Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[cumminsbassguy]

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.

 

[Fujicon]

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.

 

[Rokbar]

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.

ONE OF THE BEST ONES YET.

 

[cumminsbassguy]

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.

I hate when the yotes do that stuff. They chased my dad to the truck one night after sprucing up the bait pile. They spouted off in the corn field and he could hear them getting closer. So he high tails it to the truck with them russeling the corn stocks not 20 yards away.

 

[manitou1]

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.

I can't get ten miles from other humans here in WY! Except if maybe I would camp in February...

 

[Nickofthewoods]

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.

First of all sorry for the tragic loss of your family member. Forgive me for asking but would you feel comfortable providing more details about this incident? I'm very curious about what mountains he was found in and if he was hunting when he went missing. What about the bullet wound? There must have been an official investigation?

 

[cumminsbassguy]

First of all sorry for the tragic loss of your family member. Forgive me for asking but would you feel comfortable providing more details about this incident? I'm very curious about what mountains he was found in and if he was hunting when he went missing. What about the bullet wound? There must have been an official investigation?

Thank you very much. I can ask my mother more about it, but I was fairly young and don't remember much aside from what I posted. Granted they didn't give the kids the details aside from the big items.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

Thank you very much. I can ask my mother more about it, but I was fairly young and don't remember much aside from what I posted. Granted they didn't give the kids the details aside from the big items.

Sounds like a heck of a story so whatever you find out and are willing to share will undoubtedly be of great interest to those that read this thread.

 

[Sooner]

Not really creepy but strange. About 20 years ago my dad, two sisters and I were camping up on a lake at Grand Mesa. There was no one around, just before dark a little Doe Mulie showed up. She started out walking a big circle around camp. As the night went on, we could hear her come by every few minutes. She walked circles around our tents all night until the sun came up. We just chalked it up as she was watching over us for some reason.

 

[Calcoyote]

Not really creepy but strange. About 20 years ago my dad, two sisters and I were camping up on a lake at Grand Mesa. There was no one around, just before dark a little Doe Mulie showed up. She started out walking a big circle around camp. As the night went on, we could hear her come by every few minutes. She walked circles around our tents all night until the sun came up. We just chalked it up as she was watching over us for some reason.

Cool story. It is very possible that she had detected a predator such as a mountain lion in the close proximity. Deer will often get close to humans when being pursued by a mountain lion. When the lion gets close enough to smell the human scent they will usually retreat. Pretty common out here in the West.

 

[7mm-08]

Alright, alright, I'm finally going to cave and tell this story (because I love this thread and this was my creepiest experience ever). 20 years ago I decided to solo hike into a remote area in Idaho to archery hunt for a few days. Tough, 6-hour hike to get to this location (on-trail with elevation for a four miles then off-trail for another two miles, climbing uphill with downhill growing alders, etc.), which I was up for because I knew the gig from hiking in there without a pack on previously. Found a flat spot and pitched a solo tent with high hopes for the next few days of hunting. I wandered around the tent after setting up and spent a few minutes at a nearby glassing spot with no unusual feelings or thoughts other than, "Man, this is going to be great." I had dinner and turned in with high hopes for the next few days. About 1:00 A.M., I woke up with the same feeling of absolute dead/terror that gulfofmexicoflyfishing described in post #1,776. I was used to being in the backcountry solo and had probably spent a few hundred nights in a tent by myself in remote places at that time. This feeling caused every hair on my body to stand on end and there was no doubt I was fully alert with a full dump of adrenalin to boot. It was a new moon and I got out of the tent (without turning on a light) to take a leak. I did some deep breathing to force this sentiment to subside and after staying up for about 20 minutes, I dismissed the whole thing as a bad dream (that I was unable to recall). After lying awake for a period of time, I was finally able to fall back to sleep. Some unknown period of time later, I was again awoken by an even stronger feeling of dread/terror, which I did not believe to be possible. I swear, if I had been anywhere other than this hell-hole, I'd have left everything behind and run for the truck. That's how powerful this feeling of impending doom was - incomprehensible as I sit here typing today. This time, I didn't try to do anything to suppress the feeling. Instead, I turned on my headlamp, pulled on my clothes, grabbed my bow and made my way to the glassing spot I had visited earlier. I recall I arrived there about 3:00 A.M. because I checked my watch. I sat there on that high spot until it got fully light. There was no way I was going to close my eyes again or try to get back to sleep that night. After the sun was up, I wandered back to my camping spot. About 100 yards out, I slowed to a very controlled pace in an effort to determine if I was able to find a cat or bear track, to which I could attribute this event. Nothing! I was rummy from being awake for what felt like all night, but I am confident I didn't miss a track on the way to my tent. I wish I could say that I saw something physical that I could attribute to this experience, but no. I half-heartedly hunted part of the day but had already decided that I was getting the hell out of that location before dark. Seriously, I've never before nor ever since had such an experience. I screwed myself out of a few days of hunting, but I truly felt happy to be alive - it was that intense. And, I've never been back to that location to this day.

 

[Billogna]

It would be interesting if we could somehow get someone else to return to some of these exact spots and see if the experience repeats or if it was a one off kind of thing. I know that's a long shot considering most of these experiences were had years or decades ago. It would just be a cool experiment is all.

 

[Pdzoller]

Whenever I have those uneasy feelings I send a pin to my wife on the inreach. There’s two places I won’t go alone or stay the night anymore. You can feel the change at both areas. I’ve had some odd coincidences happen at those places. Two stories I’ve shared earlier on this thread were from these places. We set solar trail cameras at one location and didn’t touch them for a year. One camera just quit working within a week, the other two caught lots of game and lots of nothing pictures but one got one picture that is very odd. The figure shouldn’t be there because there’s a cliff. I’m sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

 

[TxxAgg]

What am I missing? Those two pictures look alike. One in the day. One at night.

 

[Pdzoller]

Should’ve added this instead of the daylight picture. There’s something behind the tree on the left in the first nighttime picture.

 

[manitou1]

View attachment 730087Should’ve added this instead of the daylight picture. There’s something behind the tree on the left in the first nighttime picture.

I don't see anything...

 

[Nickofthewoods]

I don't see anything...

Look closer

 

[Drenalin]

Look closer

View attachment 730262

Looks like the tiger from the Jungle Book.

 

[TX_Diver]

Cool story. It is very possible that she had detected a predator such as a mountain lion in the close proximity. Deer will often get close to humans when being pursued by a mountain lion. When the lion gets close enough to smell the human scent they will usually retreat. Pretty common out here in the West.

Hmmm… I have some selfies with a fork that wouldn’t leave me alone a few years ago… I’m pretty sure I’ve been stalked by a lion before but it didn’t cross my mind when I was snapping pics with that Buck…

 

[TX_Diver]

Look closer

View attachment 730262

Anyone else have super troopers in their head??

“Enhance…”