Interesting things seen while hunting....

[calvin62]

I saw a show about the large number of people that keep large cats [lions, tigers, leopards, etc] as pets. maybe he escaped someone or was a desendant of one that escaped and interbred. all I know is that he was the size of a mountain lion and black.

[220swifter]

We used to trap hogs and put them in a pen near the Nueces River in S. Texas to fatten up. The river has quite a few alligators in it. Once when we were down there, one of the dogs ate a hole through the fence and was harrassing the pigs. About a 175 pounder got out of the hole and took off across the river. It made it about half way before an alligator took it under. It reminded me of a bass hitting a topwater lure!

[Robert Garner]

dont really know how long i watched but sky went from black/grey to pink/red and visibility got huntin good as i watched a river otter divin and eatin
in fast water,never left general area and never acted as if he was fightin the current.
Wasnt huntin but at work(dont get paid for this) saw an owl stoop and take a huge rat,lay on the ground with said rat in outstretched talons,rise and fly off.Were all three of us better off for that?
robert
occupied georgia

[Walter]

I sat in a deer stand one morning for almost an hour watching a pair
of roadrunners engage in what I can only assume was a "mating dance".

The two birds walked out into the clearing, and began walking in a circle, facing each other. Every few seconds one or the other, or both would flap their
wings, jump up in the air, fan their tail feathers, then light back down and commence the circling. After a few minutes they would break off and run in separate directions into the brush. Five minutes later they would both strut back out into the clearing and resume the "dance".
It reminded me ot the old "Wild Kingdom" TV show.
They eventually both ran off into the brush, one chasing the other.

A couple of years ago I watched from a tree stand as a bobcat stalked
a fawn feeding with a pair of does in a clearing. The cat got within about
15 feet of the fawn, when I guess one of the does smelled it. She snorted,
jumped straight up, , and all three deer were gone like a puff of smoke.
I shifted my rifle to get a bead on the cat but it got down in the dead grass
and I lost sight of it.

Walter

[1BadF350]

For some reason squirrels always seem to want to either climb up or climb down whatever tree I'm set up in. Real uneasy feeling when your eyball to eyball with one.
I see red-tailed hawks all the time up close but they always spot me right away, they have great vision.
I always think its funny when I see something moving out of the corner of my eye and its a leaf blowing on a tree 100 yards away. It's amazing what your senses pick up when you're "tuned in" like that.
I saw a scarlet tanager for the first time while hunting. They are the brightest red color I've ever seen.

[mdhunter]

Years ago squirrel hunting in Maryland, shot a squirrel out of a treetop with my shotgun.....before it hit the ground, a hawk grabbed it out of the air and tried to fly away with it.....a shot over it's head into the leaves persuaded it to leave the squirrel behind.

Three years ago on Alaska moose/caribou hunt, watched two wolverines chase a couple of big bull caribou away from their (wolverines') den. My buddy and I hiked after them (about 2 miles above the river in the hills), but when we got up there both wolverines and cribou were nowhere to be seen - still amazing to watch though!

This past year in Alaska, was fishing on the bank of our camp with my buddy when a mink ran down the bank and wanted to get around us - I was standing in his path - so he retreated, went under the bank, used one of his tunnels, and popped out about 15 feet on the other side of us!

Michael

[Twycross]

Just the other day, a buddy and I had just hiked out of a canyon and spotted a baby moose heading to a pond along the rim. We snuck up onto a hill about 100 yards behind it, and then my buddy went down behind the moose while it was drinking, and threw a stick at it. Hit it right on the rear. That moose jumped and swam the pond in record time, then headed out into the canyon. We figured he had gone to fetch Momma, and since we had one .270 between us, and it was out of season, we ran half a mile to his rig, trying not to keel over with laughter.

[tintcutter]

My dad and his hunting buddy drug me along on what was one of my first hunts with the grown ups. We were living in the village of Bethel, AK. So we went via boat up river for the hunt. It was late in the year, and cold enough for an evening fire, so when one of the other fellows tried to cut a piece of bowed wood out of the river bank he found it unusually hard to chop with his axe. It turned out to be a mastadon tusk, so it was fossilized ivory. The rest of the animal was in the bank also. We still have the tusk.

[MeekAndMild]

It turned out to be a mastadon tusk

Now that is really fantastic! I've heard there are fossil bones in some of the Florida springs but I didn't know they were in Arkansas.


Found what I think is a piece of meteorite last week, but I'm not sure. Nothing as exciting as a mastodon tusk.

[tintcutter]

AK is Alaska. Dads buddy was a local eskimo. Yeah, I used to carve little necklace pieces and give them to sweethearts. The axe marks are still in it. The outside is dark brown like dirt but inside is like a yellowed ivory color. I don't think that kind of stuff is super rare though. There were lots of fossils and bones because everything both froze and stayed very dry in the low humidity you get around artic type air. I was at a Gold camp in the Yukon and found a bunch of tools from the original guy who started the camp in 1933. He got sick and died in town so he left a bunch of stuff. They were barely rusty.

I saw my brother catch a duck with a lucky cast from a fishing rod. It flew into his line, not the lure. The duck came out from under a bridge he was standing beside. That was cool. That happened on Kodiak Island. I also saw a sea otter (I guess, it was the 6 foot kind) follow his lure and pop up on the bank right underneath him. The otter bailed and Rob hollered. That happened in the Yukon. But they were talking about hunting...

[Trapp]

I saw a deer once......I was in too much awe to shoot it.

[FirstFreedom]

I believe this is the most fascinating/entertaining thread I've ever read on TFL - amazing stuff.

[handwerk]

A couple years ago while deer hunting hear on my 40 in n.e.Mn. I had 3 wolves chase a red fox right past my stand, one of the wolves was coal black. You don't see that every day.

[artsmom]

Meek and mild, I can still recall the one and only indigo bunting I saw when I was a Boy Scout camping on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I went wild, and the rest could have cared less that such a bird existed.

I have on the camcorder a bald eagle trying to pick off a crippled hen mallard in open water. It made five passes, each time the mallard waiting until the last minute to raise up and flap its wings to make the eagle flinch or throw its aim off. The eagle gave up, and went to hang around the snow geese.

[MeekAndMild]

We don't have many mastadon bones in the deep south, but if you get away from the cities and areas where there is heavy agricultural pesticide use you can see many indigo buntings. The major trouble they have is the brown headed cow birds like to parasitize them, so a certain percentage of nests are lost each year. It would be nice to be able to legally shoot cowbirds, but that isn't allowed except with special permits.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Conservati...lt.cfm?fxsht=3

[Rojoe67]

Speaking of eagle........

About 5 years ago I was on my quad putzin down a seasonal dirt road. I came up to a gully and as I came down into the low area an American Bald Eagle (mature) flew up from a road kill. I bet that fella had a 5' wingspan.... He flew off real majestic like and again.......a kodak moment again - without the camera

[jsflagstad]

About 10 years ago in NW WI, I watched a doe walk out of a swamp into my shooting lane about 200 yards away broadside. I put the cross hairs right behind the shoulders and squeezed off a round. Kind of seemed like a weird commotion after I fired, or not normally what I had seen before when making a kill. When I got up to the kill site, I realized there was a 2nd doe right behind the one I was shooting at. I double lunged them both with the old 7mm Mag and there they lay. I'm sure I couldn't do it again.

The other neat thing I witnessed while bow hunting in my back yard 2 years ago was 5 different bucks fighting under and around my stand over two does. It started with 2 bucks, and then 1 by 1 along came 3 more as the commotion got louder. The buck were from 6-9 points and being that I was bow hunting I couldn't get a standing shot at them because they were always moving. Of course, the 9 point won the battle and chased the others off. After he had his way with the does and then they headed out past me for some dinner (suppose he felt obligated?), it was getting dark and I think the buck knew I was there so he was real cautious. All he would give me was a straight on shot and he was still in the woods under mild cover. It was the last day of bow season before the gun opener, so I decided to take the shot. You guessed it, big miss! :barf: I hit that branch that only the arrow can see. Crash boom bang, away they went. I scoured for blood and found my arrow that revealed a clean miss.
This past season, I came face to face with that same buck while pistol hunting (I live in a pistol/shotgun zone) in the same spot where I missed him with my bow 2 years ago. I took the buck with one shot at a little over 50 yards with my Thompson Contender. He dressed out at 244 lbs and scored 155 green. Very happy to say the least...

JSF

[pdt1793db]

One day I was reading some on the Internet about how hard squirrel hunting was with a bow so I said hey that could be a good challenge so I went out to this conservation area near where I live. Got the bow out and walked a ways into the woods. I see squirrels running around here and there and start stalking them for the hell of it. For some odd reason I looked down at the ground and there was a copper head right at my feet. My heart was going like 100 miles an hour so luckly I had an arrow nocked I stepped back and put an arrow through its head. made sure it was dead then knocked it off the other arrow and went on my marry way but it was definetly intense. I did shoot several squirrels with the bow and now carry a gun every time I go just to have something a little more reliable than a bow if I need to defend myself.

[RCPractitioner]

I was spotlighting jackrabbits in west Texas, I shot one with a .22lr tracer round he dropped right away and as I'm heading over to him he appears to burst into flames! Turns out it was the grass behind him! Stomped it out real quick but it was pretty funny after the fire was out!

[1BadF350]

RCPractitioner, now that's funny right there I don't care who ya are!

[capnrik]

Dad and Capt. Jack and I were on the Waldrop Ranch in Val Verde County, right on the U.S./Mexico border. Jack and I were standing on the tailgate of the Jeepster Commando, with our rifles laying on a thin mattress secured to the roof. Antonio was driving and Dad was riding shotgun.

We were parallelling Sycamore Creek, when I saw movement near a clump of brush on the edge of the dry riverbed, some 350 yards away. I knocked on the jeep roof, and Antonio killed the motor in gear.

Squinting through the 4X Leupold, I could count five...no, six of 'em. With a flush of embarrassment, I pulled up the rifle when I realized I was pointing the six millimeter at a family, headed north.

Jack dismounted and trained his old binoculars on the band.
"Looks like three men and three women...one of the women might be a little girl."
"Are they any threat, Jack?" Dad asked.
"Naw. They're headed in country, looking for work. Every couple of years they break into the house, when we're not there. They'll walk right past the booze and the rifles, and take a blanket or canned goods. Never bother anything else."
Antonio watched the little group melt into the brush. His face was expressionless, and his eyes were flat and black.
"Su familia, posible?" I asked. He turned and smiled, and threw a brown arm around my 16 year old frame.
"Siempre, Ricardo. Siempre."

[Dogger]

I was bowhunting in Northern Virginia. There was fresh snow on the ground and the air was cool and crisp. I got tired of sitting in the tree stand and decided to still hunt a bit, and get a better look at the terrain. I was standing still on an old logging trail just enjoying the scenery, when I saw a red fox pop over the hill about 50 yards away. His nose was to the ground and he was looking for dinner. His fur was all puffed out to keep him warm. His coat was a beautiful red and the white on his tail made a remarkable contrast to the red. He was coming right at me, zigging and zagging with the folds in the ground. I just stood there, not moving a muscle, and watched in silence. He passed by me at about 10 yards, never noticed me, and then kept his pace until way beyond me and out of sight. The most beautiful fox I ever saw. I didn't get a deer, but it was a remarkable experience and a great hunt.

[drinks]

I don't know about you, but I have no use for Dubya or his dad, both carpetbaggers to me.
Dubya seems to meet the definitation of a Fascist , check your dictionary before flaming me.
I am a conservative conservationist, not a contradiction in terms, look them up .
It is very improbable that Felis Concolor has melanism, the genes are not supposedly there.
We have melanistic Fox and Gray squirrels here and some place up north has a large population of white Fox squirrels which are not albinos as they do not have pink eyes.
Don

[tintcutter]

Drinks, did someone on this thread see a politician while hunting?

[20cows]

Please don't shoot jack rabbits w/ incendiaries in dry pastures. (In W. Texas that's always).

We had a grass fire on our place that was restricted to 300 acres by the wind direction (Praise the Lord!). The grass was chest high and from a mile away, it looked like the world was on fire.