Ever had a bullet go by your head?

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v8stang289

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I have now, and it's freaking scary.
Around 5 Saturday afternoon I was sitting in my stand in the woods about 16' off the ground. I wanted to try and record the hunt, so I was messing with my camera settings when I heard a ziiiip and BOOM! It was surreal, I could hear the bullet and the leaves/ limbs it was hitting. It was close enough that the camera captured the sound of the bullet, and the audio pickup on this camera is not very good. I got my stuff together and got down and went home. Best I can tell is that it was a guy that hunts an adjacent property that has a stand through the woods on the other side of a field about 500 yards away. I heard his 4 wheeler about 15 minutes prior as he headed to the stand. All i can figure is that he was on the ground at the base of his stand and a deer came out toward the middle of the field, which has a slightly higher elevation, and he shot at it and missed and the bullet had an upward trajectory. Either that or it was a Negligent Discharge or maybe a ricochet. Scary either way as it had to go through more than 200 yards of solid woods to get to me, but it did. I'm definitely going to have a word with this guy, and let him know what happened.

Just want to remind everyone:

Be very sure of your target and what is beyond it

Don't shoot at an animal on the crest of a hill.


Here is the video clip

[video]


Only thing odd to me, is I swear in real time I heard the ziiip before the boom, but the camera recorded the other way. May have just been my perception as my adrenaline was pumping.
 
Not by my head but like you I could hear it breaking limbs coming through the woods . It made me hit the ground and start yelling . I saw the big buck they were shooting at but I was laying on the ground . He was about 20 yards from me . He was one of the biggest bucks that I have seen up to now and this was 40 years ago . It was my own hunting party that was shooting at him and they new where I was at because I had just left them as we were all going to our stands . I was on the first stand they kept walking and jumped him up and he ran to me .

Last year I was rabbit hunting with some friends , 3 generations of hunters . The boy is named Hunter , he is 15 years old . We were sitting at the edge of a field , right before the woods . There is a little trail going into the woods . Hunter walked down the trail a little ways as he heard the dogs coming . The rest of us just sat at the 4 wheeler , 3 of us , his granddad , dad and myself . The rabbit came up that trail , ran past Hunter and was running strait for us . Hunter turned , with his gun on his shoulder , his dad started yelling , no Hunter , no Hunter , he shot . Lucky know one was hit , not even the rabbit .

His granddad teaches hunter safety , but didn't say anything to him . That upset me some .
 
i mean i have never had a bullet fly pass the side of my ears but i had lightening pass through me and i know that feel
 
I was sitting in an unmarked car at a red light when a guy pulled up beside me. He took a shot at me which shattered the back right passenger window with the bullet lodging in the door post directly above my head. I was hit by a few shards of glass but wasn't injured. He was hit with attempted capital murder of a police officer. :)

He didn't know me but suspected I was a law enforcement officer because I was driving a Crown Vic. He said he had always wanted to kill a cop. This was three or four years ago before killing cops became all the rage.
 
I was sitting in an unmarked car at a red light when a guy pulled up beside me. He took a shot at me which shattered the back right passenger window with the bullet lodging in the door post directly above my head. I was hit by a few shards of glass but wasn't injured. He was hit with attempted capital murder of a police officer. :)

He didn't know me but suspected I was a law enforcement officer because I was driving a Crown Vic. He said he had always wanted to kill a cop. This was three or four years ago before killing cops became all the rage.

hope he was arrested. geez!!!
 
Yes I have. Twice actually. Once was when I was walking into the woods one morning when I was 19 during rifle season. Had orange on and everything. But it was still pretty dark. Some jack hole with a lever gun decided to shoot at the sound. Luckily he was a horrible shot. Shot at me 3 times. Being young I didn't duck behind the nearest tree. I ran. That was stupid.

Second time was last year. Was scouting with a friend on some public land. We were walking out but still about 250 yards in the woods. There is a shooting range by there with a huge berm. Next thing we know we hear some "pops" and heard the whizzing sound through the tops of the trees. Then a small limb about 10 feet from my head shattered. We hit the deck. Ended up having to lay there and call 911. Waited for the sheriff to show up and have them stop the guys. Turns out they weren't shooting into the berm. The were shooting into the ground about 50 yards in front of the berm. Idiots. Anywho the sheriff had them stop and then called me on my cell and tell us it was ok to come out. I gave them a real good chewing for about 2 minutes until the sheriff told me he thought they got the point.
 
Yes I have, I had one hit a tree two feet away from me one day. That woke me up! I grew up in Western Pa in the woods and we raised Pheasants for the state for 15 years when I was a child. We raised them for 15 years. We belonged to the Pa Game Commission Co-op. So our 100 acres was open to public hunting. We had people shoot the side of our house, shoot our out buildings and basically not give our land any respect at all. The only reason we didn't close our land to hunting was because of all the good, respectable hunters that frequented our property. I was hunting pheasants with my father one day when one flew behind me and I got hit with shot in the back. It didn't go through my hunting jacket but it did sting and left welts. My father, well, I can't tell you what he said, but he got his point across to the hunter. It was an accident and I figured I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, I started watching for Pheasants out of one eye and watching for the other hunters with the other one. We ended up having to tell everyone we didn't want anyone hunting our ground any more. A lot of people respected that but some did anyways and without posting it, we couldn't and really didn't want to do anything about it.
When we sold the farm the new owner got tired of it real quick and did post the ground but the Amish moved in to the neighboring farm and those particular Amish didn't respect anyone's property lines. I feel for the new owner.

But I don't live there any more but I remember how it was when I lived there for my first 50 years and people respected other peoples property, so I still feel for the new owners.
 
I had a anti hunting girl shoot over my head about a half dozen times because I was scaring the deer. Not sure how close, but the whine will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Called the Sheriff's Dept. and she denied doing it. I had witnesses, but decided not to pursue it any further. She was just a kid and had likely figured out it was a bad idea.
 
1st time, 30 years ago in a club in Denver to see Johnny Lee Hooker and shooting started between a couple drug dealers, one of whom was behind me to my left. Fortunately for me, 2 or 3 rounds missed me, but hit their target. I got out of there on my belly and that night prompted me to get the heck out of Denver. It also prompted me to never be a defenseless victim. Armed shortly thereafter and ever since.

2nd time about 10 years later, out on BLM land with my wife looking for a new place to shoot. I thought I found a nice place, a bowl at the end of a jeep trail, and I was placing a target when that 'whizpop' came over a couple feet over my head into a log on the slope. Again, I hit the dirt, then started hollering Several shots were fired as I crawled my way back to the truck and my wife. They were still shooting when I got the truck out of there.

I try to live with gratitude.
 
Farm country deer drive when I was 15... I was posted on the corner of a small copse of trees with two more folks posted to my left and 5 drivers coming through some swamp toward us. There was about 100 yards of open ground between the swamp and the woods where I was. A doe came out of the swamp running directly at me. I was kneeling and watched one of the drivers raise his shotgun with it aimed right at me. I dropped face to the ground just before he let loose and heard three slugs buzz through the brush above me. He did not hunt with us again.

But... After his three shots, I got my nose back up out of the dirt just as the doe was about 20 yards in front of me. She veered to my right and I shot her as she ran past me 10 yards away. It was my first deer...
 
That one was going slower than the speed of sound like this one.



They make a lot more noise if they are still super sonic.
 
Not counting military, yes, while hunting in Texas Big Bend country. I topped out on a ridge and heard the supersonic crack beside my left ear....dropped to the ground. After I worked my way down, stopped in another camp where 'grandpa' was complaining
about his scope being off....pointed up where he shot. I demanded his rifle be taken away and he stay in camp! His kids obliged!
Dan
 
Not directly over my head, but through the trees maybe about 20 feet up. I was a kid, and was hanging around in the woods with my friends. We were on one side of a wooded ravine. On the other side of the ravine, the woods bordered an apple orchard. I'm figuring that somebody in the orchard took a shot at a deer standing at the treeline and missed. Either that or some jackass was just shooting into the woods for some reason. There was only a thin line of trees between the orchard and the ravine, so the bullet didn't have much in its way before it went over our heads on the far side of the ravine.

We responded pretty quickly, taking cover behind big trees and yelling as loud as we could, "Hey, there's people over here!" I have no idea if the shooter could hear us. Probably not. After a few minutes passed with no more shots, we hightailed it out of there.

Scary as hell.
 
One time I was working in a pretty dense section of trees in northern Virginia. It was hunting season, but I was in a cluster of houses with 1-2 acres a piece, so didn't figure I had anything to worry about. Heard the crack of a gun and then what sounded like a bunch of rocks hitting the trees about 20 feet away. Figured it was a shotgun with shot of some sort. No idea what they were shooting at though. I gave out a yell (it may or may not have sounded like a little girl) and didn't hear anything else. I finished up as quick as I could and got out.
Second time isn't as interesting a story, and I honestly don't know if it was near me or just the echos off the canyon walls that made it sound close.
 
Does an angry N Korean with a bolt action rifle about 200 yards away count, actually it seems to be a hunting scenario since he was hunting me! Fortunately a lot of obstacles on the DMZ and fairly dark night saved my dog and myself. I shoot a lot of ammo but remember those two shots most vividly. Funny but when the shots were fired i fell to the ground and protected my Shepard with my body....didn't even think to give bad guy a burst in return.
 
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The shot I felt but didn’t hear. Southern Tier of NYS. Hunter Daryll Philips was found leaning against a tree with a bullet hole in his chest. I was on the search party to find him after he did not return home. The tears of close friends are forever etched. He had been taken out by another hunter who left the scene. I don’t hunt the Southern Tier. Too many NYC cowboys.
 
I was held up twice in the 60's while driving a Chicago bus. Fortunately, however, they didn't shoot. I've been peppered more times than I can count on dove fields but only had two incidents where bullets almost hit me.

My brother and I were hunting in northern Wisc. on opening day of gun deer season. We were stalking through the woods when we decided to take a break. While we were sitting at the base of a tree, a bullet hit the tree above our heads. The sound of the shot and the bullet hitting were simultaneous. We started yelling (swearing) at the unseen imbecile(s) to stop the !#$! shooting.
We cautiously walked out to a field edge where we encountered a middle-aged man and his son sighting in their .30-30 rifles. They had placed a box on the edge of the plowed field and started shooting at it.

Their ears were burning when we left them. Hopefully, the kid took a hunter's safety course afterwards without his father to coach him.

I won't go into the other incident but had a .45 ACP go over my head as I was crawling away in the dark. (Halloween prank gone bad.)
 
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