What’s the gnarliest situation you’ve been in while hunting?

[thinhorn_AK]

I've been pretty lucky, but had a few encounters.

I got charged by a cow moose while I was hunting in the farewell burn about 5 years ago, it didn't want to stop and harassed me for a good 10 mins.

a few close bear encounters but never an attack.

 

[Bagel_7]

I'm an adult onset hunter and maybe my 2nd or 3rd season hunting deer I bought a Yamaha side by side, to hunt in Southern California. I took it up a trail in the mountains scouting a month before season, did my thing walked around and decided to head back down the mountain. On my trip back down the mountain I get to a point where the road is rutted out real bad from rain water. I get out and wonder how I got up this spot, so I figure I'll just take it real slow over the ruts but as soon as I hit the first rut the side by side tips over. I fall out, and the side by side lands on my left leg. Pinning me to the ground and breaking both bones right below the knee. I get out my pocket knife and use it to dig the dirt around my leg until I can wiggle free and crawl back up the side hill onto the road.

I call my wife and tell her she's going to be mad since I was supposed to meet her for lunch with her family because I'm pretty sure I broke my leg. After discussing it with her and failing to get a hold of one of my wife's uncles to come get me with his quad I call 911. I was hesitant because I thought it would be too expensive to call them and 911 sends a helicopter to find me. So I'm on the phone with them trying to walk them into where I crashed, this was before I had purchased OnX and could've given exact coordinates. After a while the helicopter finds me and I get choppered in a gurney dangling below the helicopter to the ground and another helicopter takes me to the hospital.

I broke both bones below the knee, had a collapsed lung, and spent about a week in the hospital.

The following month I convince my uncle to let me hunt his friends property (about 20 acres), drive to a point, use my walker in the dark to get to a high point in some brush and was able to shoot a small buck and not let the season go to waste. See my walker in the back ground.

Side note - my wife's insurance was bad ass as a teacher and I ended up paying $50 for the whole ordeal.

 

[Kevin Dill]

This^^^is how guys die. Remarkable story....could have had a tragic ending.

The little walker buck is a really cool piece of hunting lore for you. Lots of respect.

 

[Fatcamp]

First time hunting in my new 14' jon boat I was so proud of. Didn't even have a trailer. Convinced a guy I worked with to go with and haul it out of the back of my truck. Put it in. Forgot plug in the dark. Pulled it back out and dumped it over and recovered all our stuff. Actually shot some ducks that day.

Now for the dangerous part. I had never been to that lake. Someone told me about it. It had been raining for days and where we put in was a creek. With a low head dam. I didn't even realize until a week later when I went back to hunt and the water was down that I had been standing on that dam getting the boat back out of the water. Without a life jacket. The downstream side was 8' deep and the current was ripping. One misstep and I would have plunged off the backside and been swept away. The only reason the boat didn't sink completely was due to resting on that dam. I was shocked to see how close I had come. The more I thought about it and looked at the spot and what was downstream I realized just how close I had come. Now I never go in or around the water tending my boats without a pfd, and I have never forgot my plug again after 15 years of owning boats.

And lightning. Numerous stories about lightning.

 

[HERD CHALLENGER]

I brought my wife hunting.

 

[CorbLand]

Not hunting but fishing. My buddy and I took a trip to Montana to do some fly fishing in the early spring. We had fished one river the day we got there and you had some decent success. Water was flowing pretty good from the run off but it wasn't unmanageable to wade in most places.

We fished another river for a couple days after that and then on our last day decided to go back to the river that we had fished the first day. It was significantly warmer that day and the river was running faster than it had been the first day.

You had to wade across the river a couple of times to get to the fishable sides. Well, we decided to wade across, against my judgement. I got 3/4 of the way across and stepped onto some loose gravel and there was nothing I could do. The water pushed me down river, still on my feet and gravel piling up on the backside of my feet. I finally stopped about 6 feet down river when I reached up and grabbed a tree limb. I was stuck and couldn't move. Any time I would move, the gravel under my feet would wash away and I would get washed down another 6 inches or so.

Fortunately, my buddy was able to come in upstream and extend his net out so I could grab it and he pulled me out towards the bank. He fished for a couple more hours and my ass sat on the bank.

 

[11boo]

I thought it was a couple of these, from 60 yards out in the failing light of the end of day. They were right in my direct path to my truck, which was still a couple miles away.
So I kept going, straight ahead not really paying attention to the “porcupines”. About 15 yards away from them, one let out a squeal. Not porcupines, 2 small bear Cubs now scurrying up a couple aspens and squealing their heads off. Full stop. Just blackies, but still.

Then it sounded like a big elk charging thru the timber, of course it was momma bear coming in at full throttle from beyond the Cubs . She stopped right between the two aspens with the Cubs, and as god is my witness she stands on her hinds and looked huge as a T. rex. 15 yards, 20 at the most. I’m backing away bow over my head screaming at her, trying to keep backing away and tripped, land on my butt. Got back up quick and she had gone down on all fours, standing her ground. I let her have all the ground and made a good 400 yard retreat and circled wide around . Never saw a bear that wasnt running away from me before.

 

[elkbowhuntr]

Due to car trouble I took my wife to work. I was climbing down from my treestand 1-1/2 hours away when I remembered I was supposed to pick her up over an hour earlier. Pre cell phone days. By the time I got home you couldn't drive a toothpick past my sphincter with a sledgehammer. Her long silence was the worst thing about it....and she knew it.

Worst gnarly ever.

You Win !!!! LOLOLOL

 

[Hoghead]

Been on my knees and elbows lots of times in brush piles with wild hogs. Shot one charging about 5 -7 feet away. I have shot charging hogs close. But nothing beats being face to face with one in a brush pile with no were to go. Love that adrenaline rush.

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[mike.adams.467]

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[mike.adams.467]

This tells my story pretty succinctly.


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[11boo]

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Holy cow. Do you think you hit the bear with the 44 ?

 

[mike.adams.467]

Holy cow. Do you think you hit the bear with the 44 ?

Definitely. I had bear hairs on my front sight. Amazingly, the Idaho F&G officials obtained a dna sample from the glove she bit and tracked to a bear that had collared. She lived through the winter and was observed with her Cubs the following spring.

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[Voyageur]

This tells my story pretty succinctly.


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What year were you attacked, Mike?

 

[mike.adams.467]

What year were you attacked, Mike?

2015.


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[11boo]

Wow, incredible. I would carry my 44 in grizzly country too for what it’s worth. If that black sow had attacked me I doubt I could have even gotten my 45 on target before she was on me, but I would have tried.

 

[hunt1up]

After this thread I might hang up my boots and take up golf!

I had one close call while boating that I'm still leaves me scared and embarrassed. I've always been around boats since I was a little kid so I'm pretty versed in loading/unloading, operating a boat, etc. Well a few years ago I was selling an older Lund Pro-V. The buyers were going to meet me at the local lake for a test drive before they take it home. I arrived at the lake about 30 minute early to get it launched and ready for them. I drop it in the lake and proceed to rip out on the lake for a quick lap. For some reason the steering wheel kept pulling to the right, which it never did. It always steered nice and true. A minute or so into the ride, running around 25-30mph, the steering wheel violently cranks all the way to the right. I mean in an instant! The boat immediately pitched hard to the right and the gunwale and my head were right at water level. It almost threw me right out of the boat and would have had I not been holding the steering wheel.

I quickly grabbed the throttle and threw it in neutral. I sat there shaking, wondering what had happened. I raised the motor and aluminum transom saver was bent in half, stuck in the prop. In my haste to launch the boat I hadn't removed it. When I launched the boat it simply detached from the trailer and I'd been dragging it while driving the boat, thus the odd pulling to the right. It must have gotten in the right spot to where the prop sucked it in, instantly locking up the motor and throwing it to the right. I reached back and removed it, thinking I certainly grenaded the drive shaft on the motor. Fortunately it didn't and I slowly returned to the dock.

The worst part of the story is that I was alone, probably 400 yards from shore, in 20' of water that was probably 40 degrees, it was a windy 50 degree day, and the water was choppy. I was wearing boots, hoody, blue jeans, and no lifejacket. Had I fallen out of the boat I would have been a goner. There was probably 6 life jackets in the boat too.

The buyers showed up and I calmly explained how the prop that was perfect 30 minutes prior now looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. I left out the part where it happened out in the middle of the lake at damn near full throttle. I knocked $200 of the selling price and they bought it anyway.

Needless to say that ruined my day. I didn't tell my wife that story until probably a year later.

 

[Titan_Bow]

In a 14 foot fiberglass canoe in south Georgia, bowfishing at night. Literally, at full draw and a milisecond away from releasing at what I thought was a GIANT carp. Luckily before releasing, I realized it was just the head of an enormous aligator, the way his head was pointing meant his entire body was underneath the canoe. His head looked to be about 2 feet long, so I am guessing it was a 12 foot or so gator.
I trapse all over the mountain west, and it always amazes me how scared some guys from the South are about bears and mountain lions, when they got literal dinosaurs cruising the waterways, and multiple species of poisonous snakes and spiders that can kill you LOL

 

[Btaylor]

In a 14 foot fiberglass canoe in south Georgia, bowfishing at night. Literally, at full draw and a milisecond away from releasing at what I thought was a GIANT carp. Luckily before releasing, I realized it was just the head of an enormous aligator, the way his head was pointing meant his entire body was underneath the canoe. His head looked to be about 2 feet long, so I am guessing it was a 12 foot or so gator.
I trapse all over the mountain west, and it always amazes me how scared some guys from the South are about bears and mountain lions, when they got literal dinosaurs cruising the waterways, and multiple species of poisonous snakes and spiders that can kill you LOL

I got snake boots, where you get mountain lion boots?

 

[Dos Perros]

Fishing the Arkansas River by myself, that section above Canon City where the highway is right next to the river. I guess it was May, right after finals in college. I was by myself, wading downstream, water was moving pretty good, and I was trying to get to this big boulder to climb up and sit and take a break. I had driven all night to get there and was pretty tired and obviously not thinking clearly. I approached the boulder from the upstream side and plunged into a hole I didn't know was there, just above the boulder. The water flow pinned me against the face of the boulder with my head about 18" under water. I remember looking up and seeing the gray sky through the water and thinking several thoughts at the same time: 1) Welp, this is it, 2) I wonder if they'll find me or if I'll just be here forever?, 3) Dad was right, shouldn't fish by myself. I'm sure it was only a few seconds, but I managed to push myself off the rock and got out of there. Drowned my first digital camera that I got as a gift.