Strange or Unexplained

[Gen273]

[Trumpkin the Dwarf]

dang. You guys are really making me feel like I should try and join the Navy Seals so I can be better prepared to harvest Bigfoot when I finally meet him!

[BDann]

OK, this didn't happen in the woods, but here it goes.

I was doing some wade fishing down in Galveston bay several years ago, pretty close to the causeway that connects the mainland to Galveston Island. I had caught a few fish, nothing too exciting, and started moving out a bit farther towards an area where I normally do pretty well.

The outgoing tide was moving along at a pretty good clip, and schools of baitfish were being funneled through the arches of this bridge.  Specs were chasing the bait like crazy, so I was looking for fish to cast to.  I heard a splash behind me, under the bridge, so I turned to fire a cast to it.  After I let the cast go, I noticed something in the water near the spot where my lure landed.  It was barely submerged, and was kind of bobbing in the current.  

This spot has lots of concrete debris on the bottom, and is pretty treacherous wading.  You really have to be careful not to cut yourself or get your foot stuck in a crack.  Anyway, I keep casting under the bridge, watching whatever this thing is.  It's just bobbing in the current.  

Meanwhile, I've snagged on a rock pretty close to the object, so I thought I'd wade over and check it out.  As I waded closer, I've come to the realization that it is a booted foot, and it's just stuck there.  I figured that I'd better check it out, even though I had visions of a crab covered body, stuck in the rocks.

I must admit, that it took me a while to screw up the guts to go check it out.  When I got close enough, I poked it with the end of my rod, and it felt pretty solid.  I really started to freak out at this point.  It looked like a leg, in waders, sticking up from the rocks.

The current had dropped some more, and I now had a pretty good view of it.  Carefully inching closer, I was now close enough to grab the foot.  My heart was pounding like crazy while I reached down and gave the foot a tug, trying to free it up.  

Much to my relief it turned out to be a discarded pair of chest waders!  So I did what any responsible person would do, I let them drift on, hoping that someone else would have the opportunity to feel as stupid as I did!

Funny thing, this happened just a few weeks after another fishing trip during which I casted for about 20 minutes at a piece of tin that I had mistaken for a redfish tail.  Maybe I should have my eyes checked.....

[danderson]

I've only told my girlfriend about this before.

Up in the berks where i hunt most of the fall, theres a huge patch of woods i've grown to know like the back of my hand. there are 2 graves from the 1700's and 1800s in an apple orchard. Whenever i hunt this particular patch and begin to zone out and get in touch with the place, i hear a drumming sound every few minutes. If i walk into a lower field where i turkey hunt, i never hear it. It doesn't freak me out but i get a lot of feelings and "mojo" when i'm hunting this spot like i know what the animals movements are going to be    

[TxAg]

Bump

[shankspony]

Ive just spent the evening reading these stories. Great!
I dont quite have any like many of those but Ill tell a little one of my own.

The land around my farm has many, many caves and holes. often when hunting I will find a new one and I always have to check them out. One day a mate and I are hunting pigs and our dogs lead us up onto a high rock ridge in thick rain forest type country.  The only way we can follow the dogs is down a steep rock bluff which, it turns out is nearly too hard, but we get there in the end.
Towards the end of the drop I pass a large rock and notice a hidden cave behind it. I stop and go to explore. There is a 5 foot drop into the cave and in the dim light I see a large bone lying on the cave floor. I have always wanted to find Moa bones,( A long extinct bird, think Ostrich on steroids that grew up around 12 feet tall and weighed up to 500lb.
Ha! I think. I drop down and grab the bone and hand it up to my mate outside to inspect. In the dark I can see the vague color of more bones so I ask my mate to pass me his lighter and go to inspect.
As I follow the bones I catch a sight to my left and flick around to come face to face with a human skull perched on a ledge. Besides it are the stacked remains of the rest of the skeleton.
Oh S---! I say and tell my mate to pass the bone back quick and I put it back where I found it and climb out of the cave.
Im not superstitious but for the next few hours everytime i notice my hand that picked up the bone its wiping itself on my clothes like its dirty.

[cahaba]

A couple of years ago I belonged to a hunting club. The first day of turkey hunting season I go to the sign in shack and see a post on the board that says "Warning Black panther seen near plot 21". That area is a favorite place of mine to hunt turkeys and it was where I planned to go that morning. I didn't believe in "black panthers" so I headed out to the area. It's a long walk in there on an old logging road. It was pitch dark and when I get close to plot 21 I smell something. It smelled just like the cats in a zoo smells. It freaked me out and I was looking around in the dark scanning the area especially behind me. All I have is a small flashlight and can't see very far with it.I can smell this odor for about 100 yards and then it subsides. The hair is standing up on my neck. The woods were eerily quiet.I walk on another 1/2 mile and I smell it again. Now I'm thinking this cat or whatever is stalking me. I walk with a slight limp and as we all know that is a key predators look for. Finally after walking another 1/2 mile I don't smell it any more and it gets daylight. I hunted the area several more times that season and never smelled it again. I have smelled skunks and such in the woods and the smell was nothing like them.

[DaveT1963]

I was elk hunting in New Mexico in the wilderness unit near Silver City.  Must have been the late 80s?  Anyways, there was a severe drought that summer and the bears were on the move.  On my way to my remote hunting spot, I stopped to talk to a local taxidermist friend of mine.  She warned me that the bears were breaking into cabins, cars and trailers all over the place looking for food.  She warned me to be extremely careful as they had lost all fear of humans on their search for foods.

Now the way I hunt is to go very light and cover a lot of ground.  I had planned on a 5 day trip.  I use a tarp and sleeping bag only and often just throw the tarp on the ground, sleep on one half of it and then cover up with the other half in case of snow or rain.  I usually just camp at the first flat spot I find as the sun starts to go down.

Well on this particular night, I found myself near a nice little clearing with water as the sun set.  I grabbed a quick granola bar and filled with water.   There was no moon that evening and it became dark, real dark pretty quick.   I laid down and sleep came pretty quick as I had covered a lot of miles that day.   As I drifted off to sleep I had many thoughts about all the bears I had seen and saw sign of.  

Sometime around midnight, as I was deep asleep, I became conscious of something taking a deep breath and then exhaling loudly a few inches from my face.  Now, I am not one that easily scares but I swear this was the closest I have ever come to crapping in the old pants.  I must have looked like Fred Flintstone as I leaped straight up in the air with feet churning before I ever hit the ground.

As full consciousness finally came upon me, and I had relieved my bladder which had become suddenly full, I had time to “process” what had just happened to me.  After some fumbling and finding my small flashlight I was able to discern what it was that had just literally breathed on my face.  Seems an errant moo moo cow had been forgotten or over looked.

I am not sure which of us was the most startled but I felt every hair on the back of my neck standing tall.  Sleep failed me the rest of that evening and it took me a couple days to regain my nightly composure.

Guess that has to rank as my all-time favorite weird hunting experience

[Gen273]

Glad to see this up again.  

[riverrat 2]

WOW what a cool old thread. Vintage. Up in Michigans Upper Peninsula,the woods are big and thick. Very,very brushy and swampy. My good friend Rob and my son-in-law Joshee were hunting deer there a couple years back. Rob had told me before that in the restaurants and bars up there you will find missing persons flyers stapled/pinned up for hunters that didn't  make it out of the brush. Joshee was in stand hunting. It was early evening. He heard footsteps,and turned to look. Saw a guy walking,with a blank facial expression,and had his shirt off just walking aimless. Josh said "hey!" the guy kept walking. He yells out "HEY!!" the guy walks out of sight,and sound. Josh got out of tree,went to camp,then town and reported it. Never heard anymore about it. But he told me "that guy was totally absent" "Just completely lost"  rat'

[Thumper Dunker]

This is great stuff.

[JMG]

Great thread!!
 Several years back, while hunting my lease in Kent County, Maryland with a good friend. We had 2 ten pointers that we named the "Twins". We hunted hunted those 2 bucks all year with only the occasional glimpse of one of them at a time. We only seen them together twice, once in velvet and the other time in early October. My friend was the only one out of the two of us to have ever came close to making a shot on one of them but poor light stopped him. We taken several nice deer off the property but the "Twins" always seem to be one step ahead of us at all times. It was rare to see them during the day but we knew they was there because of all the sign they have left, tracks,rubs and scrapes mainly. Second to the last day in the evening, I seen both of them together behind an old drying barn on the property that was rarely used anymore. The back of the barn was completely over grown with weeds and phragmites  grass. So I came up with the idea of hunting from the loft the next day. Next morning bright and early I made my way across the field to the old drying barn with bow in hand, making sure to swing wide to not to disturb any deer. When I finally made it to the old barn I squeezed through the doors to only hear the scuffling sound. As I swung my flashlight towards the noise, there starring at me in the darkness was the "Twins" standing right in the middle of the old drying barn!! They made their way out the semi open in the rear of the barn only to never be seen again by me or anybody else on our lease! After that morning hunt, I climb down from the loft of the old barn and noticed that the Twins was bedding in that old barn for some time!! And by the looks of it, they was rubbing their antlers on a old support beam in the barn as well as made a scrape just outside the rear door!! Here is the punch line, when discussing with the farmer about what I have found that morning he said "Oh, you didn't know they was in there"?? I could have told you that son. I have ran them out of there several times!!  

[paradocs]

Back in the 70's, my parents owned a "farm" deep in the marshes of the Eastern Shore of MD....great waterfowl and deer hunting; crabbing and fishing during the summer.  Old house on the property; two graveyards within 50 yards or so of the house.  The markers were still readable...mostly early-mid 1800's.  Adults, children; probably 2 dozen in all. At least 3 or 4 listed "killed by savages" on the stones...not sure who the native population was at that time.  I took a buddy down to bowhunt one weekend; told him about the history of the place on the 2 hour drive down; the graveyards with their notations, and also about the old hermit who had lived in a second house on the property back in the 1940's who had fallen ill, and did himself in by putting an oil lamp behind his head, and then blowing his head off with a shotgun, burning the house down around him.  We arrived at dusk, fixed some dinner and goofed off for awhile, then went to bed.  Sometime during the night, my friend awoke suddenly due to a crushing sensation on his chest, and the sound of whispering in a language he couldn't distinguish...loud whispering, to hear him tell it.  Finally worked up the nerve to call out to me in the next room.  I got up, hit the lights......nothing.  Guy was seriously shook up; didn't sleep the rest of the night. Me?  I slept like a baby.  Power of suggestion?  Yeah, maybe.....but another friend had spent two nights down there several years prior, and woke up screaming from nightmares so horrific that he only spoke about them on one occasion....thing is, he didn't know about the existence of the graveyards, and I hadn't bothered to "prime his pump" with the history of the place.  He wouldn't go back.

[KSdan]

A friend from out of state came here to hunt with me in KS.  In a 5 day period we had four different encounters with a 170"+ Non-typ buck I was after.  Each encounter was a different first time sit as much as 1/2 mile apart.  We had him dialed in.  My friend finally had a shot. . . It turned out terrible as the shot was deflected by a small twig- it was a high back hit with an expandable head.  The arrow had just a couple of inches of penetration as the buck wheeled off in sight for a 75 yard run before vanishing in the timber.  The arrow flapped on his back as he ran. We did due diligence looking for that deer for 4 hours with no blood.. . .  nothing.  NOW THE BIZARRE TWIST:  My friend left a day later and I decided to go back and spend more time looking and studying what had occurred.  After another 2 hours of looking I went back to the stand site.  I studied the trails and the spot where the deer was standing when my friend took the shot.  I was stunned!  Not 15 feet from where the deer stood when he took the shot was the arrow laying there point down and shaft leaning against a tree.  It was almost as if someone had set it there.  Further- there was meat material around the expandable point but the head had never opened.  I immediately called my friend (who by-the-way has decades of serious accomplished hunting in his resume).  I asked him again, "Did you see your arrow in that deer?"  He explained again how he watched it and exactly where it went with the arrow flapping on its back.  He swears what he saw unfold. . .   To this day we are dumbfounded.  How did that arrow end up 15-20 feet from where he shot the deer, leaning against a tree? Mystery??

[Huntingnut]

Glad this thread was resurrected. I hadn't seen it before and have enjoyed reading through all the stories. It got me thinking trying to recall any stories I might add. I came up with four, three of which are completely natural, but hair raising none the less. I hate typing so I'll post each individually as I have time.

The first occurred several years ago. My dad, brother and I were hiking into an area. We had been walking for awhile when we came to a point in the trail that basically curved 180 degrees while gaining elevation. We had just rounded the curve when my dad said something to the effect of "whoa boys". Something about his voice got my attention and I stopped immediately and slowly turned back to look at my dad.

As I did I noticed we had just walked past a slight opening in the brush as we came around the curve. Sitting in that opening no more than 7 or 8 yards away was a bear. Not a huge bear, but at that moment it was plenty big enough. It was eating berries, but at the moment was looking at us.

 After what seemed an eternity, but  was probably seconds, it turned and disappeared in the brush.

The curve in the trail and the lay of the opening made it impossible to even see the opening until we had passed by it and looked back. I had walked by the bear with no more than 10-15 FEET between us. Not the scariest thing I've ever done, but not what I'd call fun either.

[flyne]

I have had a couple of weird experiences out hunting and in just day to day life hear in Australia The spookiest was dogging pigs up north me and a friend Aaron met up with a local ranger Dave that was allowing us to hunt a small patch of forest that wasn't to be hunted under normal circumstances but the pigs Had been causeing lots of damage to the native vegetation and needed to be thined so off we go to this small patch of scrub (3000 hectares) at about 2100 on a moon lit night We had 4 experienced dogs on board and 2 in training by midnight we had 7 pigs on board ready for the chiller when the dogs took off again this time the dogs wear onto something bigger and smarter and it was giving them hell Next thing I knew I had been put on my ass by 55kg of mastiff Cross high tailing it out of there followed by 3 other verry scared dogs now I was a bit shocked as iv never seen the main dogs back down from a pig before and my buddy I was with didnt know what was going on all he kept saying was we need to get out of hear it don't feel right and I agreed so we high tailed it back to the ute wear Dave had locked him self in it took us 10min to get him to let us into the ute and anouther 10 to get the 30/30 out of his hands we waited for the the last 2 dog's to come back (1 bully stag cross and a pit bull cross bullmastif both been on hundreds of pigs) after  10 min of dead silence and no sine of them I decided to call it a night and left a jacket on the track incase they came back in the morning and we headed home Dave wasn't doing verry well and was as white as a ghost and didn't say much he only told us once we wear back in town about something following us in to the bush 5 min after going after the dogs he said it looked like a 6ft tall spider monkey that was wearing a emu skin as a coat so the next day after running the pigs to the chiller me and Aaron went back looking for the lost dogs but Dave wouldn't have a bar of it and said we wear mad for going back we found the spot wear we had parked but my coat was gone so we got out loaded up a 12g with buck shot and a 45/70 I was s#!TING my self but the dogs wear like my kids and so we went looking what we found after about 5km or searching was one of the creepyest experience of my life we came into a small clearing with 3 lean to's about 1ft off the ground around it with beds made of leaves in them about 7ft long and no sine of a fire with no modern metearials other then one shard of glass sitting in a tree  we only found 1 foot print and it was longer then my  boot by a couple of inches (size 14 boot) and narrow and apered to only have 4 toes well I looked at Aaron at the same time he looked at me and we both turned and high tailed it back to the ute on arivel at the ute we wear relived to find both dogs alive and well but cowering under the ute on the ute and my jacket sitting on the bonnet we jumped in and never returned we told dave what we had found and he told us that he had been talking to his boss at forestry and said there had been reports of simular ocorences out there and it was just hippys and drug growers but that dosnt explain the dogs freaking out or what dave seen
Il put the others up later
Jim

[TxAg]

^^^ creepy

[Cavscout9753]

Dang Flyne... Some of these stories are creepy as heck, but honestly, (and for no specific reason) I'm not sure anyone could get me to go wandering around in the Australian bush at night under any circumstances.

[mountain lion]

i believe I was a freshman in high school, I planned on going hunting the next morning as it was suppose to be a hard frost and it was at the end of october so I was pretty pumped! Why I got to my hunting spot, got all my stuff ready, grabbed my bow and I was off to my stand. I had about a 300 yard walk through what was beans at the time and my stand was 40 yards inside the timer positioned on a ridge, great spot!!! When I started in the timber I thought I heard something else walking with me, so I stopped to listen and nothing. I blew it off, took off walking again and I heard it again so when I stopped again to listen, about fifteen yards away I heard two more steps and then quiet. Ok so now my imagination is starting to run a little wild right now, I wasnt very far from the stand now so I started to walk at a faster pace and I could hear it walking behind me, I'm starting to freak out now cause all I can think of is werewolves and mountain lions and such. The bad thing about this is that my stand was a climber, so I couldn't just hurry up the tree. When I got to my stand I didn't even tie my bow on my pull up rope. I just jumped in the stand and if there was a record for climbing a tree let me tell ya I would have beat it!! When I got to what I felt was high enough to let me feel out of danger I grabbed my flashlight and shined around and never seen anything. I don't know what it was, whether it be a deer, coon, coyote or what but it scared the crap out of me! So from that day on I always carry a sheath knife in my side, make me feel a little more safe!

[longbow fanatic 1]

Here is my strangest tale. While slipping quietly through the woods toward my treestand, I encountered a rafter of turkeys. Slowly, I nocked an arrow. When I had a clear shot, I loosed the arrow. I heard a loud crack and the gobbler, along with all the other birds, ran, flew and skedaddled! When I walked up to the location where the gobbler was standing, my arrow was laying on the ground, clean as a whistle. The strangest part was that the arrow was laying 180 degrees and on top of the soil. It wasn't even stuck in the ground and the broadhead portion was facing me. In other words, the arrow appeared to have tumbled. I've racked my brain for years over how this could have happened. My only conclusion was that as the turkey launched itself, it may have tipped/struck the shaft of the passing arrow, causing it to tumble.