What the closest face-to-face encounters you've had with animals while hunting?

[omicron1792]

Nothing scary but cool. Hunting a tripod stand yesterday and a doe walked out at 50 yards. She looked at me for a second then walked toward me. She literally walked right by my stand. I could have jumped off and wrestled her. I was only 8 feet in air. Was just cool.

 

[Wildone]

Put a turkey to bed the night before and got in position in the dark the next morning. 20 minutes after sun up he starts going off in the tree and I start working him. 2-3 minutes later I catch movement on the edge of the field a 200 yards in front of me. Turkey is still going off in the tree and I'm playing along because I'v been trying to kill this bird for a while that season and he is finally not henned up. Dam black bear is comming in on a string . When he hit 5' I had decided I better standup otherwise he is going to walk right into me. Turkey is still gobbling and the bear and I are having a mexican standoff. I'm trying to be as quiet as possible to not spook the bird and the bear has no idea what I am yet cuz I'm camo head to toe. Bird is to my left still in the tree and I start waiving my right hand at the bear while keeping the shotgun anchored to my shoulder with the left. Bear bounds to my left side and stops again still tring to figure out what I am. He then takes two steps forward and gets my wind and hauls tail out of there. Never heard a peep out of the turkey for the rest of the morning but wound up getting him the following weekend. Took out the bear that fall.

Bowhunting Caribou in Quebec had them passing on both sides of the tree I was hiding behind and had a small bull knock the arrow of its rest had to put it back on to shoot the bull I wanted that was 25 yards behind that one.

Bow hunting elk in NM Had two bulls heading up and I'm below them ( yes I know ) Started cow calling and sidehilling back and forth a couple of yards. One of the bulls kicked his cows and a spike right to me. I am literally right in them 10-20' all around me again I'm backed into a tree. The bull finally comes down and turns broadside at 12 yds screaming his head off. When he puts his head down to bugle his eye is covered by a leaf on a shrub between us. I wait for him to bugle and draw the bow. I squeeze and the knock explodes and the arrow lands 2' in front of me. The spike and the cows are so close. I wait for him to bugle again and slowly reach for another arrow out of the quiver and put it on. Feels like 5 minutes have gone by and he's still going at it. I wait for him to bugle again draw and fire. He runs off 40 yards and stops and keeps bugling for what felt like 20 minutes. Watched him tip over. When I came out of the scub the spike and cows turned themselves inside out to get out of there.

 

[PNW bow hunter]

My buddy and I got on a bull bugling shortly after daylight.

It only answered bugles, and was working up the hill. After trying to catch up for about an hour we hit an open meadow in the timber. There was a small rise on the far side of the meadow, and I thought I could see horn tips sticking above it. After I saw the horns move I told my buddy to back up 60 yards and cow call.

The bull came running right to me. I cow called right before it got to me in the timber, and he stopped so close I wasn’t sure if my arrow wound get off the string before it hit him!

Pretty sure it was within 3 ft of my bow when I shot the bull!

 

[longspeak74]

Lots of squirrels within arms length in the tree. Birds landing on end of my arrow. Had a fox in Colorado this year following us up the trail.
Years ago shot a decent basket rack 8, knew it was a good shot so got down after 30 minutes and starting following blood. Not paying much attention as I had my focus on the blood. Turned a corner and a legit 170" with a huge drop tine was standing over my dead buck at near 5 yards. About shit my pants.
He casually walked away into the woods. He was shot later in rifle season by the neighbor.

 

[mitchellmountain]

Beat a deer to death with the barrel of a muzzle loader after I broke the stock trying to kill it. Wrestling for a little bit prior to that was tooth and nail along with just plain stupid. I was 25 and bulletproof.

 

[rookieforever33]

Beat a deer to death with the barrel of a muzzle loader after I broke the stock trying to kill it. Wrestling for a little bit prior to that was tooth and nail along with just plain stupid. I was 25 and bulletproof.

Might have been easier to just load the muzzle loader again. Cheaper too

 

[Pharmseller]

9 1/2 yards......

View attachment 808712

View attachment 808713

Frontal brain, one round .450 Nitro.

What is that?




P

 

[JCS271]

What is that?




P

The shot....

 

[dsotm]

You guys see animals?!

 

[nam1975]

Walking back from my tree stand. Well after dark along standing corn. Idiot neighbors shoot a couple of times. I get to a tractor lane and a small doe runs right cross my toes.
I was half a step from getting trucked.

 

[buffybr]

One year a couple of my friends and I were camping in one friends trailer tent camper at the end of a Forest Service road near West Yellowstone, Montana. I had my horses in an adjacent meadow with an electric wire around it. We had the quarters of 2 bull elk and a bull moose hanging in the stock rack in the back of my truck.

About 10 o'clock one night I went out to check my horses and to water a bush, and at the top of the road cutbank, not 10 yards from me, a grizzly woofed and clicked his teeth at me. I had my Ruger .44 mag on my hip, and I unholstered it and fired one round over his head. No reaction. Then I fired another round into the trunk of the pine tree next to him. Again, no reaction. So I hollstered my pistol and picked up a golf ball size rock that I threw and hit him. He then ran into the dark, and a few minutes later we heard a bunch of quick (pistol ?) shots from a neighboring camp.

He had a radio collar around his neck and had an ear tag. We reported the incident to FWP and found out that he had been a problem bear near Cooke City and had been trapped and released near where we had camped.

Another time I was driving back to the office on a Friday afternoon and I saw two of my co-workers stopped by the side of the road so I stopped to see if they needed help. They didn't need help, but they said there was talk on their Forest Service radios that a member of one of our trail maintenence crews working on the trail above them had been attacked by bear.

About then our Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer and a Deputy Sheriff drove up. The Forest Service LEO gave me his .223 AR, he and the Deputy both had shotguns with 00 buck loads, and we all started walking up the trail. I don't know why, but I was in the lead.

The trail crew was 3 college students, 2 guys and a girl. When we got up to them, it was at least an hour since they had called for help. The girl and one guy were up in one tree. They had a radio and had called for help. Fifty yards up the trail was the other trail maintenance guy. He was the one that the bear had attacked, and he had climbed almost to the top of a very tall spruce tree. Every hime he had called out to the other crew members, the bear would climb up the tree and had bit him in the foot or his lower leg.

When the LEO, the Deputy and I got to the tree he that was in, a black bear charged us from out of the bushes. We turned and all fired at once, killing the bear.

We then got the injured crew member out of the tree and got him down were the other crew members were. Other help had arrived and they called in an evacuation helicopter from Yellowstone Park.

I went back up to the bear and saw that it was a sow. Then I saw a bear cub of that year running in the brush. I immediately realized what had happened. The lead crew member had got between a mother bear and her cubs and she attacked him to protect her cubs.

I then went after the cub and he climbed up a tree, so I went up the tree after him, caught him and brought him down. He was all teeth and claws. If I didn't hold him tight on the back of his neck he would bite me, and his little teeth felt like nails in the jaws of a vice. And if I didn't hold his back legs with with my other hand the claws on his back feet would scratch me.

I had to tightly hold him for about an hour until the FWP bear biologist brought up a 5 gallon bucket with a lid to carry him in.

FWP brought dogs up the next day and found another cub. They took both cubs to a wildlife rehab center in Helena, and released them in the forest 2 years later.

The injured crew member was treated and released from the Bozeman Hospital. Schnees gave him a new pair of boots. I had to take some antibiotics and get a tetanus shot.

My third wildlife face-to-face story is on a Forest Service road survey project where I was walking through some waist to chest high brush and a bat flew out of a bush and landed on my chest, clinging to my shirt. I just picked him off my shirt and put him in another bush.

 

[Zak406]

We push deer with bows. I’ve had them close enough I can touch them. I’ve also had a black bear 2 weeks ago about 10 feet away. It was close enough I thought it was going to run me over.

 

[NRA4LIFE]

Had a spork walk so close to my stand this year I could have peed on him. That would have been funny.

 

[HOT ROD]

Spitting distance of a big Mt lion while archery elk hunting...

 

[flyboy214]

I had a herd of big horn come take a drink just across the stream from me while fly fishing. It was pretty cool to see them damn near levitate back up the side of the ravine.

Bull elk 7 yards from me while turkey hunting. He made my shotgun feel really small.

Raccoon tried to share my treestand with me one morning.

 

[PredatoryProwler]

Does Grabbing a grouse around the neck count?

 

[137buck]

I've had a few elk within feet of me while hunting, a whitetail doe brush up against my ground blind, and the most recent, was a big color phased black bear come in downwind of me sniffing the wind like a bird dog right to me. At first I thought it was a grizz and pulled my phone out to record it. Then it hit me, the wind was coming from me to him, and then I realized it was a big black bear and he was sniffing me out. I wasn't too concerned as I was ready to stick an arrow into it, but he was coming right at me, and he stopped at 10' because of two trees that were tipped over. He never gave me a shot, and when I realized I wasn't going to be able to shoot him, I pulled my 10mm and said hey bear, he never moved, then I said it again, then he turned and walked away, never running away and never giving me a decent shot for the bow.