Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[Oxbow]

Ever year for opening day of duck season I have some friends up to backpack into some backcountry ponds that hold wild rice and few ducks. The ponds are on state forest land that backs up to my property. It’s more for the camping than the shooting but we always have a good time and kill some birds.
Since they come from a few hours away and I live just up the road from the trailhead I will usually spend the day before they arrive getting camp set up and scouting ponds. A few years back I was getting camp set up and had to break my load into two trips. First was camping stuff, ammo and food. I got everything in no problem, set up tents found some ducks etc.
I head back home for the second load of decoys, dog and gun. When I got back to the trailhead another truck was there and I could see them just starting down the trail. They had green pants and were walking a German Shepard…. Game warden I immediately thought. I figured I’d let him get aways ahead of me before I started out. Not only because I wanted to avoid a conversation with the Game warden but I was also going to have my dog (uncut male although super friendly) with a full load and wanted to avoid any dog fights. Well I let the guy get just out of sight and I take off down the trail. Pretty soon I can see him 500 yards ahead of me. He noticed me too and I see him duck off the trail into a bush and hide….. still figuring it was a game warden trying to surprise me I kept on walking. The dude lets me walk right past him half crouched in a bush like I can’t see him before he stands up and says HEY! I turn, he’s not a game Warren but a rough looking younger fella with a revolver on either hip and a bandolier of ammo with a 12”knife in the center. His dog is immediately acting somewhat aggressive. I tell him my dog is nice, he says “oh really cause mine loves to fight” and proceeds to take him off leash. His dog lunges on mine and I have to break them up. Before I can even yell at the guy he immediately starts telling me that I shouldn’t snter these woods because of the bigfoots and dog men he’s seen roaming there. He tells me a bunch of wild strange stories then walks off ahead of me. I though for sure he was gonna ambush me somewhere on the trail and I’m defenseless since by all my ammo was in my tent from the first load.

Funny thing since I live adjacent to this area I spend alot of time there and have encountered a bunch of weird stuff. My wife and I both saw floating orbs moving through the woods, I’ve heard noises I can’t explain and when I bought my property the previous owner pointed to a spot on the map and said don’t go there. When I asked why he said “just don’t”

 

[Blowdowner]

Crisp prints from boot tread, heel and all. Think the cheap blue/black/yellow rubber boots they sell at farm stores.

The only thing I can think is that the snow under the tree was older and didn’t get covered over by the fresh snowfall.

 

[bigbassin]

I’ve heard noises I can’t explain and when I bought my property the previous owner pointed to a spot on the map and said don’t go there. When I asked why he said “just don’t”

Well have you checked the spot out yet?

 

[Oxbow]

Well have you checked the spot out yet?

I have, it’s a super thick swampy cedar woods on the far end of my property. My deed was written in 1798 and describes that corner of the land being marked by an “Old Growth Hemlock with a cedar sign”

I was hunting near there when I heard a strange bark I couldn’t put my finger on, wasn’t a fox or yote. Definitely not a cat. It was moving FAST covering a couple hundred yards between barks. Not sure if I was freaked out because of the warning I got or if it was actually something strange.

My property and the surrounding area has a ton of native history, it was a well traveled portage route between major river systems. It was then acquired by family members Napoleon Bonaparte. Lots of weird happenings in these parts. We’ve seen orbs floating through our yard on multiple occasions.

 

[bigbassin]

I was hunting near there when I heard a strange bark I couldn’t put my finger on, wasn’t a fox or yote. Definitely not a cat. It was moving FAST covering a couple hundred yards between barks. Not sure if I was freaked out because of the warning I got or if it was actually something strange.

Not saying this is what it is, but a possibility, I had a deer barking the other week. I thought for sure a dog or coyote was clearing the distance towards where I was sitting about 20 minutes before dark. The barking stopped about 75 yards away from me, then I heard something walking towards me slowly until it was basically dark.

Thought I was about to be real close to some kind of canine, then a deer popped out almost within ten yards of me. Just after the end of legal light, so enough light to make out silhouettes but too dark to make out details, but body size was the biggest I’ve seen in person for a Georgia deer.

It spooked and ran down the hill. It sounded like the movement stopped and then the barking picked back up right where I believe the deer was standing.

I can’t find audio/youtube videos of a barking Whitetail, but researching it resulted in a couple of forum post with either people saying they’ve heard a barking deer, or knew someone that says they have.

 

[Rotnguns]

I've got one more weird one from southwest NM. It took place in 2017 in a roadless wilderness study area. I'm with a group of 4 guys, all good friends in mid 30's. We have 2 bull elk tags between the 4 of us and are 5 miles into this roadless area and set up a spike camp. No horses, just on foot. Before sunrise the next am, we take off and split up into pairs and we are each going to climb to two peaks that are approximately 2 miles apart and glass the morning, as we have not been here before.

Well, the guy I'm paired with and I make it to the edge of the last drainage we need to cross before climbing to our peak, and we see a camp. We are immediately pissed that someone else made it into here before us. We can see the tent clear as day across this drainage and it has an obvious lantern hanging from the tent pole with two guys milling about this tent looking like they are getting boots on, etc. before the day. It is still an hour before sunup. We made sure to turn headlamps off to not give away our position. We can see our other pair of friends red headlamps a mile away as they are climbing the other peak. Well, we just start following them, pissed off that this camp is right below our peak that we were going to glass. We figured our buddies saw this camp as well, as it was lit up and in a relatively high, open spot.

When we finally peaked out on our buddies mountain, they were like, "why the hell aren't you glassing from the other peak"? We said, because of those other guys camp. They got there first and there is no way elk are moving there anyway with their camp overlooking that drainage. The other two guys never saw this camp. They thought we were crazy. Anyway, that afternoon we all 4 made our way down and back to spike camp together, but we were going to introduce ourselves to that other camp on the way back. All that was there were the remains of an old shredded canvas wall tent with a rusty lantern laying half buried in the dirt and a few old steel pots and pans. This camp was at least 50 years old. No boot prints, nothing. I never had an uneasy feeling this entire time. I don't read about or believe in hauntings or ghost stories, but I cannot explain this any other way than we were witnessing two buddies trapped for eternity in their last hunting camp for some reason. We still refer to that drainage as ghost camp, and have been back several times since and never had any hair raising feelings. I like to think those two guys are good old boys from a previous time that would rather give us a cup of coffee than spook us in some way.

Wow! Awesome story and I really like the way you told it.

 

[Braaap]

My buddy saw a fast moving orb or ball of light moving through a canyon yesterday morning while we were hiking in the dark to a glassing spot. He said if he was alone he would have booked it back to the truck. This is northern NV. There wasn’t any noise associated with it.

 

[lyle_destroys]

My buddy saw a fast moving orb or ball of light moving through a canyon yesterday morning while we were hiking in the dark to a glassing spot. He said if he was alone he would have booked it back to the truck. This is northern NV. There wasn’t any noise associated with it.

I watched a meteor so bright and close that it lit up my buddies face with a blue hue, I turned just in time to watch it burn out as it passed over our heads. This was in Afghanistan and it was dark dark where we were.

 

[Pharmseller]

Who says “orb?”





P

 

[huntsman22]

not me, I call 'em BOFFL's....... Balls of Fugging Floating Light.

 

[RockAndSage]

My buddy saw a fast moving orb or ball of light moving through a canyon yesterday morning while we were hiking in the dark to a glassing spot. He said if he was alone he would have booked it back to the truck. This is northern NV. There wasn’t any noise associated with it.

Care to share which mountain range? I'm in northern NV and would appreciate knowing.

 

[Braaap]

Care to share which mountain range? I'm in northern NV and would appreciate knowing.

Desatoya’s.

 

[RockAndSage]

Desatoya’s.

Thanks. A lot of people from a lot of different walks of life report orbs, spheres, or "ball lightning" like this in remote areas. Hippies to hunters. Theories range from government tech to UFOs to actual plasma phenomena to people swearing they saw a "mini bigfoot" in them. Fallon NAS has a bombing range in the flat one mountain range west of the Desatoyas, running from Dixie Valley in the north between the Stillwaters and the Clan Alpine range, and south between the Sand Springs Range and the Fairview range, so there's that.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Reading about the orbs reminds me of camping down in old Mexico. I was young teen, maybe 13 or 14 and dad had dragged me and one of my friends down there. He was going to be a liaison for bringing Texas hunters down and getting them connected with landowners. Anyhow, he leased the hunting rights on a whole lot of land. I don't remember where exactly but I do recall we drove through Sabinas to get there and it was a full day drive down dirt roads and such. There was 5 or 6 different ranches and I think the smallest one was 8000 acres. One of them bordered some cartel property and we'd watch them patrol the river with a truck bed full of kids with AK's, but that's another creepy story. So we're trying to explore one of the biggest ranches, there's not really any roads to speak of and nobody there, just empty brush forever and ever it was a truly wild place. We spent all day getting up some big rock cliffs and carving trails with an old Blazer to get up top, miles from the entrance and probably middle of this property. It gets dark so we find a place to park and I have my sleeping bag on the top of the Blazer, dad and my buddy are sleeping inside. I'm tossing and turning and keep catching a light like a firefly. I finally sat up and watched for a minute and I'd see it come and go, had a little bounce to it. If you can imagine a guy on horseback holding a lantern trotting really slow that's what it looked like in my mind. So I wake up my dad and my buddy climes out and we all stand on the Blazer and watch this thing coming right at us, for like an hour it was so far away. It keeps getting closer and eventually it's right on top of us, passes right by us maybe 40 yards out in the brush and keeps going by. We watch as it gets further out and to a spot we know there's a barbwire fence and we're waiting to see what it does when it gets to the fence, figured if it's a guy on a horse we'd see him jump it (I was a kid so it seemed feasible at the time) or stop and change directions or something as there were no gates there. Nope, dang thing just kept going without skipping a beat right through the fence. We never did figure out what it was, dad talked to his POC down there that was a former congressman or something. He said that ranch was loaded with old Chinese mines and they were manned by slaves. I can't remember if the Chinese were the slaves or the owners, think it was Chinese slaves. He ended up coming out and showing us some of the tunnels, big tube tunnel going straight down and you could throw a rock and I swear count a fully 60 seconds before you heard water or crashing. Couple of them had old cranks of sorts he said they'd use to lower and raise people and supplies and whatever they were mining. Anyhow, he said when the mines were done they'd throw all the slaves in because they had no other use for them, shoot the ones who resisted obviously. He said what we saw wasn't uncommon and had been seen by the owners and others who'd been out there, he said the slave bosses would ride horses between the mines back and forth and he asked us directionally which way we saw it come from and go to and it was pretty much a beeline between these mines.

 

[Braaap]

Thanks. A lot of people from a lot of different walks of life report orbs, spheres, or "ball lightning" like this in remote areas. Hippies to hunters. Theories range from government tech to UFOs to actual plasma phenomena to people swearing they saw a "mini bigfoot" in them. Fallon NAS has a bombing range in the flat one mountain range west of the Desatoyas, running from Dixie Valley in the north between the Stillwaters and the Clan Alpine range, and south between the Sand Springs Range and the Fairview range, so there's that.

Definitely wasn’t any conventional aircraft out of Fallon. We were up high and he was looking southeast of us. Him and I both live in Reno and see lots of jets from Fallon. I was up at the top of the Ruby’s in October once and could see some bombing range to the east going off all night long. I don’t have any explanation but my buddy is a totally normal dude, we work together and have been hunting together for the last seven years, and was genuinely concerned.