Hunting mistakes you have to laugh at.

[canuckhunter]

Was just reminiscing about last seasons hunt with my father. Another thread had me looking back with all fond memories and one laughable blunder by myself.
He had an Elk tag in an area where special permission to carry a rifle is required. You can carry a cased rifle here also, but it is a hastle so I didn’t bring mine during this hunt.
Fast forward to the next week. Out for deer in another zone. Nice whitetail appears my gun is nice and warm in the gun safe at home. Fortunately I was able to help my good friend haul the deer out after he got the job done. Wasn’t funny at the time, but the boys will never let me live that one down!!

 

[fngTony]

Several years ago I put a new sight on my bow. Had a nice buck give me two chances but I shot low both times. Back at camp I was asked if I even had a 50yd pin? I said ya it’s the…color sequence changed from the last sight, so I was using my 40yd pin.

 

[Yarak]

I grew up skwerl hunting and decided to ask one of my many uncles if I could go deer hunting with him...I was about 16 at the time
Of course he was all too happy to take me
We get to the spot well before daybreak and he tells me to be back at the truck around 01130 hrs
I get there around that time and he’s eating a sandwich and drinking coffee
He asks what I brought to eat and drink and being the average teenager I said “well I didn’t think I’d need anything”
He said I bet you didn’t bring toilet paper either did you ? Well no
He looks at me and says it’s gonna be a long day for you
The old man didn’t give me anything to eat or drink and told me to use a sock or article of clothing I didn’t need for toilet paper
I’ve never made that mistake again !!!

I met up with him a couple years ago (I was 50 at this time) to go on a hunt
When I stepped out of the truck he was standing there in his coveralls so I walked over to him and I shivered a little because it was cold and voiced such
He looks at me and says “ you need some Oreo’s “
I was caught completely off guard by that statement so I had to ask how eating Oreo’s had anything to do with being cold and replied it doesn’t
He explained I had to use the cream in the Oreo’s to put around my ankles so the ants wouldn’t make it up to my candy ass.....I was no good the rest of the day
Every time I thought about that I chuckle uncontrollably and I know there wasn’t a deer within a mile of me
I make very few mistakes anymore but am particularly cautious about what I say or do around The Old Man....he’s the best friend Ive ever had !!!

 

[Beendare]

Glassing for hours on the Mountain.....then walking off 50yds thinking something isn't right......left my bow sitting there at the glassing spot.

__

 

[actionshooter]

Very early in my hunting career, (I might have been 21) my wife's cousin and I went out hunting late muzzleoader blacktail in Washington. With only a couple days left in season, killing a doe was better than eating a tag, so we glassed up a bedded down doe about 400 yds out right smack in the middle of a 3-4 year old clearcut. I then proceed to begin a stalk that Fred Bear would have been proud of... Move right in, peak over a little knoll and the doe was still there bedded down and facing straight away with no clue, at 30yds! Line up the ole peep and put a 50cal Buffalo Bullet right thru the back of her head with my trusty MK85. Backstraps for dinner!
My partner comes down the hill with my packboard and I decide that I'll strap her to the board and make the pack out downhill to another road, Tracy will drive the truck around, then I can gut her out on the road. The perfect plan!! No dragging uphill, no bloody clothes, no problem packing a whole deer. I'm 6-5 and dumber than an ox. Strapped that deer to the pack frame and went to town.
Perfect plan until about halfway down the hill and my lower back and butt feels a little warm and wet... you guessed it... my underwear is full of scrambled deer brains, clear down the back of my legs and into my boots.

Tracy wasn't impressed but I drove home buck ass naked with a towel over my lap..

 

[BluMtn]

Several years ago I was laying in some rocks out of the wind glassing for elk. I had been there about an hour or so. Got tired of setting there and got up, gathered my stuff up and climbed out of the rocks to a grassy knoll right above where I had been sitting. I was looking around and looked below me and much to my surprise there was a rifle laying there in the rocks. I thought to myself "my lucky day, some idiot forgot his rifle". That is when I realized it was my rifle.

 

[Legend]

Spring bear hunt a few years back we where walking down a logging road. My buddy sees some bear crap in the road and proceeds to say how fresh it was then puts his boot in it just to prove his point. That is when I said "yeah that is fresh but so is that toilet paper."

Still makes me laugh!!!

 

[rclouse79]

I tried to break in some boots that did not fit me well for the first time on a hunt. I limped up to a lookout with bloody heels and sat down to glass for the rest of the day. I ended up shooting my best coues deer, so it wasn't all bad. If you are going to be dumb you have to be tough.

 

[CorbLand]

To lead this out, you must know. I have a jacked up digestive system. I can eat raw chicken and be fine, then sniff a salad a shit my brains out. There is no rhyme or reason to it.

So we are a scouting one night and something I ate did what my body likes to do. You have about 5 minutes to find a place or its happening whether you like it or not. I tell my buddies I will catch up and take off for the trees. I run into a little quakey stand and the only place I can find is a 6 inch tree that has fallen and is wedged in the crook of another. It is solid so its all I got. Drop the drawers, sit on this tree that is flexing under my weight and at an angle. Shit happens, literally and I am finishing up and a moo cow comes into the grove mooing. I am sitting there watching it and it lifts its tail and starts shitting too. I kind of chuckle and let out a fart when I do. The cow turns it head directly towards me and starts coming straight for me. When it gets about 10 yards from me, I decide that its not going to stop so I start throwing things at it.

So, you basically just have to imagine a 23 year old kid, sitting on a flexing, slick aspen tree, pants at his ankles, feet in front of him so he doesn't shit in his pants, throwing sticks at a moo cow that is coming to see what is going on.

So what can you learn from my mistake? Learn to squat and dont fart when around cows.

 

[Wapiti1]

Don't set down a camo hunting pack to finish a stalk with the idea that you'll swing back by and pick it up. You'll lose an hour or three looking for it.

Jeremy

 

[Where's Bruce?]

Edited from my very first elk hunt report.


The next morning we headed back to the top of the same mountain 30 minutes before graylight. The woods felt different in the darkness…larger, quieter and more alive. I can’t really explain it. A third hunter joined us this morning, a long time British pal of mine whom I have fished with many times and he had recently moved to Oregon and taken up bow hunting a month prior. Parker had actually given Neill (that’s his name) his old bow. The three of us silently slipped into the thinned section of woods near the top of the mountain and set up in an area where the mountainside flattens out into a sort of plateau. Portions of it almost look manmade, perhaps a century ago when logging was active here. Parker and Neill sit downwind and uphill from me and I stand in a spot where game might be called in from three directions. They have weeks to hunt because they live there; I have only ten days so I am being given guest privileges. Parker had handed me a Bull Bomb to spray once I got positioned so it would cover our scent. I have never used one of these before but really, it’s a spray can…how hard can it be? (I know some of you who hunt are already laughing.)


The air is still, the first blue fingers of light are piercing the crisp morning sky and I point the Bull Bomb in front of me and press the button. A moment later I see the slight imperceptive breeze blowing in my direction as the fine mist envelopes me. Inhaling 100% genuine fresh elk urine first thing in the morning will outperform coffee every time. OMG! How FN stupid can I be?!


As I fight the urge to cough, choke, puke and spit I just know my two friends are fighting urges of their own. Musta been a gut buster watching me douse myself in elk pee. I spray in all other directions and the sky grows brighter. That’s when I learned lesson #2 about Bull Bombs…they are insect magnets. In moments I have literally thousands of biting, stinging bugs all over me. I pull up my bandit, (3/4 facemask) pull down my beanie and put on my gloves. As I write this a week later my hands and face still look like a teenage pizza employee’s face. My hands actually began swelling and looked freakishly plump for five days. Benadryl didn’t help.


So there I am, bugs getting caught in my eyes as I blink, buzzing is all I can hear and I’m trying to focus as Parker chirps (a subtle elk cow call) for bulls. The three of us are being eaten alive and after an hour we decide to beat it outta there. Yes, I have Thermacell (a little device that keeps bugs off you)…it’s right there in the truck two miles away. (Insert self administered bitch-slap here).

 

[Flyrodcowboy]

After slogging for miles into duck blind for morning hunt, I pulled my shotgun out of my dry case to find it had the trigger lock (I had little ones at the time) securely locked in place. Key was at the house. After a good ribbing from friends I got a nap in the blind while they limited out.

 

[gelton]

Back when insulated coveralls were a thing I took a shit right in my hood. Learned the hard way that it's better to just take them completely off when it's time to do your business.

 

[James gradenPruitt]

Nice.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[WCB]

Not me but when I was maybe 14 or 15 (over 20 years ago) my buddy and I went duck hunting. We were about 5 minutes late and we were finishing setting out decoys at shooting light. well after a few ducks dropped in and not being ready I told my buddy lets just go with what we have and start shooting ducks. He starts wading back to shore and he gets stuck with the water about at the bottom of his ribs. He stepped into a soft spot on the bottom up to his knees in sole sucking sludge.

I rowed out to him and had to literally lift him out of his waders and into the boat. Well as he slides out of his waders I had to ask "What the Fu$&! you have no pants on". He put his waders on with nothing but boxers and sox on. So he hunted the rest of the morning like that with a pair of wads floating in the decoys.

While guiding once I guess I did have a time where I was glassing and thought I spotted an elk coming up a ridge kind of parallel me and my client through some real thick timber. I pulled him over and we kind of got ready. We could see glimpses of tan body then the black legs, then catch another glimpse of body. I even told the client how light it was it was probably a bull and he is going to end up popping out 150 yards from us. Well out steps this thing perfectly broadside sun hitting it perfect. Client says well "What is the trophy fee for shooting your horse?". Here the Buckskin I used guiding had came untied and made a break for it. I whistled and yelled his name and he looked over at us like "AH CRAP I'm caught".

Of course by the time we got back to camp that night the client had grew the story to include how I was telling him it was a 6x6 with 20 inch swords etc. We had a pretty good laugh.

 

[Plainsman79]

When I was younger a group of us used to do deer drives to fill tags at the end of the season. Well about 15 minutes into the drive, the stomach rumbled and it was time to do the daily duty. Afterward, I didn’t have anything to wipe with and made the decision to sacrifice my socking hat. When the drive was over, my Dad asked me what happened to my hat and without thinking I told him I must’ve lost it. Fast forward about a year and we were finishing up another drive, my younger brother got back to the truck with a proud smile on his face and my “lost” socking hat on his head. He was pretty happy with his “gently used” hat so I didn’t have the heart to tell him until the next year.

 

[M-Wig]

Back in high school a buddy and I decide to hunt coyotes. We started out with mouth calls and did okay for newbies. A few months in buddy buys a cassette of calls and we head to our deer lease to sit a main road. We pull both 15's from behind his seat, get set up in the back of the truck, lock and load. We can see a few hundred yards, which is a long distance for our area. We're bad, we know it, and fur is about to fly. Buddy turns on the call. Sounds amazing and the speakers are really loud. About 30 seconds in a booming voice says, "ATTENTIOOOOOOONNNNN HUNTERSSSSSSS" and then proceeds to thank us for buying this particular tape of calls. I guess my buddy didn't listen to the tape before bringing it out. We just looked at each other without saying a word and started packing up.

A few seasons ago I drove to my lease for an afternoon hunt (120 miles one way). Pulled out my muzzleloader and realized I had left my tackle box that carries all the primers, powders, etc in the closet at home.

Probably too many more to list.

 

[shanew1668]

I went to a spot I had only escouted in the early season. It was way thicker than I thought it was going to be and I was on my hands and knees at a couple points. I finally made it to the spot I was looking to get to which had some good sign and looked down to see I had lost all 6 of my brand new arrows and broadheads in the thicket and tried to retrace my steps but had no luck finding any of them.

 

[WCB]

When I was younger a group of us used to do deer drives to fill tags at the end of the season. Well about 15 minutes into the drive, the stomach rumbled and it was time to do the daily duty. Afterward, I didn’t have anything to wipe with and made the decision to sacrifice my socking hat. When the drive was over, my Dad asked me what happened to my hat and without thinking I told him I must’ve lost it. Fast forward about a year and we were finishing up another drive, my younger brother got back to the truck with a proud smile on his face and my “lost” socking hat on his head. He was pretty happy with his “gently used” hat so I didn’t have the heart to tell him until the next year.

I did the same thing but my cousin found I "nice face mask". hahaha I told him to try it on and then told him about what I did with it the year prior. hahaha forgot about that.

 

[mwebs]

Before surface drives had taken over we had an old Johnson on the duck boat. Thing was bullet proof and churned through mud but would only start on full throttle also it would start in drive.. Me and my cousin go to a new area we had hunted once and knew one spot, get there and there’s a guy there and boats coming out so we stop the boat to figure out where we could go because we couldn’t get to the spots the others could. Decided to turn back and trailer the boat to the usual area. I put the throttle to full blast and started her up, next thing I know I’m pinned against the side of the boat along with the dog and we’re doing doughnuts at full speed with my cousin nowhere in sight. I somehow crawl to the motor and straighten it out while throttling down. Look around and my cousin is stuck in the very back corner of the boat petrified. After the holy shit I can’t believe we didn’t get thrown from the boat and drown in our old canvas wadders or get ran over subsidies we laugh our asses off, must have been a show for everyone in the marsh haha. Never forgot to put it in neutral again.

Also forgot to vent the gas tank once and thought the motor had quit on us. It was a night hunt so we thought we were sleeping in the marsh until I saw the tank dented from pressure.