Strangest thing you came across while hunting

About two years ago, while squirrel hunting at my parents farm in Western Kentucky, I saw a huge black cat. Thing was bigger than our German Sheppard and had a very long tail. I was near the top of a hill and it was about 50 yards down below following a creek bed.

Armed with only my 10/22, I decided it was better to just freeze and watch. It moved from tree to tree and was awesome to watch.

About 20 years ago, my Mother saw one in the same woods when deer hunting (yeah, she's awesome like that).

I spoke with the Game Warden, and he said there's been alot of sightings, but none that he's seen. Told me it was also illegal to shoot them.

There are no records of melanistic cougars. Jaguarundis are occasionally spotted in Florida due to people turning them loose but they are quite a bit smaller than a German Shepherd.
Maybe an escaped black leopard. Most of the black panther sightings down here are Labrador retrievers.

You know how Urban Legends are... but the story is some dude released some exotic animals back in the 70's. I doubt there's any truth to those stories, but I did see some reports online of big black cats in these areas.

And you know that everything on the internet is real.

It's been some fifteen years or so since the last report in south Brewster County, but for over a decade we had fairly regular sightings of high-melanin cougars, with the usual "black panther" stories. Since I've personally known three of the observers, I don't doubt the stories.

I've seen a couple of the usual tan/brown cougars, but the oddest deal was one that was colored much like a Sealpoint Siamese on his mask, paws and tip of his tail.

A couple of years ago, I actually saw a rooster pheasant while pheasant hunting. It wouldn't fly, just run, but at least we saw one. It's been pretty slim pickins around here for pheasants for about 20 years.

Ironically, they end up taking residence in the field right behind my house which is off limits due to it being in town.

My youngest son and I had the opportunity to view a couple of the more wary critters around our homestead.

The first was when we were out deer hunting, we were together talking and all of a sudden a ruffed grouse came ripping through the tree tops afterburners full on and he had to because about 10 yards behind him was a goshawk. We could see them both for about 60 yards and the grouse made a couple impressive sharp angle cuts and the last we saw the goshawk was pulling up and going home hungry.

A few years latter we were walking down the dirt road heading home cold and hungry after spending the afternoon on stands when I happened to glance into my woodlot and about 40 yards from the house I saw a red fox laying in the leaves, I thought the fox was dead so I grabbed my son's arm pointed and yell fox trying to startle the kid but to our surprise the fox pulled his head up out of his tail jumped up then bolted,

Content, are you sure it's not a spear point?

bubba15301--- very well could be but the spear points I have found are rounder and broad. A friend that knows more than me about such things says arrow head.

I just looked at the entire listing of S.C. arrowheads and mine is most like the Morrow Mountain and a bit like the Wateree. They are both found in overlapping areas so it might be a cross between the two.

Lots of cool stories here! Strangest thing I've come across is an old foundation to a house that was long gone. Guess I need to get in the woods some more

A few years ago, I took a young family friend on a youth turkey hunt here in NW Missouri. We heard deer snorting and since he had never heard one, I told him to watch and he might see it. In a few minutes a bobcat sprang out of the woods edge being chased by a doe who had her head down pawing and snorting at the thing. She chased it across the field we were hunting in. The boy didn't get a turkey but he saw something he'll never forget.

This isn't a hunting story but a pretty unusual find. In about 1964 ( I was about 10) my cousin and I went to find an old run down building we had seen on an earlier trip in the woods. We found it again, with plenty of daylight left, and went in to see if there were any "treasures". We found many wooden cases of .45acp, .30 carbine and .30 cal. ammo. The cases were too heavy to carry but we manged to break open one of the .45acp wooden boxes and we stuffed our pockets and ran home. When we got home we showed all our bullets to my father and uncle. They naturally wanted to know where we got them. We told them and they wanted us to take them to the building. We went back to the building and this time searched the whole building and found more ammo and boxes of explosives and literature. The literature was from the American Nazi Party. This was in northern Virgina and their HQ was about 3 miles away. My uncle knew who owned the property and the owner called the police. We watched the police remove everything but the explosives from the building. Military people from one of the nearby bases came and removed the explosives and wouldn't let us get close enough to watch. To this day I wish I could have gotten more bullets but my father and uncle weren't going to hear it. We took the bullets we had to school to show everyone. Boy, have times changed.

Not a hunting story - but we live in a very nice, peaceful, and very residential neighborhood. Not long after we moved here, I was going somewhere about dusk and right around the corner I saw four pheasants, two cocks and two hens, side-by-side in pairs, just walking down the sidewalk like citizens out for an evening stroll! Never seen anything like it before or since.

While walking thru some bush once, I stumbled across a number of bushes that someone had knit "stockings" onto. The "stockings were knit in a manner that each one must have been knit on the site. There must have been 3 dozen branches that had anywhere from about 12-36 inches of coverage.
Someone even more eccentric than myself must have spent days up in that coulee knitting nice little warm "socks" for trees.
I gps'ed the spot and named it "tree socks" on my favourites list. I still take my new hunting buddies by the spot just to see the looks on their faces.

^^Ok, THAT'S strange. Got pics of the "Tree Socks"?

Not really strange, more sad really. I was making my way down an old fire road on the mountain I hunt when I saw something dangling from the brush. Upon further inspection, I realized it was a balloon with a tag on it. The tag was a call for help to find a missing little girl from WVA. Looked her up when I got home and found out she still hadn't been found. Hope to never find anything like that ever again.

pretty mundane, but a rolled up NY state motorcycle dealer tag in the crook of a tree that I sat down in. It poked me on the rear I grabbed it, and turned it in to the police. It was an odd find 2 miles from a road, and a mile from a path that you could pass a truck in. Since it wasn't accompanied by A. bright patch of grass or B. a depression I picked it up and went on with my hunting. Being the Pine barrens if it were accompanied by A. or B. I would have put it back and walked on.

We used to get a bunch of devil worshipers round here. make shift alters, panache for sacrificing roosters and sheep and burning pentagrams of varying sizes every winter. When death metal trailed off in the mid 90's and they grew outta the phase it stopped

Not exactly a hunting trip, but a spring fishing trip (We were hunting for trout). My brother and I were heading into a remote trout pond in the north Maine woods. We were miles and miles out on old logging roads and came across a pile of dead cows. It looked like they been there a good part of the winter. I counted at least four different cows, one being a calf. It was kind of hard to tell how many there were because they were in a big heap and had some good decomposition going.

My guess is that a farmer hauled them out there after they fell to disease or something. Still, really strange thing to come across so far from civilization!

I was hunting for my golf ball (spent a lot time doing that when I was 'playing' golf) - anywho, I found it (I think it was mine) in a Canada Goose nest - neither she nor the gander were in the mood to let me get close enough to retrieve it.

Not hunting related but should be filed under "Weird Wildlife" - In high school one Sunday morning I heard a strage buzzing up in a tree in the front yard - I looked up and saw what was making the sound but couldn't figure what I was seeing until I climbed high enough until it was at arm's length. It was a rather large preying mantis that had caught a small, young hummigbird by the head. The preying mantis was hanging upside down - or out to one side of the small branch he was holding with his feet when the bird tried again and again to get away.

I thunked the bug in the head with my finger until it let go.

The strangest thing I've ever seen while hunting was a group of a dozen or so Coati while hunting in southern Arizona. They were walking with their tails straight up in the air like antennea.

Arrrrmy training, sir!

You said hunting right? I guess that includes people? . Fake hunting of course. I found some wild warthogs once.....
I was playing the part of the bogeyman as a member of a 4-man fire team at JRTC in beautiful Fort Polk, LA. We spent the night camped out on the backside of some ridge in the middle of nowhere, overlooking some stupid valley between 2 stupid ridges, totally secluded. We slept great until dawn the next morning when the A-10s began their strafing and bombing runs on the live-fire range that was apparently that valley. We were all camo'd up and hiding so I'm sure nobody expected us there, and I'm also sure we were technically inside the danger-close window, but man was that ever COOOOOOOL! The A-10s were coming in at about the same altitude as our ridge so we were at the pilot's level when he'd begin shooting that Gatling gun. Tremendously awesome to witness that. I believe that most people who get that close don't live to talk about it.

"Not a hunting story - but we live in a very nice, peaceful, and very residential neighborhood. Not long after we moved here, I was going somewhere about dusk and right around the corner I saw four pheasants, two cocks and two hens, side-by-side in pairs, just walking down the sidewalk like citizens out for an evening stroll! Never seen anything like it before or since."

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Being right along the Missouri River breaks, we get a lot of deer here in town (Pierre, SD). I've seen trophy bucks standing by my mailbox and in my cousin's backyard numerous times. However, the most humorous deer sighting I had came as I was driving home from work at 7 AM. I was on the "main drag" through town, and happened to glance at Taco Johns on my way by.....lo and behold, there was a doe standing right at the drive-thru window. I wonder what she ordered?

Extra lettuce?

I find the critters where I shoot hogs to be, uh, odd... Just a couple nights ago I shot a hog with a 30-06 and before the smoke cleared about 20-30 seconds later a small buck walks up about 25 yards from us with the "Sup?" look on his face. I kept the light on him as he moseyed along a drainage ditch and he could care less - he knows the regs.

I used to hunt deep down in south Texas just few hundred yards form the Rio Grande. The soil in that area was covered with sea shells. No buildings around or any form of construction. We were also hundreds of mile from the sea. This area used to be sea bed.