Scariest thzing you’ve experienced?

[tttoadman]

Every Grouse Ever!

When I have a heart attack and die in the woods, it will be at the hands of a F'ing grouse.

 

[jaredgreen]

Having a kid lost in the woods at night. Miserable feeling.


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[wyosteve]

Not quite as scary as Flyboy's, but as a teen, I hunted deer in a cattail swamp. Couldn't see more than a few yards. Some other hunter shot at a deer and the slugs came whizzing through the cattails close enough that I could hear what Flyboy described, i.e. tick, tick, tick of slugs through cattails.

 

[Elkfitness]

When I have a heart attack and die in the woods, it will be at the hands of a F'ing grouse.

Ha! Love it!


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[huntaholic123]

Thanks for sharing FlyGuy. I suppose it would be hard to prove that the guy had intent. Glad everything worked out and you didn't lose a limb or your life. My story is weak after anything like that.

A few years back myself and two friends headed out after work for a weekend of bowhunting in an area none of us were familiar with. We arrived around 10pm and wanted to at least figure out where we could park in the morning and exactly how far the river was from our parking spot. We had a decent idea from the one parking area but ended up in another. We were underdressed, no phones and little light. The area we parked at was right where the river took a big bend away from us and there was a mile worth of thick brush, cattails, and no sense of direction. It didn't take long to realize we needed to turn back. After hiking back out we got turned one way or another and just like that we were lost. It was cold, dark, and we were drastically unprepared. After about an hour of attempting to figure out where we were going hypothermia was becoming a realistic issue. We took a moment to gather our thoughts and found a large tree. I jumped on my buddies shoulders and my other friend climbed up both of us to get high enough to figure out which direction was which. Once we established which way was east we took off in that direction. After about another 30 minutes we came out about 500 yards from the truck. Ultimately we were only out in the brush for about two hours but being unprepared like we were and having that feeling of being helpless/lost was unnerving. Definitely always go in prepared now no matter how quick of a trip it may be.

A close second was about ten years ago I was out prairie dog hunting with some guys from high school. We had been shooting a lot of dogs and everyone was having a great time. We spotted some jackrabbits run into some brush a couple hundred yards out and three of the guys took off after them. They started walking through the weeds and grass and flushed the rabbits and started shooting. One rabbit cut back toward the area I was sitting shooting prairie dogs. One guy not watching what was in the background of his target started shooting. He had an AR-15 so there was a lot of bullets zipping past me before I knew what was going on. I hit the ground and luckily the other two guys yelled and caught his attention. After some choice words with the individual we packed up and called it a day. I never did hunt with that guy again. I know it was an accident and he is a good hunter/person but I just don't have the trust anymore.

 

[Elkfitness]

2 years ago, I was walking back out to the truck at dark, while day hunting for cow elk. I was back down to a small trail that weaves behind a few houses that back up to the national forest. As I am walking I hear a sound off to my right (up the mountain and away from the houses). there are moose in the area and that's the first thing that pops in my mind. I look over, and something tells me its not a moose. I stop and look and there are a set up eyes too low for a moose. I have my head lamp on and it takes me a sec, but I now realize its a mountain lion. He or she is about 15 yds from me and just staring at me. I do my best argh yell and make myself big. Well, the mountain lion does move. It walks to one side and then walks to another as I'm trying to make myself look menacing and loud. I'm cow hunting with my rifle, and don't carry a pistol when rifle hunting, so I chamber a round and click off the safety and ready myself in case the mountain lion decides to jump. It was the longest few minutes of my life (though it was probably only 30 sec!). The mountain lion stands there for a bit and then moves off and i can't find it in the dark. I stood there for another few minutes and then made the rest of the walk back to the truck in the dark, which was about 45 minutes away. I still remember standing there, wishing i had something more than my rifle, like a knife, knowing i would only get a shot off. such a crazy thought. It has't changed the way i hunt, but was scary/adrenaline pushing in the moment.

 

[cnelk]

Back in 2006, archery elk hunting. I woke up to some scurrying in my wall tent.
Reached over and turned on my headlamp to see what was making the noise, figuring a mouse or something.

When the light cast on an animal that was black and white with a long tail, that tent got real small, real quick
It was my first time seeing a Rocky Mtn Spotted Skunk up close and personal!

Did you know they do 'hand-stands' when they are about to spray??

 

[RoJo]

Nothing super crazy here.

Multiple close encounters with rattlesnakes, as in stepping within striking distance before they rattled and scared the crap out of me, a couple of them over 5 feet long.

Multiple close encounters with lightning in the mountains. One time, I was in a one-man tent when the storm hit. The lightning strikes were of the instantaneous flash/bang variety. Lying in the tent in complete blackness, punctuated by flashes of light that lit the tent up white and simultaneous "BOOM!". Or hiking in one of the sky island mountain ranges here in AZ during monsoon season...hiking through the storm clouds (fog) because the storm had enveloped the mountain peaks, with lightning striking all around.

One day at the municipal range, testing some handloads in my hunting rifle, some other guys were in a neighboring handgun range shooting something big. I was out at the 300 yd. berm (which was elevated above the 200 yd berm) putting up a fresh target. I hear a bullet from the handgun lane come whizzing through the air and hit the berm 10 feet to my left with a thud. I immediately collected my target and got the heck out of there.

 

[ReddingArcher]

Like a couple of the other guys I've had a bear come into camp while backpacking in the Marble Mountains Wilderness area and sniff around my head in the middle of the night. Definetely makes for a sleepless night afterwards.

 

[Larry Bartlett]

Chose a head shot on a dall ram at 15 yards...bullet struck between its eye and the base of its left horn. Sheep flipped over backwards, eyes open and fixed...dead.

Posed for a selfie with him and it came back to life in my hands. The first minute or so was scary but easy to manage my legs around its torso in a back-lying position, but the stronger and more panicked that ram got the less grip i had on that reality. Thrashes from those hooves feel like hammers and rakes stripping bare skin. Unimaginable power.

had to manually suffocate a thrashing ram on a precarious scree slide, and it took a surprising 6 or 7 minutes for it to stop kicking my ass completely denied of oxygen.

it was the scariest loss of control (and winning) and the most humbling event of my hunting life.

 

[ChrisS]

A deer drive when I was a kid and a 12-gauge slug came flying my way. It must have hit something before getting near me because it I could hear it buzzing past and it wasn't moving real fast, maybe 90-100 mph, but I didn't want to be any closer to it. 30 years later and I'm still nervous about drives.

A few years ago, I was helping to drag a buck up a river bank, stopped to rest for a bit, walked back down to get my bag and started back up the bank and slipped. I landed about nose to nose with that buck and a tine about 6-8" from my right eye.

My first Rocky Mountain lightening strike. The closest one was probably 100 yards away, but it got my attention.

 

[jlaner0408]

If my wife stumbled across this thread I could kiss my solo trips good by...LOL.

Great stories, some crazy stuff happens when you're a few miles back.

For me, the one that has always stuck with me, probably due to my age, was hearing a pack wolves tearing in to an elk at night just outside of our camp. Hearing that elk "scream" as it was being ripped apart made for a tense night of sleep.

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This is why I'll make sure my wife never gets on here!

 

[Steelhead]

Pucker-factor for this season involved standing deadfall. Packing in solo a few miles to meet my hunting pards at elk camp up and over a ridge. Sidelining a steep, fairly narrow draw covered mostly in burned out pines in 10 inches of snow. The older I get, the more I hate hiking in snow, I was pacing myself, plodding along.
It was slow going already, halfway through roughly 1k foot climb to the ridgeline when the wind decided to join the snow. The first big gust coming up the draw sounded like a jet, then stuff began to crack, pop and crash on the other side of the draw. The bad viz (snow) and trees made it so I couldn’t see the action but from my tree-cutting days I knew there were multiple trees coming down. The next gust angled up the side of the draw I was hiking up, like a wave I watched the trees bend as the gust came toward me, heard more trees knocking over, then looked uphill and watched a good sized standing deadfall get blown over maybe 20 yards above me and start sliding/rolling down. Like someone else said, total slow motion. In my head I realized I had nowhere to run, in deep snow I wasn’t going to be very agile, especially with 35# on my back, I just stood there…until it came to rest against more stable standing trees *maybe* 10 yards above me. All I could think was I’m either going to dive over this thing or its taking me for a ride down the hill and crushed to pieces.
You could say that gave me some motivation to pick up my pace…

 

[Ridge Ghost]

A few years ago I was packed in to my elk spot on a solo hunt and sleeping under a tarp. Around midnight a bull moose came by and started grunting and attacking a tree about 15 yards from me. I slipped out the backside of the tarp with bearspray in hand, shined the headlamp on him and started yelling. Thankfully he decided to run off in the other direction like a good moose. He traveled about 100 yards and found another tree to rub on. It was a more comfortable distance for me, but I was still on edge and didn't sleep at all that night.

 

[brooketrt]

While hunting deer in the Nebraska sand hills I got dropped off on the edge of a large public area. I walked and glassed for several hours with no luck. I had been working in a loop I thought and was on my way back to the boundary fence to walk to my truck. I reached the fence only to realize it wasn't the boundary fence. Somewhere I had gotten off track and had no idea where I was. Glassed for a couple minutes and couldn't see the boundary fence or any land mark I could go by. Thankfully a light dusting of snow had aloud me to leave light prints and I was able to follow my own track back to where I started.


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[Conroy]

About 25 years ago I was home on leave for Christmas and my cousin wanted to go coon hunting. We took a ride to some reclaimed state land that still had the old houses and other junk throughout the property. These houses were all run down and stripped of anything of value. Most windows were busted out and none of them had doors. As a kid we always played in these houses and explored most of them. This piece of property was around 400 acres and in the middle of nowhere. The only people we ever saw were locals riding their horses in summer, never anyone other than hunters in winter. We drove down the long dirt road and parked at the end, near the last house. It was cold and clear, hardly any wind. We really liked this spot because there was a small creek in the tree line that emptied into a little pond. This area always had a lot of raccoons and we had gotten many over the years from this place. We let the dog go, a good straight female redbone, that never ran off game. She headed right to the creek and opened shortly after. She had a really nice bawl mouth and she was making a beeline for the pond. We stopped at the tree line and waited for what we knew would be her changing over to her tree bark as soon as she found the right one. We were talking about old hunts and old girlfriends, whatever 20 year olds talk about. After a minute or two we noticed Josie has stopped barking. We stopped talking to listen, thinking she had gotten out of pocket and we couldn’t hear her. While we were listening we both thought we heard a cough behind us. Mind you this was around 930 at night in upstate NY and freezing cold. There were no other vehicles anywhere on the road we drove down and it’s quite a ways from any place people would walk in from. We had a very bright light used for spotting the raccoons up in the trees and we started shining the tree line we heard the cough come from. We didn’t see anything that could have made that sound and we were both nervous, but talking brave to try to prove to each other that we weren’t scared. All of the sudden the dog opened about 50 ft away in the brush by the old house. A lot of times coins will run into those houses as they make great places for them to hide. We both laughed a little and went to get the dog and see what she had. As we got closer she came to us which was a little weird. She was a tight tree hound and you had to drag her off the tree. We leashed her up and went to shine the area where she was last. As we shined the tree, the light passed the house and there was a person looking out of one of the second floor windows. As soon as the light hit him he ducked and was gone. We both started walking to the truck at the same time and by the time we got to it both of us were running full speed. We put the dog in the box and started the truck. As we turned around, the headlights passed the house and an old man was standing in the doorway. We took off for home and told my uncle about it. He thought we were trying to scare him. Two days later all went back and looked around. We honestly found no tracks in the snow but ours, the dog and other wildlife tracks. There were no other people tracks. My uncle accused us of trying to scare him and lying. Even typing this makes the hair on my neck stand up. We never found out who or what we saw, and I have never been back there since.

 

[frankrb3]

I stop and look and there are a set up eyes too low for a moose. I have my head lamp on and it takes me a sec, but I now realize its a mountain lion.

I had a very similar thing happen to me. I was hiking in the dark with a red lens headlamp to a spot where I had seen a nice bull the week before when all of a sudden I ran into a set of eyes. I immediately knew something was not right about the eyes. I Pulled a brighter flashlight out of my pack and shined on it. At first I thought it was a deer, until is moved to the left and I saw the long tail. Believe it or not I wasn't scared at all. I was pretty relieved actually when I found out it wasn't a grizzly bear. The cat ended up bedding down at 27 yards which I was happy with. As long as I knew where the cat was I wasn't too worried. When the sun came up 45 minutes later the cat got a good enough look at me and decided to head out. The part that was most incredible was how that cat didn't make a single sound as I watched it walk off. Grouse are still way scarier.
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[ptarmigan]

I was on my way back from a late season fishing trip to the Katmai area flying in my friends 206. He had given me the controls for a while and I was trying to keep things level. We were between Lake Illiamna and Lake Clark at about 3,000' when I looked out at the wing and saw the ice starting to form. He saw it at the same time and took the controls. You could actually watch it accumulate on the leading edge of the wings.

Now John flew Cobras with the Marines in Vietnam, then spent his career flying in Alaska for the FAA. Lots of stress filled time in the air and he has ice water in his veins. He never said a word and dropped our elevation pretty quickly. Luckily we hit warmer air and it rectified itself, but for a few minutes I though we might be a smoking hole in the tundra, not unlike the ones he used to investigate. When we got back he casually mentioned that it was close to things getting hairy. I hate flying.



The other was on another fishing trip, this time to the Kenai River. We were crossing Skilak lake in December. Temps were in the teens and the outboard didn't care for it. My buddy got the boat (14' RIB w/50hp merc) up on step when the motor started cutting out. For some reason instead of backing off the throttle he opened it up. When the motor caught up to his throttle input it ripped the tiller out of his hand and the boat banked hard left, then hard right. It was on the hard right that two of us were sent into orbit out of the boat.

Somehow the driver was able to stay in the boat and was able to get it under control. That wasn't until after we had come up from being underwater and were watching the boat spinning in a tight circle. Of course we didn't have life jackets on, just waders, jackets, and other warm gear. The 200yds to shore looked like miles. When the motor shut down we did a Michael Phelps back to the boat. Surprisingly very little water got in until I pushed myself under to get momentum to pull myself up. My buddy the driver was ready to call it a day, but we were already there so we just toughed it out for the next six hours. I was damn near frozen but did catch some big trout! Now I never get in a boat without a PFD, and nobody that goes in my boat will either.

 

[skaldugwas]

Last october I slipped while climbing out of an exremely -hands and knees- steep canyon covered in icy huckleberry bushes. I shot down about 200 feet and actually caught a little air in a few spots. I managed to stop my self. Amazingly nothing was broken. I took off my pack (full of bear meat) and figured I would let it slide the rest of the way without me. Instead it shot down the canyon like a bullet and began rolling end over end and bouncing all the way to the bottom where it landed in a creek.
I shortened up my trekking pole so I could use them to dig into the canyon wall and slowly climb down to my pack.
Instead I slipped again and the trekking poles were ripped out of my hands as I continued sliding down again.
I made it to the bottom with no broken bones, but some serious road rash all up and down my side. Amazingly enough the only damage to my pack was a bent 3 bar slider. My binos, camera, and all other gear survived the decent.
That was probably the most afraid I have ever been in my life.

 

[skyleralan]

When I have a heart attack and die in the woods, it will be at the hands of a F'ing grouse.

Right up there with kicking a turkey up in CRP!!