Strangest thing you came across while hunting

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Geno

I've got a few.

A friend and I were duck hunting on a creek way back in the woods. We would normally go in and shoot wood ducks and mallards. I remember seeing wood ducks hit tree limbs on the way through the canopy. There were little pockets of water all around the creek with mature oaks lining those pockets. The ducks wanted in there bad enough to make a dive for those pockets every morning. It is something else to see a flight of woodies ducking and weaving through treetops. Anyway, this day, we are set up between the creek and a pocket. I remember looking up and seeing a drake woodie paddling up the creek. He was hugging the far bank and making good speed. Apparently, he crossed right in front of an otter, and the otter must have been hungry. All I remember seeing was a crazy splash, bloody water, and a few feathers. It happened about 10 yards from where we were.

I've seen Bald eagles come falling out of the heavens to try to intercept a duck in flight. We found out pretty quick that you can forget duck hunting if there is an eagle circling nearby.

I live in MO, I was thinking maybe a giant fox bat got loose? Stll dosent explain why it was grey tho. I'm not superstitious at all. I wanted to catch it, but a past experience with a small fruit bat that left me with having large slices in my fingers glued closed told me not to try. Large bats are comon in this area, I go cave exploring all the time and usually see bats averaging 1-2feet tall with the wing span of a large bird. They are usually never close to as big as the one I saw that night tho.

A few years ago my setter pointed a large cat at around 150 yards. The Florida Panther has supposedly been "extinct" in east central Georgia since my childhood.

Toml said:

A few years ago my setter pointed a large cat at around 150 yards. The Florida Panther has supposedly been "extinct" in east central Georgia since my childhood.

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They turned some sterilized Texas cougars loose in NE Florida about 10 years ago to see if the habitat could support an introduced panther population. It was in the Osceola N.F. just SW of the Okefenokee swamp.
They said that all were killed either by natural means or poaching. However, they don't always release the true story about their introductions. One or two could have made it north.

That's a possibility. ~ 190 miles as the crow flies with dense forests and refuges in between. Thanks for the info.

Dead tilapia in the river while duck hunting. Apparently there is a fish farm using a hot spring upstream from our favorite spot and the small ones sometimes escape and die in the near-freezing water of the river.

A very old dried out cowboy boot stuck in a very old dried out stirrup. I looked inside, no very old dried out foot.

My dad found two dead deer bucks once that had gotten their antlers locked and starved to death. They were nice ones too, very large and awesome racks for western Oklahoma whitetails. Those locked antlers were just a fixture at the house for as long as I can remember. I wish I'd taken them now, but my brothers and I had known them for so long they didn't seem special. They do now though.

I have a friend who was out scouting a new hunting area one afternoon. He stumbled across a clearing with a huge goose-neck trailer loaded with tanks and vats. He figures it was someones meth lab. He called the sheriffs department, who called the DEA and lord only knows who else. He also said that about three weeks later that area had a HUGE explosion, and that no one knew what was going on. He laughed at it, and figured something went wrong in the manufacturing process.

I have found a small abandoned still (it was extremely old) and a chevy truck from the late 40's in a ditch. The truck we figure was a local redneck being stupid and trying to drive to the hunting ground and got caught in a mud pit.

Probably 7 years ago we where hunting from friends cabin in Adirondack mountains NY and after few days seeing anything somebody remembered seeing a deer last year by a lone lake in the middle of nowhere. Shure we decided it should still be there and went to check.And after 3-4 hour walk thru the forest, jumping mountain streams, snowing rain pouring on our heads.... Exhausted and wet we came out of the woods and on the small grass field reaching our lake we see a full 24 box of old style...I can swear even the sunbeam shined right at the box....it was for a quite some time up there all rotten few cans were fallen on the ground...but man beer newer tasted so good...thank You Stranger for making our day, our way back was much easier...by the way we used some of it and left more than a half for others..

I was living on a small ranch in the Blach Hills of South Dakota when I was in college. It bordered national forest. My roommate and I decided to go coyote hunting one winter day. We had set up on opposite sides of a deep ravine and called for 20 minutes or so before signalling to meet it the bottom of the ravine. We met and were chatting about where to make our next stand. I glanced down and slightly behind my buddy and was mildly startled to see a sleeping coyote about 15 feet behind him at the base of a large ponderosa.

The critter was laying in the snow curled up with its tail over its face like a dog or cat will do when it's very cold. We stared at it for a bit before we realized it was dead. I kicked it an it was frozen solid. I rolled it over, revealing a stick protruding from its throat. The stick was about 1-1/2" in diameter and about 12" long. It was stained red and had entered beneath his right jawbone and could be felt beneath the skin on the neck behind his left ear.

The dog had clearly tried to sleep off his injury, obviously with no luck. I can't imagine how this took place, but I always picture a rabbit bracing the stick into the ground as the coyote pounced in as last ditch effort to elude him.

Well living in the pacific northwest things dont last as long being they rot or rust quicker, but Ive found a old 30s dodge pick up cab nothing else, a pink station wagon in some swamp bottoms, a old homestead with the lovely furniture of hand ties from the ceiling and a recliner.... yeah.... and a old cable crossing bridge that used to be the only connection from one side of this valley to the other.

An emu which is a big bird just a little smaller than an ostrich. It escaped from a nearby emu farm and two guys bailed out of that pickup running to recapture it. They got it.

I've found 3, yes 3 of the geo-caching boxes while hunting public land around Maryland.

And a coupe of years ago about 30 miles South of Annapolis a Emu got loose and was roaming the (once) countryside for a few days. A farmer apparently got it with a 12 gauge deer slug, so we now know the answer for "What caliber for....Emu"

Found these on scouting trip. This off a pretty gnarly mountain road and I have no idea how these got back there. I counted seven cars in all. Excuse my nephew acting like, well, my nephew.

You can't just post that without some explanation!

That's like the guy with the wooden leg telling you that he'll answer one question. You ask him how he lost his leg. He responds with "It was chewed off" and walks off.

It is hanging from a snare wire. Is that enough?

I wasn't hunting, but I was running up a local mountain and decided to leave the roadside and go on the trail at bout 2.5 miles up. The trail was marked "NO PARKING" at the entrance (since many people "park" on top of that mountain...) but I figured trail running was okay.

I kept going and I stumbled across garbage bags, maybe 30, full of only latex gloves and syringes.

I immediately felt endangered, and like someone was watching me. I took a look around the next corner and saw long chains connecting trees and roping an area off with a home made "NO TRESSPASSING" sign.

I immediately turned tail and ran back out.

About 20 miles south of Tupper Lake NY I found a small stream with very little water. The bottom was a vein about 15 feet long and 3 feet wide of quartz. Small chunks, about the size of small safety pins, of crinkled metal fragments about 1/8 inch in width and up to 1/2 inch long on the surface and inside of the quartz. Weirdest thing I ever found in the woods.

Another time my cousins husband and I were checking muskrat traps before sun up. We had been on the lake about a half hour when all of a sudden the sky was lit up in a green hue by a meteor. Nature can sure put on a show.

Another very cold day while beaver trapping, I came upon an inch of fresh ice on the lake. The sun was very bright and all of a sudden there were sounds like jets flying over the lake. No jets, but the sun was heating the clear ice to cracking hundreds of feet long.

I was out hunting one day and as is quite common with me I got lost. Pretty normal state of affairs for me. On this day however I stumbled on an old overgrown graveyard, no roads into it and very small maybe 25 graves. I sat down on one of the gravestones to eat a bit of lunch and when I got up I read the inscription on the stone. "As you are I was, as I am you will be" I got a little somber thinking about that. By the way I was never able to find that place again. FRJ

I wasn't hunting at the time, but one time while driving the sand roads in the Appalachicola National Forest south of Tallahassee I found a sinkhole pond. Maybe 100 feet across. Beautiful water. Nearby I found three or four old gravestones. All I remember is that one was dated 1823. No sign of any farmstead or cabin.

In my south pasture at Terlingua is a circle of foot-diameter rocks; maybe thirty feet across. If you stand in the center and look at the only gap in the ring, you're looking in the direction of the sunrise of the winter solstice. The state archaeologist, his archaeologist girlfriend and another archaeologist spent a half-hour arguing over historic vs. pre-historic. Damfino. However, stone-age artifacts are common in the area; some on the surface, others several feet below the surface.

Tracking deer last year I found this "arrow head".
I found many half this size but never one like this. Might have been used on S.C. Buffalo, Elk or Bear years ago, seems large for whitetail.

Interesting things in the great outdoors.

This is a great thread!

In June of 2010 I spent 19 days kayaking and rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. If you are an adventurous outdoorsman then I can't recommend it enough.
When we pulled into one of the riverside camp spots we found a coyote that was mortally injured but not dead. It had fallen off the approximately 100 foot cliff. As the only hunter in the party and the only one of the 16 people who had ever killed an animal with anything other than a car, I finished the poor guy off with a large rock. I dragged him downstream a ways and left him on a rock for the resident condors and ravens to dispose of.
I imagine it was like the old road runner cartoons, The road runner won.

I was with a couple of buddies walking in an old sand wash just south of Millville, NJ. On top of one of the bluffs we found what appeared to be a stone alter, fire ring and several what im assuming stone seats in a large circle around the fire ring. Close by we found a very decomposed dog (I think) hanging from a tree. I couldnt get out of there fast enough. In retrospect I should have reported it. Seeing as we shouldnt have been there either I never did. I have herd stories of so called devil worshipers in the general area. Im assuming that we had found one of the temples.
Also found a penny from 1794 and many foundations, chimneys etc.... made from stacked Jersey stone.