Scary Hunting Stories

Does anyone have any scary hunting stories to share?

The only time I have ever truly felt scared while hunting was during my croc hunt in Australia. No other time have I felt scared due to animals while hunting, but that time was a bit different. I will round up all of the photos for an official write up and post when I can. Still trying to convince my wife that I don't have a girlfriend and all I am doing is posting to Hunttalk

Let's hear those stories!!

Heck ya. Archery elk season this year. Pulled up to my spot in 68, and there were 4 trucks parked there with Texas license plates. The horror

Bigjay73 said:

Heck ya. Archery elk season this year. Pulled up to my spot in 68, and there were 4 trucks parked there with Texas license plates. The horror

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Sounds like "Tales from the Gunnison Country" Except Duane Vandenbusche's stories weren't as scary.

Shortly after I took this picture the bear walked to the base of my tree and paused for a minute. Very cool to see and no big deal. Then he began to climb up the tree. Now it was a big deal. Never thought about it before but I realized immediately there is no way to shoot a bow straight down from a climber. After yelling at him and frantically looking for something to throw at him (I was not about to throw my brand new and expensive bow only for him to to chew up while on the ground. I'd give him my leg first) he stopped half way up to my stand and just looked at me. Then climbed down and walked off.
My friend hunting a few hundred years away thought I fell out the tree when he heard all the noise I made. The bear was never aggressive and more so curious. In hind sight I had just eaten some peanut butter crackers, shook the crumbs out the bag and put the trash in my pocket. Regardless, to have a full grown bear walk up and climb towards you was scary enough.

Should have gave him a "luggi" no idea on spelling. I talking about a sold mass of phlegm. Sorry about luggi. I have heard the term but cannot find it on the web.

I had a pretty close call with a XL grizzly, November of 2005 in the Bob Marshall. Scariest part of that hunt was actually the hour I spent at Teasers on the way home.

bobbydean said:

Should have gave him a "luggi" no idea on spelling. I talking about a sold mass of phlegm. Sorry about luggi. I have heard the term but cannot find it on the web.

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no luggi ready but the first the he would've reached was crap in my pants

I too had a face to face, come to Jesus with a big sow grizz and yearling at about 0300 hours in the Scapegoat, September 2006. It was amazing how much better I felt when my hunting buddy handed me a 30-06 instead of the mag light I had been holding.

I called a grizzly into 18 yards a couple years ago in the Snowcrest. That one definitely got my attention, and changed my hunting plans for the rest of the day.

Not as scary as an afternoon at Teasers, but I once became overexhausted dragging a deer out. I was 19 or 20 and alone and shot a buck maybe 2.5 miles from the truck. This was before I had a pack to haul animals out or any knowledge of how. I thought it would suck but was doable because the last 2 miles were down a long ridge. I exhausted myself getting the buck to the top of the ridge, and broke the deer dragger I had. I used a stick between the deer's legs and my belt. I would heave the deer along for 10 yards, then catch my breath for a couple minutes, and repeated that process for a couple hours. About a mile from the truck I started to get real dizzy. I couldn't catch my breath. My heart was fluttering and skipping beats with what I later found out were Preventricular Contractions(PVCs), likely a function of some major chemical imbalance in my body. I was shivering uncontrollably. I abandoned the deer and hiked straight to the truck. That hike was frightening for me and there were numerous times I felt on the verge of losing consciousness. When I got to the truck I cranked the heat on and laid there in the seat shivering and generally freaking out. I managed to drive the hour home shivering uncontrollably the whole way. I took a 2 hour shower and slept the rest of the day. Went back and got the buck the following day with a buddy.

I was in decent shape at the time, it was like I just hit a wall, and maybe in a sort of subtle way I panicked exacerbating my problems, though I don't remember feeling panic. I hadn't eaten anything that day and was out of water early on in the drag. It taught me to be more prepared and more cautious. Dragging an animal can empty the gas tank quickly.

"One time at band camp....."

oh, where to begin? running across pitbulls, almost drowning in 10 inches of water, the hundreds upon hundreds of coyotes in one field, or how about the alien landing.

have called in a few cats while archery elk hunting, having a disagreement with a bear over who was the owner of my freshly shot cow elk little did he know I had a bear tag and a 7 mag that does not discriminate with what is in front of it lol...

noharleyyet said:

"One time at band camp....."

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Oh the fear and shear terror............LOL
Your response made my day!

Here is an chunk from a longer article of an interesting few minutes... After a week or two over on the west side without getting any shot opportunities on big bulls I retreated to my base camp in less scenic surroundings. The west had been stunningly beautiful with the Tetons towering off to the west every sunrise. I went back to a large basin where there had been moose spotted every day I had hunted it. I parked at the closed gate, told my dog to stay and headed up to get to the flat swampy basin at first light, about a 4 mile hike in the dark. I got to the lower edge with a half hour to spare and took a wheeze break then gingerly edged up the road glassing as I went as daylight dawned over the willow flats. I was about in the middle of the large swampy basin and there was some crunching/snapping in the timber beside me. I snuggled up to a six foot tall pine tree as I was in the midst of second growth clear cuttings. The snapping got louder and I just knew it was a huge bull headed right for me, I knocked an arrow and got ready, as whatever it was, was going to come out into the open at close range. Then at 30 yards it was in the open and broadside, a mama grizzly with a tiny cub under her belly… Oh SHIT… She was moving slowly and then I saw as bad as things appeared they could always get worse, a coyote pup was circling her and lunging at her cub. He was just being a puppy, being obnoxious just for the sheer joy of it. She wasn’t seeing it quite that way, it turns out that the brush popping I had heard was her clicking her teeth together, I had read about it but it is much more impressive when up close and personal. She was swatting at the pup with her front paws as he dodged and nipped at her flanks and dove under to nip the cub, the cub was getting nipped and stepped on by mom and was squealing and squalling up a storm from underneath her. She had great goobers of drool hanging out of her mouth dripping down maybe a foot or more, swinging back and forth as she spun to meet the pup’s lunges.


And through this all there I was thirty yards away trying to melt into a 6 foot tall sapling holding a suddenly very puny looking bow with an arrow knocked… I figured she had to have seen me, I had almost no cover at all and it was beside me, not between us. The fight raged on for what seemed like hours but was most likely a minute or so and I decided to back out of there as they were edging closer with each swat and a miss. I slowly backed up a step and it was immediately apparent that she had not seen me yet as the entire circus froze and stared at me. The pup was 5 feet beyond the bear and stopped cold and looked at me, the cub was crying terribly from under her belly and Mama spun her tiny pig eyes to pierce right to my core. To steal a phrase from a much better writer than I, she looked at me like I owed her money… As she spun her head to stare a big glop of goo from her mouth on a tether of more goo spun up and over and landed smack on the top middle of her short snout making a wet splat noise. As she fixed me in her glare I knew one thing with perfect clarity, she was coming, her eyes told me that as clearly as if she spoke perfect English, she was frustrated, mad and there I was in range and not nearly as fast as that puppy. I was dead meat and we both knew it with zero doubt.


Now I have been known to say bad things about Wile E. Coyote on occasion, after he poaches ducks or chickens from my yard for instance, but on that flat, on that morning, I came to realize all God’s creatures have their place, and they can sometimes be man’s best friend. After everyone but the cub freezing for several seconds the pup decided I was a harmless spectator to his recreation and lunged right in between her front paws and nipped the cub in the ass, making it squeal in pain, Mama Grizz spun to swat him dead and I was instantly on the back burner, and with her back turned I reversed marched faster than a Frenchman at a Panzer reunion. Upon reaching a shallow gully completely shielding me from her view, an objective observer might have referred to it as “fleeing in headlong terrified flight” but there were no objective observers there that I could see. I will refer to it as carefully skirting the area to find more suitable hunting terrain elsewhere…


I could hear the puppy yipping and playing his silly game of chicken for the next hour or so, from high on the opposing ridge, where I stopped to clean out my under drawers… err … I mean glass for moose.

Squirrel,
Good read and great story. I did have to.....Squirrel...start over a couple times as I was tired at the time.

Western Traveler1 said:

Squirrel,
Good read and great story. I did have to.....Squirrel...start over a couple times as I was tired at the time.

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Got it, the story is true the writing a draft, I'll fix it. thanks

I surprised a bear with cubs on an elk kill, and mountain lions on deer kills twice. The bear at about 30 feet. Four lions at once last Fall. Tense, but nobody died. mtmuley

No real scary hunting stories but a couple good canoe ones. My brother and I had trapline back in the day and would check our traps before school in our canoe. One pitch black morning (pre head lamp era) we got too close to a beaver, and it slapped its tail in the river about a foot away from me. I about pooped myself right there.

Another time we decided to canoe a river in Northern Minnesota that we knew nothing about. About a mile into it something seemed odd to me and I convinced my brother to pull over the bank. Just around the bend was this......

http://www.gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/baptismhigh.shtml

We were able to portage around the falls and continue, but the river was rough with a series of 10 foot drop offs, and ended up losing an oar, and the wrapping the aluminum canoe around a rock. Ended up walking out to the road after that lucky to have not drowned!

Bluff charged by a grizzly while finishing up butchering a caribou was some good excitement, but not nearly as scary as beating a black bear sow across the face with my trekking pole.
I was elk hunting opening week on the north end of the crazies a few years back. And while hiking down a game trail just trying to cover ground to get to my destination i heard something down below. After listening for a while i decided it could only be elk hooves and them feeding. I snuck down there. On all fours crawling toward the sound that was now just over a small rise, when a little black bear cub came out and walked right up to me.
Turns out, the noise was the sow ripping apart a dead moo cow. She came charging in popping her jaws and pounding her front feet off the ground. Almost got shot in the head a few times, got hit in the face with my pole and a few rocks and finally decided to let me back out of there. I yelled enough to certainly ruin the elk hunting. I probably should have just killed her as she was about 8 feet from me several times, but it all turned out okay in the end.