What is the strangest thing you have seen?

[Pahoo]

In all the years I have hunted, I have seen many unexpected thing happen that made little or no sense at the time. Most of the time we are just witness these things as oppose to being a part of it. There are many that come to mind but will start with a deer story.


We were Pheasant hunting up this weed draw or long ditch, when a bunch of deer got up and ran to the other end of the draw. It was not deer season so just enjoyed watching as they bounded into the woods. When we got to the end and patially into the woods, we saw one of the deer, laying dead and bleeding from the nose. Seem that for no apparent reason, there was a short section of hog-wire fencing strung between two trees. Was serving absolutely no service to anyonne or anything. Most of the deer had skirted the wire except for one. You could clearly see where he hit the wire, flipped over and broke his neck. Now, I would have no reservations shooting one during the season but sure felt sorry for this one. We field dressed it, gave it to the landowner and tore out that section of fencing. The landowner was not even aware it was there.


Be Safe !!!

[.284]

I once jumped a spike that got it's head caught under the handle of a five gallon pail. Made one helluva racket running through the woods.

[elkman06]

Strangest thing while hunting....wanna talk about UFO's? No whiskey involved... they mighta had a big gun though.
elkman06

[sserdlihc]

I saw a mannequin in the woods one time under some brush and thought it was a dead body! I was coming out of the woods on my 4 wheeler when the lights shined on the mannequin. It totally freked me out.

[banditt007]

lets talk UFO's elkman, spill yer guts =)

[essohbe]

I live in northern IL and I saw what looked like "afterbirth" smeared vertically on a tree at about head height. It was slimy like a raw fish, but bloody. (Yes I touched it... eeeww!) No sign at all of an injured animal in the area, no tracks, no hairs, nothing...



The only thing in the woods here is going to be white-tail, sasquatch, or small game.

What do you think?

[30-30remchester]

My mother-in-law naked. I almost put out my own eyes with a hot fireplace poker.

[troy_mclure]

saw a deer "sack" hanging from a barbed wire fence.

crossbow hunting, fell asleep in the ground blind, woke up to a deer sniffing my face, it kicked the bolt loose as it took off(from me yelling!).

saw a red/grey tiger striped squirrel while deer hunting(any other season i would have shot and mounted it).

saw a rabbit with no ears, just little nubs.

shot a sickly looking coyote with 2 toes on each paw.

1 horned great horned owl.

maned buck, and antlered doe(in deer check station).

[elkman06]

Not much to tell actually..they mighta had a gun..(content)..
Driving an open top 46 willys down into a canyon..other side ridge had blinkin lights. Ok, might have been a tower, right? Stopped the Jeep for a couple minutes and then the lights zipped into a position straight above us. It hovered there for approx 20 seconds and did a 90 to the north at a rate of speed I can only guess at. The whole situation didn't last 3 minutes and left me scratching my head. Don't know what it was, really don't even want to guess. Just weird.
elkman06

[trooper3385]

A monkey run across a field while I was deer hunting in south Texas. There use to be a company that raised monkeys and sold them for testing that's not too far away. So it wasn't unheard of to see monkeys running around that had made the great escape, but still a little surprising to see while deer hunting.
Another story that didn't actually happen to me but is a little unusual. We recieved a call from a deer hunter that was bow hunting from a tree stand and saw a naked man walk by his stand. The guy never noticed the hunter in the stand. We walked this brush for about 2 miles looking for this guy. Never found him but we did find a homeless camp. This area was pretty much in the middle of no where, so it was a little strange.
Another strange story that didn't actually happen to me but I went to the call. This was in the same area as the naked guy. A hunter had not been in his deer blind since the end of the last deer season. Opening day, he goes to climb in his tower blind and finds a dead man in his blind that had been there for several months!! Turns out it was a homeless guy again that had died of a heart attack.

[youp]

I was stopped listening for some big game hounds. I heard a tink-tinkle sound coming from over a small rise in the road. It got my attention and it was coming my way. I looked down the road, a gravel two track and saw the fletching of an arrow weaving and bobbing, coming my way, tink-tinkling. As the basket rack buck topped the rise the mystery was solved. Some well meaning bow hunter had managed to barely stick an arrow into his head.

[N.H. Yankee]

The strangest thing I saw was a DEER while DEER hunting in N.H., yup, its that bad in some parts of the state.
Strange things, found a crashed single engine plane on a mountainside, found out later through research it was a suicide!

Had 3 moose events, had one bull charge me twice at 25 yards, a cow walk up to me while I was sitting within 3 feet looking me straight in the eye with her ears pinned back, had a huge bull stand 10 feet behind me steering at me for 20 minutes.

This all happened during the rut when moose can be very dangerous. I had used Deer dander on a boot drag each time, and each time the moose came in nose to the ground following my trail. Oddly, this NEVER attracted a deer in the 5 years I used it, but moose love the stuff.

[10-96]

On one of our prairie dog spots, me and the land owner found 2 NOAA weather balloons about 100yds apart and about a year apart. There are these little cardboard covered boxes with them that are approx 4"x3"x6". They have addresses where you can send them back to the weather folks free of charge.

So OK, it was weird to me.

[Uncle Buck]

While I was stationed at Loring AFB, ME I witness a little red car hit a moose. I would swear that moose just rolled off the car, then got up and did a tap dance on the thing. Totaled out the car and then the moose just ambled off into the willows. We pulled the young lady out of the car and she was physically alright, but really shaken up.

We used to play chicken with the moose. We would get kinda close to them with our cars and flash the lights and blow the horn. When the moose came towards us on the attack, we would shut the lights off and sit quietly. I guess they really do have bad eye sight. After seeing the incident with the red car, I decided being dumb was not worth walking around in that section of Maine in the cold weather.

[VaFisher]

I was putting hounds out for deer and jumped a deer right out of the box then heard a loud thump plus the hounds started baying so walked around the briars to see a small buck had run into a oak tree and knocked itself out. Regrouped & started the hunt again to run a much bigger buck which made a large circle and I ended up shooting him next to the one that ran into the tree. Very strange day and put hounds out in the same place many times but never had any other strange things happen there afterward.

[remingtonva]

The most weird stuff I have found, Not just weird but NASTY! Had a tri pod stand deer blind. Nice big It could fit 4 people very comfortable a big cooler an everyones guns an cases very nice blind, Me an my father-in-law went hunting one morning, he brought his stand I went to the blind An I told him you get cold come get in the blind,So Im walking to my blind notice beer cans round it the door was broke In an Just looked like a bunch of teens trashed the placed an left, Went up to the door Smelled this unbareable smell! something I could not explain! open the door there Is a man laid face down butt naked Dead! Call 911 found out It was someone that was I guess brought out there an murdered an I guess they took his clothes so He wouldnt get no evadence well, My father in law calls me an say hey there Is two guys walking your way with a large bag dragging something in the woods, Well come to find out the are the murders with another body, I swear on this one guys look It up in virginia, But LAter they found 4 more bodys across tree blinds in other countys too, Freaked me out! think about If they were there an I just got there, wouldov been mounting some human heads!

[Pahoo]

WOW, Some of these replies are amazing and unexpected. Imagine going to your stand and wondering if you are going to find "another" dead body!!:barf:

Okay, I have one more only this one seems very natural to me. I once shot a Grey squirrel and on his way down, he started squealing and then stopped. I thought well, this noise is going to upset the other squirrels and perhaps get some of them as well. No sooner had the squirrel hit the ground, when a Hawk swooped down, picked up the squirrel and flew off to feed it's young. Had to think about that for a few minutes and the only thought that came to mind was that this was one that I didn't have to clean.


Be Safe !!!

[sc outdoorsman]

The strangest animal event I witnessed was 2 big barred owls fighting in some tree tops for about 45 minutes about 30 yards from my stand. I thought they were never going to stop and I was afraid to climb down thinking they would jump on me instead.
Human wise my Dad and I were deer hunting in a 20 acre field and a drunk lost control of his truck. It flipped 4 or 5 times a couple hundred yards from me. It scared the living daylights out of us. It threw him from the vehicle and mangled him up pretty good.

[MosinM38]

Well...when pheasant hunting I've had birds accidentally fly into my shot pattern....Does that count? Once a season max...

Lol.

Not alot of "Weird", but alot of interesting stuff.

I consider myself lucky for not running into anyone dead,etc.

Weirdest thing I've seen was a 4X4 Muledeer I shot, that I didn't notice at the time, but when I got home, had already been shot that day. My bullet hole right behind the shoulder, and a second hole through the guts farther back.

When I got him, there'd been a bunch of shooting a ridge over. Musta hit him then, and in the heat of rut decided to forget his wound for the hot doe he was trailing.

Humorous: I was siting on a irrigation headgate (Mosquito infested of course) waiting for a beaver to come that had been plugging it (Perfectly legal by the way to shoot them for pest control).

Sitting there, not moving, and right across the ditch this raccoon walks onto the headgate and starts messing around, pawing the water, and eating on the anthill that was there. He kept it up for a long time. Finally it got too dark to shoot. Before I moved to get up the coon was leaning over the edge of the cement and pawing the water (Probably checking for minnows).

I jumped a foot in the air and yelled "BWAAH". Scared the living bajeesus out of that coon. I know it's sorta mean, but the little fella about fell off the cement and tripped over his feet as he ran off

P.S. Even so, I really enjoyed watching him. Passed the time waiting for that beaver.

[Old Grump]

Two, I saw neither one but both verifiable.

1. Aunt and Uncle out night clubbing and on the way home in the fog hit a deer broadside with their Cadillac. No damage whatsoever to the car, deer not so lucky, he rolled over the hood and kept on rolling uo over the windshield till it was atop the car and came to a stop with the rear feet over the passenger door and the head and feet over the driver side door. They drove home and at dark thirty in the morning sat in the driveway honking their horn. Next door neighbor was a game warden and they need him to get the deer off the car so they could get out and so he could tag it as road k9ll so they could keep the deer.

2. Father in law and his brother spent the day in the woods deer hunting. Came back for milking and their mother was outside the barn laughing and trying to load the 12 gauge but she kept laughing and dropping the shell. She had called the cows in for milking and in the middle was a little buck who followed the herd right into the barn. They went in to check and it was in a stall stuck, couldn't get its small rack out of the stall. They fed it, did the milking, let the cows out then cut off the antlers and let it escape. They just didn't have the heart to shoot it.

[hogdogs]

I guess a more recent event ranks up there for me...

I decided to shoot a particularly brave/stupid cottontail rabbit with my .22 lr. Since it has the see thru scope rings and the shot was only 25-30 feet I aimed a tad higher than usual to compensate for the couple inches higher objective...

He had his back to me exactly facing away. When I shot he did a full front flip as was expected unless he would have fell right over.

I inspect them closely for flea infestation before giving them to one of several bulldogs. I also like to find entrance and exit wounds to verify my aim. He not only was free of fleas, he had no bullet wound. Not even a skinned scalp or body. This was a hollow point and I have never had one not leave an obvious massive wound.

I decided it had to be fright related death or possibly as the bullet passed by, an air pressure spike killed him or knocked him out and he stayed unconscious long enuff for me to get him to the bulldog who looked for a wound as she normally utilized it as a starting point before she gave up and just chomped the head.
Brent

[jakec2789]

remington where can i find that article? i find that very intriguing.

i would say the strangest thing i have ever seen while hunting was a deer getting chased by a beaver. dogs started running, deer hit the beaver pond like they always do. well, that particular day, that deer had more to worry about than just hunters or dogs. a beaver proceeded to attack this deer until it got out of the water and chase it up the hill. i was laughing so hard that i couldn't possibly aim to shoot.

[bamaranger]

I was rabbit hunting one AM as a teenager along the mainline RR tracks not far from my home and came upon a big Cat bulldozer that had come off of a flatbed rail car and cleaned out a an adjacent length of track and a siding as well. ran all the way home, scared another train would come along and crash, before I could report it.

Was plugging a farm pond one evening at dusk when a small flight of geese came in. The last one in hit a tree limb head on and crash/flopped into the pond! About the time I was going to try and snag him for meal for my landlady, he unfolded himself, looked around (I hope nobody saw that......) and swam off.

Was walking out one night after a bow hunt and kept thinking I could see headlights/vehicle, reflecting off the trees/clouds and approaching in the distance. Turns out it was the Northern Lights, very rare I suppose, to be seen here in AL.

[CajunBass]

It wasn't hunting, but fishing the James River, near Richmond, I saw what looked like a Volkswagen floating down the river. Turns out that's exactly what it was.

It washed up on the bank near Kingslanding and stayed there for a year or so. Finally someone pulled it out.

We figured it had been dumped on the side of the river, somewhere upstream and broke loose during a recent high water event. No idea how far it had floated. VW used to advertise that their bugs would float, and that one sure did.

Another time, my wife and I were fishing the Mattioponi River, near the town of Walkerton and I saw something moving in the pad field. I wasn't sure what it was, but my first thought was "Manatee." Now we're a LONG way from Manatee country so I told myself it was nothing. A few minutes later my wife asked me "What was that?" She had seen it too. She too thought Manatee.

A few days later, I saw in the paper that a dead dolphin (mammal) had been found in that area, apparently hit by a boat. It's a pretty long way to salt water from Walkerton, but my guess is that's what we saw.

One other "fish story." Again my wife and I fishing along the shoreline. Two young women, late teens maybe, ran down the bank, hand in hand, and ran into the water and started pulling each others clothes off. They then spotted us, laughed, ran back up the bank giggling and waving and disappeared into the woods.

No idea what was going on there.

[Uncle Buck]

The strangest thing I saw was a DEER while DEER hunting in N.H., yup, its that bad in some parts of the state.

My brother occasionally makes that same claim about deer hunting in RI.

He reminded me of the time we went quail hunting and comming back, crossed an old farm bridge and saw a body wedged under some trees on the up-river side of the bridge, under water.

Turned out it was one of the damned-fool canoeist who tried to go over the Potter Hills falls in the spring floods. Every year, when I was a kid, some idiots would try to shoot the falls and tip the canoe. At least one of them would end up missing, then they would call out the local fire department and people would risk their lives looking for an idiot who did not have enough sense to dress appropriately for this type of event.