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

[Pharmseller]

Here’s another up close and personal.

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[dfschell]

Besides a squirrel one time coming up the tree to my treestand and putting a paw on my gun sitting against the tree
( was wondering if I had enough time to get my knife)

This year I was walking in the dark to a Treestand beside a cornfield.
As I start up the path I had cleared a month earlier, I was about 15 feet in when I hear something breaking brush coming out of the corn field into the woods
A deer bounded towards me and veered off about 20 feet from me to the right up into the woods.
While standing there another brush breaking coming towards me on the same path.
This time the deer a small buck maybe 5pts came right towards me and stopped about 5 ft slightly to my right. I almost flinched and stepped out of the way of oncoming brown fur.
I could have touched the deer with my rifle
Then the buck was off looking for the earlier doe.

Full rut was on, deer was running all over that day.
Great experience for me.

 

[Parkerpusher]

First and only time I hunted from a climber with a rifle, I had been watching a pair of big bucks in the laurels. After a while a deer popped out below me and in my adrenaline fueled stupor I shot fast before realizing it was a little 2x2. Bad shot too. Liver and one lung.

Not one to leave the scene ever, I tracked that little buck into the wee hours of morning. Finally found him laying down and when I approached he charged me. Stepped aside to put a little 4” maple tree between us and he slammed the tree! Put him down eventually with a knife. Absolutely no quitting in that one. I respected that little deer so much that I had him skull mounted and he’s on my bedroom wall.

 

[Wildcats32]

I’ve got 2 close encounters. First one was 30yd from a mountain lion while deer hunting and it was stalking some deer. I tagged out with that lion about 5 seconds later.

Second was deer hunting again, and I was glassing when we had two Mtn goats come about 3-5ft from us sniffed our bags and kept moving on like we were nothing.

 

[Pharmseller]

 

[tony]

Who are you ? Dr Doolittle

 

[Pharmseller]

Who are you ? Dr Doolittle

You have no idea.

One of my favorites. Wild goldfinch in my back yard.

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[Pharmseller]

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[Pharmseller]

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[Pharmseller]

One more

I got a ton of these.



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[wyoutdoors]

My son and I watched a spike bull feed over a ridge. We were planning on walking the bottom of the opposite side of the ridge (where the bull was headed) to look for sheds. When we finally made it down to where the bull had crossed, he was laying there dead. As I walked up I reached out to touch the bull with my boot and a giant mountain lion shot out from under a cedar tree 3 ft from me. He stopped 50 yds away for a few seconds then walked into the timber.

 

[Wrench]

I had a cow elk almost touch my hand this year while I was at full draw.

 

[.204smokechaser]

One time in the late winter I was painting a cedar laying out a unit. Started on the downhill side painting it when I got to it and right as I was walking to the uphill side I see a bear looking at me from the cat face. I crapped my pants that day. I still go back every winter to see if the bear still calls the tree home. It was occupied last Sunday.

Been charged by a few cow moose and have had lions in the trees above me before I knew what was up there, but nothing rips the bear story for me.

 

[nphunter]

Nothing really exciting. I’ve had a few elk walk up and sniff me while calling. Had a decent 6 point bugle in my face at 10’ probably 10 times before he walked around me and i killed him.

I’ve had several bears run right up to me and then run off. Had one sneak up and growl at my wife while she was cow calling. She said it was snarling at her like a dog. I yelled for her and it went up the tree right next to her.

 

[Sinistram]

Probably 10 years ago hunting deer, I was sitting under a tree and had a whitetail doe appear and come in almost close enough to sniff the toe of my boot. I didn't have a doe tag at the time, but even if I did the experience transcended hunting. There's something about blending in with nature and goofing around with animals that's oddly relaxing. I would've sat stone still all day if she decided to hang out.

 

[jmcd]

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.

That crew member is my bro in-law. Pretty experienced woodsman. If I recall correctly, his dad was the leo that responded. That incident 25 yrs ago made me start taking things seriously in bear country. Bought spray and a .44 right after that.

 

[crgchck]

While hiking havasupai falls, the first gorge we entered I had the largest bighorn I’ve ever seen come down the rocks and cross 10 yards in front of me.. went up about 50’ and stopped.. beautiful animal.. also encountered a pretty damned big mulie in the cave on north rim of the canyon when doing a rim to rim.. the mule deer was very odd as I wouldn’t think any deer would enter a cave.. I was tired, cold, and exhausted.. I swear my first thought when I heard him walking ahead, was that a creeper was hiding out in the cave to attack an unexpecting hiker.. after scaring the shit out of me, he darted out the end I was headed to and stopped in small valley to the right to give me a good look..

 

[Darn_deer]

I was out doing some July scouting a couple of years ago in the NM desert, and as I’m standing there glassing, I hear something coming at me in a rapid pace through the shimmery oak. I back up from tripod, and look down to see a running slinky (badger) stop a couple of yards away. He stopped and started hissing at me. We stared each other down, as I was preparing to punt this thing if it charges me. Eventually it lost interest and ran off

 

[grfox92]

2025 early October, rifle elk hunting NW WY.

Power hunting through rolling sage brush foothills and Come up to a creek bottom. Working my way through when 20 yards to my right and slightly behind me my dog starts going ballistic. Standing 5 feet, face to face with Buck (my dog) is the biggest grizzly boar ive ever seen with my own eyes.

When this all went down I was walking with my thumbs tucked into the front of the shoulder straps on my pack. I had spray on my binos and pistol on my hip, just due to it being right there next to my hands I pulled spray.

Buck is barking non stop right in this guys face. Hes looking at me and looking back at Buck kind of frantically. Im screaming at him to "go on and get out of here." The bear spins and assume hes taking off, but instead of running off he just does a 360 and squares up on us with a pretty agressive posture. At this time Buck got even closer to the bear and is litterally right in the bears face. The bear locks eyes with me for a solid 3 seconds, then looks back Buck, turns and starts booking it uphill towards the timber, with Buck right on his heels for about 100 yards, then Buck turned back and met me back in the creek bottom.

In the moment I was pretty convinced he was going to either go after Buck or me after he spun around and didn't leave. But looking back im pretty sure Buck walked right up to that bear while he was napping in that creek bottom and that bear was groggy and disoriented which is why the whole thing lasted as long as it did, probably about 10 seconds.