Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[24valve]

Enjoyed reading this thread over the past year and finally had one of my one while mule deer hunting in CO earlier this fall.. We found a weird circle of rocks complete with an little rock altar and deer bones underneath a nearby ledge.

 

[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.

So I posted this a little over a month ago. I filled my tag on opening morning but he didn’t so he went back at the end of October and brought along a friend of his. His buddy ended up seeing the same thing (ball of light or orb) but this time it was in the evening and several canyons over from his sighting. Weird.

 

[Ditt44]

Had an odd experience two weeks ago. About 5:45 AM, cold, clear sky. Orion's belt is to my right, between 45 and 50 degrees inclination. A large, bright object comes from the north to south moving in a straight line. No blinking, no colors at all, just the 'bright yellow/white' light... or reflection of the sun? The object was perhaps 5 degrees below Orion. First thought was it is the ISS as I have seen that in the past numerous times....

This object moved very quickly, traversing the entire visible sky in maybe 20 seconds. What helped place it in perspective is when it crossed above a jet liner with a well defined contrail. The jet was moving mostly east to west. The object was much higher and no contrail. I looked up the location of the ISS at that time. It was over Ohio. I'm in south central PA. No way I saw the ISS.

May have been another large satellite. Most odd thing I have seen in the sky in a very long time. I love getting out early, like an hour before day light and spend a lot of that time star-gazing.

 

[Warmsy]

Had an odd experience two weeks ago. About 5:45 AM, cold, clear sky. Orion's belt is to my right, between 45 and 50 degrees inclination. A large, bright object comes from the north to south moving in a straight line. No blinking, no colors at all, just the 'bright yellow/white' light... or reflection of the sun? The object was perhaps 5 degrees below Orion. First thought was it is the ISS as I have seen that in the past numerous times....

This object moved very quickly, traversing the entire visible sky in maybe 20 seconds. What helped place it in perspective is when it crossed above a jet liner with a well defined contrail. The jet was moving mostly east to west. The object was much higher and no contrail. I looked up the location of the ISS at that time. It was over Ohio. I'm in south central PA. No way I saw the ISS.

May have been another large satellite. Most odd thing I have seen in the sky in a very long time. I love getting out early, like an hour before day light and spend a lot of that time star-gazing.

That's my morning routine with coffee. Here in northern California I'll see one or more shooting stars often, and I make my wish. I was told as a youngin that if you share your wish it won't come true.

 

[Ditt44]

Was not a shooting star. That was the next morning, bright yellow/pink and "poof". This bright object arched out of sight over the horizon.

 

[Elkfever]

Love this thread. I have one from this fall that got my Adrenalin pumping.

I drew a limited elk tag in western WA near Seattle. Our camp consisted of a 14x16 Davis wall tent for cooking and relaxing next to the wood stove as well as our 7x14 cargo trailer for sleeping in. We had staged the trailer perpendicular to the entry/awning of the tent to create a breezeway between the two shelters. It was a good place to camp due to being central for the unit, low in elevation when the snow would hit but it was just off a rural highway that served as a main artery into the greater Tacoma/Seattle area. Over the course of scouting and hunting this area, we have encountered several transient camps, people that appear to be hiding out/living in their car, burnt up cars….you get the picture. We’ve never had a real issue but know the potential exists.

Second night in camp, about 1 am, I awoke to the subtle but unmistakable sounds of someone moving around our camp. I laid in my cot straining to listen and confirm. I could hear the occasional scuffing of a step, the crinkling of the awning sidewalls and general sounds of quiet rifling of gear around the entry to our tent. Then I heard the undeniable creaking of our cooler lid opening and closing a couple times.

I got out of bed quietly and made my way to the cargo trailer door, unlocked it and paused. The noises were ongoing outside, potentially only several feet away from me so I knew that I still had the element of surprise on my side. My rifle was in the trailer, in its latched gun case and ammo clip loose inside the case as well. I had tiptoed out of my cot without my headlamp and was blind to fumble for my rifle in the trailer. F@#$!!!! I thought, I had allowed myself to not be prepared for this moment. My dad and best friend were still sound asleep in their cots and my dad’s sidearm location was UTL. I didn’t want to create a ruckus in the trailer and allow whoever was outside to prepare for my next move.

Very dumb in hindsight but in that moment of holding the trailer door latch, Adrenalin pumping and boiling with anger at having someone currently going through our stuff, I flung the door open and let out a guttural “hey!!!”. As the door crashed open, before I could take a step out, a dark blob sprinted between me and the tent. I ducked my head back in the doorway instinctively. I leaned back out and about 20 yards away, in the moonlight, could see a black bear standing broadside and looking back at me. In my “fight” stage, I yelled agin at the bear and it finally lumbered off into the darkness.

Relieved that it was only a bear and not a band of tweakers to contend with, my dad had slept through the whole ordeal and my buddy finally rolled over in his bed to ask what was happening?

Next morning, we found muddy bear paw prints on top of both coolers and a Costco tray of cheese on the ground that had been pulled out of the cooler. I was thankful that my marinating, antelope backstrap was at the bottom of the cooler and had not been scavenged.

Probably not the first offense by that bear but in all my years sleeping in the woods, I’ve never had a bear cause a problem. Mice and curious cattle have been the usual suspects. We laugh about it now but in that moment, my heart was racing and mind bracing for the unknown.

My takeaway from that experience was to always keep a headlamp and sidearm ready next to my cot. Better to not need either than to be in the predicament I found myself in. In hindsight it would have probably been smarter to actually let the “intruders” hear the sound me chambering a round in my 300WSM before flinging the door open and if nothing else, I would have actually had a gun in my hand to deal with whatever issue at hand. Thankful it was only Yogi this time.

 

[Thinkingman]

I know others have mentioned this but I got to hunt whitetails out of a treestand for the first time this weekend in the Bitterroot Valley.
I was following my online tracker in the dark(windy, blowing 20, gusting 30) at 6:00 AM when I got slightly off course and retraced my steps to the correct side of a stand of olives when I heard the most violent crashing in the side of the scrub I was just standing on a minute ago.
My first thought was bear crashing through the brush but quickly realized a tree came down right where I was standing a minute earlier.
It took me a while to get over that adrenaline rush but I got another adrenaline jolt when I killed a decent buck with my bow a couple hours later.

 

[jtill2424]

A few cool story's on this thread

 

[ErikT]

Portal

Back in the mid 70s after I transferred from active USMC to USMCR and went to college, I was home for a summer because I couldn't find summer work near the college and got on at a job I had back in high school working for a local logger. Not all the tandems and tri-axle log trucks had Prentice loading booms, and the GMC I was driving was one without, so as I waited for the truck to get loaded at a staging yard at the start of some skidder trails, I walked off into the woods to ah, urinate and kill some time. I was walking along a game trail within sight of the loader, my truck, and the staging yard but still in the woods deep enough that I really couldn't make out any of the equipment behind me.

There are some pretty large conglomerate rock boulders in north central PA, as big as houses in some areas and on some hillsides. The game trail went between two such large conglomerate boulders, both were perhaps 10 or 12 ft tall, taller than a standard room ceiling. I walked past the boulders maybe eight or 10 yards and the temperature in the woods IMMEDIATELY felt like it dropped 20 degrees as I took two more steps. The hair stood up on my neck and my skin was a mess of goose bumps. There was a faint buzzing, crackling sound like arc welding, and an oily odor something like oil or coal burning, but no smoke that I could see. Maybe like when a fluorescent ballast gives out, but without the burning electrical smell. Hard to describe.

I slammed the brakes on right there, hair standing on edge, heart pounding, with the reptile part of my brain screaming, "RUN!" I took a couple sliding steps backward, listening to the faint buzzing / crackling noise that sounded a bit like an ongoing electrical short, or arc welding.

I was looking forward all around, through the 180 degrees of vision, and caught movement to the left of center, about 20-25 yards ahead at my 11 o'clock. The woods in that area was blurry, almost shimmering like heat off a car hood or blacktop in August, but the blurriness was a section of woods about 12-15 feet wide and maybe just as tall or taller, I'm guessing, in relation to the conglomerate rock boulders. I stood there for maybe 30 seconds, maybe five minutes, I don't know. The patch of woods at my 11 o'clock continued to waver and shimmer slightly, and the buzz and odor didn't let up. I knew I did NOT want to go near that spot of woods. There were no animal noises whatsover. I think I probably could have moved if I wanted to, but something deep within me said to hold fast.

After the 30 seconds (or five minutes) passed the buzz started to fade fairly noticeably, and the blurry shimmery effect seemed to fade with it. When the noise was gone, the woods at 11 o'clock looked just like the rest of the woods in front of me. The woods felt warmer. The gooseflesh feeling went away.

I backed up slowly till I got to the rocks, then backed past them before turning and walking quickly back to the staging yard. The loader operator had four or five more logs to load and I just climbed into the GMC's cab and sat behind the wheel. I wasn't there five seconds and I started to shake uncontrollably. I sat there shaking until the loader hit the horn, signalling me to pull ahead and chain up the load. I about fell out of the truck and started laying out the load chains, but concentrating on the work sorta got me straightened out and the shaking went away. I felt wasted, like after a 20 mile hike with a full ALICE pack, ammo load, two canteens, and M16A1.

I didn't say anything to anyone until about six or eight years ago when I was in a gun shop and some regulars were swapping hunting stories. One of the guys related a story that was identical to my experience. Different location in north central PA woods, but there was no doubt in my mind he saw the same thing I did. None of the guys razzed him, and I said "I saw that too, back in the summer of 1975." One of the other guys said his deceased father told him about seeing the same effect decades earlier.

What county in north central PA?

 

[Graybush]

Had an odd experience in the GWNF adjacent to Ramsey’s Draft while deer hunting a few years back. My son and I hiked back on an old, well worn trail for an end of the day sit . We planned to come out in the dark, with me being further down the trail. I told him to sit tight and wait for me to pick him up on my way back, and to keep an eye out for my headlamp. I settled in and tuned into the creepy Appalachian dusk when I saw a small, perfectly round “circle” next to a tree about 15’ above the ground. It was transparent but the sky that I could see clearly through it was distinctly a lighter, more yellow shade than the the rest of the gloomy onset of evening. I had binos in my daypack but I knew that I’d make too much noise fishing them out so I attempted to look at it through my riflescope but I couldn’t see it under magnification. I dialed the scope down to 2 power, oriented the muzzle on the orb, could clearly see the lighter sky through it, but couldn’t see it with my scope. I waited until full darkness, watching the yellow light fade slowly before it disappeared. We were in a thick, narrow drainage and I have wracked my brain trying to account for what I saw but I’ve got nothing.

 

[shootnrun]

I'm reading through this entire thread. Still have 40 pages to go, I'm addicted...

I was telling my dad about some of the stories and he says, I have one. He was driving some logging roads on private timber checking out some cuts and looking for deer on a summer scout(back before every gate was locked). He said a pickup comes up on his ass and then flys past him on a wide corner. The truck then whips it sideways in the road and another noses up behind him. He had a 22 pistol but otherwise wasn't well armed. He said he spun a 180, spraying gravel, dropped into the ditch and had enough room to get around the rig behind him rallying through the ditch. Pedal to the medal and never looked back. Said he didn't know what they wanted or planned to do and he didn't intend to find out..

 

[Blowdowner]

Had an odd experience in the GWNF adjacent to Ramsey’s Draft while deer hunting a few years back. My son and I hiked back on an old, well worn trail for an end of the day sit . We planned to come out in the dark, with me being further down the trail. I told him to sit tight and wait for me to pick him up on my way back, and to keep an eye out for my headlamp. I settled in and tuned into the creepy Appalachian dusk when I saw a small, perfectly round “circle” next to a tree about 15’ above the ground. It was transparent but the sky that I could see clearly through it was distinctly a lighter, more yellow shade than the the rest of the gloomy onset of evening. I had binos in my daypack but I knew that I’d make too much noise fishing them out so I attempted to look at it through my riflescope but I couldn’t see it under magnification. I dialed the scope down to 2 power, oriented the muzzle on the orb, could clearly see the lighter sky through it, but couldn’t see it with my scope. I waited until full darkness, watching the yellow light fade slowly before it disappeared. We were in a thick, narrow drainage and I have wracked my brain trying to account for what I saw but I’ve got nothing.

Bit of spider silk right in your eyeball