I've always been the type to get to my stand early enough that I can sit in the dark for 30 minutes prior to legal shooting time. I want the woods to be able to settle down after I pass through. Over the years this has led to a number of strange encounters. While I enjoy a walk in the woods using the moonlight, I can never tell when another hunter or poacher may be around so I use a flashlight most of the time, just so that everyone knows it's not a deer moving around "over there".
Encounter 1 - I used to drop off a county road by climbing over the guard rail of a bridge, and clamber down into a creek that ran due south for several hundred yards. I'd use that deep creek bed as a travel route to hide my signature. One morning I saw a set of eyes looking at me from maybe 150 yards away. It was staring right at me for a moment and I froze and waited for it to move on. It didn't.
It became evident that the eyes were now moving, bobbing and weaving as they made their way directly toward me down the creek in the dark. "Hmmm. What could this be?" I wondered. At around 50 yards it climbed out of the creek and ascended into the woods to my left. I heard it scurrying around a bit and used my flashlight to try to keep track of where it might be. The lip of the creek was a few feet above my head, and it was a wooded area. Soon enough, in the "Y" of a tree, a raccoon popped his head out to get a better angle on me. That thing went a long way just to see what the light was all about.
Encounter 2 - I had a whitetail doe do basically the same thing as the raccoon. This was on public land where the deer are heavily pressured. There in the dark, she got curious about the light and walked up to roughly 7 yards from me, both of us on level ground in the woods, nothing between us but thin air. Me staring at her, and her staring at my light. I couldn't believe it. I had places to be so I had to run her off so I could get to my stand.
Encounter 3 - This was a day with fog so thick that I almost called off my morning hunt. It was crazy thick fog over the entire region. I went anyway and hooked my climber to a tree. It wasn't the tree I wanted, but it was the one I could find in that fog. I hooked up and was sitting at the base of the tree, facing it, and I began climbing. Thick fog like that has a way of deadening sound and it was graveyard quiet out there. The noise of my stand was the ONLY thing you could hear, and it seemed intolerably loud given the comparative silence of the woods around me. After maybe my first or second rep on my way up the tree I heard something behind me. Something big, doe or buck {maybe a Bigfoot?) had walked directly up behind me in the dark and fog and stopped. Based on the sound, it had to have stopped within 10 yards of me. There we sat in the impenetrable dark and fog, each waiting for more stimuli we could use to identify the other. That never came. After what seemed an eternity, it walked off, and I resumed climbing. I saw nothing the rest of the day. My only thought was that my climber scraping the bark sounded exactly like a buck rubbing a tree, and something walked over to check it out. It must have been super close, or maybe it just walked into the area as I was getting setup.
What are your close encounters from out there?
Encounter 1 - I used to drop off a county road by climbing over the guard rail of a bridge, and clamber down into a creek that ran due south for several hundred yards. I'd use that deep creek bed as a travel route to hide my signature. One morning I saw a set of eyes looking at me from maybe 150 yards away. It was staring right at me for a moment and I froze and waited for it to move on. It didn't.
It became evident that the eyes were now moving, bobbing and weaving as they made their way directly toward me down the creek in the dark. "Hmmm. What could this be?" I wondered. At around 50 yards it climbed out of the creek and ascended into the woods to my left. I heard it scurrying around a bit and used my flashlight to try to keep track of where it might be. The lip of the creek was a few feet above my head, and it was a wooded area. Soon enough, in the "Y" of a tree, a raccoon popped his head out to get a better angle on me. That thing went a long way just to see what the light was all about.
Encounter 2 - I had a whitetail doe do basically the same thing as the raccoon. This was on public land where the deer are heavily pressured. There in the dark, she got curious about the light and walked up to roughly 7 yards from me, both of us on level ground in the woods, nothing between us but thin air. Me staring at her, and her staring at my light. I couldn't believe it. I had places to be so I had to run her off so I could get to my stand.
Encounter 3 - This was a day with fog so thick that I almost called off my morning hunt. It was crazy thick fog over the entire region. I went anyway and hooked my climber to a tree. It wasn't the tree I wanted, but it was the one I could find in that fog. I hooked up and was sitting at the base of the tree, facing it, and I began climbing. Thick fog like that has a way of deadening sound and it was graveyard quiet out there. The noise of my stand was the ONLY thing you could hear, and it seemed intolerably loud given the comparative silence of the woods around me. After maybe my first or second rep on my way up the tree I heard something behind me. Something big, doe or buck {maybe a Bigfoot?) had walked directly up behind me in the dark and fog and stopped. Based on the sound, it had to have stopped within 10 yards of me. There we sat in the impenetrable dark and fog, each waiting for more stimuli we could use to identify the other. That never came. After what seemed an eternity, it walked off, and I resumed climbing. I saw nothing the rest of the day. My only thought was that my climber scraping the bark sounded exactly like a buck rubbing a tree, and something walked over to check it out. It must have been super close, or maybe it just walked into the area as I was getting setup.
What are your close encounters from out there?
