sitting with my back to a tree after deer no-show through the morning. No wind to speak of, enjoying the sunshine. All of a sudden a monster fir tree over 100 feet tall around 25 yards behind my position decides to keel over right there in the woods. Branches crashing all around me. Was a bit paranoid rest of that afternoon.

Other time I was elk hunting alone deep in the wilderness, camping at least 10 miles from any other human, when coyotes woke me up around 3am with their yelping. Thing that bugged me is where I camped was surrounded by hills and they were coming down to my location from all points surrounding me, yelping at each other the whole time. Little SOBs sounded like they were closing within about 50 feet when I had enough, got out of the tent and fired off a 44 round to scare 'em away. Took care of the problem, but didn't do much for my sleep.
 
cumminsbassguy said:
After living in the U.P until I enlisted, I got stationed out in Spokane, where I took up bass fishing and bought a boat. I spent every opportunity I could on the water. In both Washington and Idaho. I always expected to find something disturbing at some point while out there because that's how things work.... Anyways Nov. 2, a buddy and myself decide to take my boat out to lake CDA to go chase winter smallies. We launch and I go to move the boat with the trolling motor. Doesn't work..WTF. so we decide to stay and fish how we can. Motor to a few spot and drift fish like the pioneers did.. as he's fishing I try the battery connections, still no dice. End up redoing the connectors with my multi tool.. still doesn't work. I spend 2 hours messing with everything... I give up, grab a rod and make a cast.. look down and I noticed there's not the usual bump on the side of the foot control.. power switch to ON, hit the button and the trolling motor works... F.M.L. we both laugh and can concentrate on fishing... Deciding if we should go inside the log book and fish the deeper dock, or fish the outside and hit the deep edge of the weeds... We decide to head inside, and as we enter I see a tarp floating in the water.. no biggie as I've seen loads of tarps and whatnot in the water. Blew in from a house on the shore.. we get closer and there is some shape to it... For context, this was the day after Halloween, and for decoration, we had made a body bag out of plastic bottles and that shit looked lifelike. (Base cops asked a few questions when we put it on the tree with the spiders).. this tarp in the water was looking exactly as my bottle body... Again..Im thinking ohhh, it's just a Halloween decoration that blew into the water. Or kids playing a joke.. we get closer, still fishing our way by. And we can't stop looking at the tarp. So we decide to get right next to it. My buddy thinks it a body, I think it's a decoration.. we get 5 feet from it and I see a hand down in the water.. nawwww man, that's just a doll decoration that some kids put out to play a sick joke. Looked fake as hell.. so we go past it.. each make a cast... Then each look at each other and give the look of 'we should probably make sure ". So I back the boat up to get him as close as possible... He pulls back the tarp and sure enough, it's a dead girl, white long skirt, red shirt, dark hair like the ring chick. Rope around her feet... so we call the cops and are told to wait for them. .. talk about a quiet sit as We hung out in that log boom area for 2 hours before they showed up... They take pictures, we give statements and go on our way afterwords. Went home as we didn't catch a single fish.. turn out she was part of a prostitution/drug ring and got killed by two other chicks. A few folks in the fishing group were long time friends with her. Had 4 court appearances to talk about it. Then they ended up confessing to it and another one that was found in another local lake 6 months prior.
Click to expand...
ONE OF THE BEST ONES YET.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
The Federal Ammo announcement
Replies
3
Views
786
MuleyFever
MuleyFever
B
Frank Church Air taxi
Replies
15
Views
1K
one66stang
O
Iowafarmer
NRA Whittington center hunting
Replies
1
Views
426
wyosteve
W
T
Digital Camera for backcountry hunt?
Replies
3
Views
618
Goseth04
G
R
Christensen 7mm PRC Advice
Replies
15
Views
419
Long84
Long84

Latest posts

Featured Video

Latest Articles

Back
Top