Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[gerry35]

Like many of you have mentioned it's the 2 legged predators that are often the worst.

In mid June of 2023 my wife and I took the travel trailer to a lake for a camping weekend. Did some hunting for black bear out there and I came really close to getting a really nice one but didn't get a good angle to get it into the vitals. It was pretty close and he bolted really quick since we both were surprised to see each other. Had I got him this next part wouldn't have happened.

We went back to camp and were enjoying our time around the campfire and doing a little fishing. We were just thinking about packing up when a couple of good old boys came down off of the highway down to the lake on their Harley's and cracked open some beers. This is remote country with not a lot of people or traffic. I got a bad feeling about them so started to pack up our lawn chairs but made a bit of small talk with them while doing so. I thought it was obvious that these guys were sketchy but apparently my wife thought I knew them and decided to come down while I was going up to the trailer with my arms full. The one guy all of a sudden decides to move his bike and almost hits my wife and is acting weird. Now I really want to get out of there.

I finished packing up everything and made sure they saw I had a rifle while doing so. I got mad at my wife for just standing around when by now she knows these guys are up to no good. I had to go one more time down to the lake to check for something and while I'm down there the one guy says "why don't you leave your wife behind" and it was obvious what that scumbag meant. I just stayed as calm as possible and we got the heck out of there.

The whole thing ended up causing a big rift between us because for some reason she blamed me, not her poor reading of the situation initially. We have both talked about it and decided to do things differently next time. There's not much I could have done differently but learned a couple of things to do differently if it happens again.

1- Don't assume that she knows what I'm thinking. It should have been obvious to her but wasn't. Quietly saying lets get out of here to her would have made a big difference.

2- Stay calm and don't get mad at her, it would have made a big difference. She was shaken by that time and was freezing up a bit.

3- She never heard the comment from the one guy and I told her. Should never have said anything until much later, like weeks later when everything was calm. Not as we are driving away.

We have since moved away from the area but I sure do miss it, I was born up there and lived 55 years there before moving to the southern interior of BC. had many wonderful experiences there but only a couple that weren't. Almost everyone we met were decent people but these two yahoos weren't that's for sure. Amazing how something that's going well can change in an instant. I always camp armed with something and always will, you just never know when you'll need something.

I'll post another story in the next day or two when I get the chance.

 

[IronNoggin]

Like many of you have mentioned it's the 2 legged predators that are often the worst.

Yep.

When we first moved south, we were doing a lot of exploration.
I did not need to work at that point, and we simply invested our time discovering our new home.

One afternoon my Lady & I were on a local river, trying for salmon.
Along comes a raft and a couple of tubers.
Raft hits the bank and a very large fellow jumps off it and yells at us Ypippee Ki Yay MF!
Then starts stalking swiftly towards us.

I immediately unlimbered my 1911 (still had a valid carry permit then) and loudly suggested he get his ass as far from us as possible.
Ho saw I was serious, and got out of Dodge rather quickly.

Gives me pause to think what might have been if I had not been packing.

No carry permits for us Biologist types any more.
But a couple of large Wolf Hybrids appear to pack the same effect.

Cheers

 

[CaribooBC]

Need to bump this back up. We need some more stories.

 

[SwiftShot]

I freaked someone out once. In the PNW hunting elk during archery. I was camouflaged up with my face mask ect sitting up in some cedar limbs. I heard something coming my way down the trail. 2 other guys. They just plopped down like 3 feet from my boot and started drinking water and having a snack. I waited a few and then asked them if they where going to share. Scared the hell out of them. Quite funny afterwards we all got a laugh.

 

[Superx3]

Not backcountry and not creepy to me but my wife thinks other wise. Tonight the dogs were raising hell and we could tell something had them angry. We went outside and saw two coyotes among the cattle in the spot light. We jumped in the pickup and drove around the pasture trying to get a shot, but couldn’t get a shot with all the cattle and the coyote just stayed out side of the lights reach. Back at the house about the time I closed the door the coyotes started howling again. I decided to walk out and see if I could kill one in foot. My wife decided she wanted to go. We walked about 400 yards out and couldn’t find the coyotes. So I decided to turn the call on and turned on female challenge howls, and then coyote fights. Not one minute later I turned the light on and could see three coyotes about 300 yards coming hard. Turned the light back off and set my 22-250 up in the direction they were coming from. When I got situated I turned the light back on and the lead coyote was 50 yards on a dead run to the call at my feet. My wife was freaked out. I shot the first one at about 30 yards but couldn’t get a clear shot at the other two . On the walk back to the house, my wife told me in a quivering voice that she was not a fan and will never go with me again. I love the rush of calling at night.

 

[Glendine]

I had previously mentioned having some interesting stories about a house I used to live in. When we bought the house and were meeting our neighbors. One neighbor suggesting getting the house blessed by a priest. He didn’t elaborate too much but we learned that the previous family that lived there had divorced suddenly and their son seemed to be a troubled young man that was described as looking gothic/satanic.

The house was bought as a foreclosure and had been trashed. We performed major gutting and renovation to make it livable. Some of the initial things we started noticing were mail or papers that seemed to be moved. For instance, I would place mail on the kitchen island at night and the next morning I would find it on the kitchen table. At first this was brushed off as “I must not be remembering correctly” or “maybe my wife had moved the item after me and not taken note of it”. This began happening more frequently but was mostly benign.

One night around 3:00AM, I awoke suddenly and immediately started hearing an unmistakable noise coming from the bedroom across the hallway, where I had an office setup with my computer. The unmistakable noise was the sound of someone/something typing away on the computer keyboard. My wife woke up and I asked her what she was hearing and she quickly said, “the keyboard”. After a few minutes the sound stopped. Admittedly I never worked up the courage to get out of bed, as I did not really want to know what I might find. Needless to say, neither one of us went back to sleep for the rest of the night.

The master bedroom was on the second floor directly above our living room. The TV was on the same wall as our headboard directly above, and the stairs came down behind the couch in the living room. When someone was upstairs, you could trace their footsteps as the house creaked as there was not insulation between the floors. One afternoon I was home alone watching TV, when I started hearing footsteps upstairs. I could clearly trace them out on the ceiling, as they “walked” around the bed and other furniture, into the bathroom and returned. This pacing went back and forth for about 5 minutes, until I heard them come out of the bedroom and start walking down the stairs. I once again lacked the intestinal fortitude to turn and look to see what was coming down the stairs. Instead, I stood up, walked to the fridge, grabbed a beer and headed out to my back patio for a few hours.

Another night, my wife and I were watching TV, when I announced I was going upstairs to shower and get ready for bed. My wife stated she would finish cleaning the kitchen and be up shortly. Our shower had a glass door and immediately adjacent to it was the bathroom sink. I was in the middle of rinsing shampoo out of my hair, when I thought I heard the door to the bathroom open, then footsteps coming towards to the shower/sink area, and then believed I saw movement out of the corner of my eye through the glass fogged glass, which I assumed was my wife brushing her teeth. (I admit that I recognize that my vision and hearing could have been obscured due to rinsing my hair.) I continued rinsing my hair and then heard footsteps walking back toward the bathroom door, and then a loud crash on the floor. My immediate thought was that my wife had slipped and fallen on the tile floor. I called out asking if she was okay but got no response. I called out again and got no response. I then opened the shower door expecting to see her lying on the floor, but nothing was there. Within seconds my wife flings the bathroom door open asking me if I was okay. Puzzled, I responded that I was fine and asked her if she had fallen. She looked at me confused and said she had heard a crash and came running upstairs thinking I had fallen in the shower. We could never come up with an explanation for what had caused the noise.

We moved out of that house 10 years ago, but I would love to talk to the people living there now to see if they have had any strange occurrences.

Just one question why didn't you get the house blessed?

 

[TroutMcghee]

If you don't believe in the supernatural, come sit in the Southern Appalachian mountains for a few evenings. I guarantee you will become a believer. I once had a skeptical fishing buddy who would tease anyone who brought up these fanciful tales. So we took him camping near brown mountain. Lets just say he went home a changed man lol...The Brown Mountain lights have yet to be explained.

 

[Mike Islander]

If you don't believe in the supernatural, come sit in the Southern Appalachian mountains for a few evenings. I guarantee you will become a believer. I once had a skeptical fishing buddy who would tease anyone who brought up these fanciful tales. So we took him camping near brown mountain. Lets just say he went home a changed man lol...The Brown Mountain lights have yet to be explained.

Nope. Your guarantee is void. Didn't work for me.

 

[TroutMcghee]

Nope. Your guarantee is void. Didn't work for me.

lol…you scared all the haints away by sucking on your thumb and calling for your mommy…I’m not sure my guarantee covers this…will have to let my billboard lawyer decide.

 

[Mike Islander]

lol…you scared all the haints away by sucking on your thumb and calling for your mommy…I’m not sure my guarantee covers this…will have to let my billboard lawyer decide.

Ah, I didn't realize your feelings would get hurt. Into the ignore bin for you.

 

[TroutMcghee]

Ah, I didn't realize you were a ****.

A hole? This was in jest…maybe it’s too early for humor…my apologies