Surprising and funny things that happened while hunting

[Savage30L]

No, the universe obviously hates your truck.

I didn't think about that....it has 176,000 miles on it, I guess it's time for another. I've gotten 20, almost 21 good years out of it.

 

[22250Rem]

Back in November of 2017 I was hunting from a tall ladder stand that I had set up in my friend's woods. Was up in it before first light, and just after it got light enough to see around me, I saw a couple of raccoons ambling through the woods in my direction. They got to a big tree behind me and began climbing it until they were just a bit higher than the ladder stand, (16 or 18 ft. IIRC), then vanished into where the main trunk split into smaller sections. I figured that's where they sleep all day and forgot about it until about an hour later when I glanced over my shoulder and saw this. . They were both staring at me, and probably wondering "what the heck is that?" Managed to slowly get my little shirt pocket digital camera out and get this shot without spooking them. They stared at me a couple more minutes before deciding that I wasn't a threat and went back to their nap. It was about the only wildlife activity I saw on that gray, cold November day, and I was up there all day. No deer, but a nice memory of something that most people never experience.

 

[Savage30L]

This didn't happen actually while hunting, nor did it happen to me (fortunately!), but it's relevant enough for me to post here.

Back nearly 20 years ago, I was a regular poster on a waterfowl hunting board. Another member posted a new thread, desperately seeking advice on how to remove dye from his hunting dog.

He had a yellow lab. He had a camo vest for the lab, but the portions of the dog not covered by the vest, to his eye, stood out like a sore thumb in the blind. So, he had the bright idea of camo-ing his dog. He bought several appropriate colors of RIT dye (olive, brown, black), put the vest on the dog, and camoed the parts of the dog that stuck out. Then, his wife came home, took one look at the dog, and hit the ceiling. She threatened the man with a fate worse than death if he did not un-camo the dog ASAP. Hence his plea for help.

The way he wrote the post made it even funnier than it sounds here...he seemed like such a clueless individual. I laughed so hard my ribs and stomach muscles hurt.....and, apparently, so did everyone else who read that thread. It stayed active for years as new members discovered it and wouldn't let the hapless fellow live it down.....He had already put the dog in a kiddie pool and scrubbed it with Oxy-Clean (over the vigorous objections of the dog), with no luck....

 

[Hugger-4641]

This didn't happen actually while hunting, nor did it happen to me (fortunately!), but it's relevant enough for me to post here.

Back nearly 20 years ago, I was a regular poster on a waterfowl hunting board. Another member posted a new thread, desperately seeking advice on how to remove dye from his hunting dog.

He had a yellow lab. He had a camo vest for the lab, but the portions of the dog not covered by the vest, to his eye, stood out like a sore thumb in the blind. So, he had the bright idea of camo-ing his dog. He bought several appropriate colors of RIT dye (olive, brown, black), put the vest on the dog, and camoed the parts of the dog that stuck out. Then, his wife came home, took one look at the dog, and hit the ceiling. She threatened the man with a fate worse than death if he did not un-camo the dog ASAP. Hence his plea for help.

The way he wrote the post made it even funnier than it sounds here...he seemed like such a clueless individual. I laughed so hard my ribs and stomach muscles hurt.....and, apparently, so did everyone else who read that thread. It stayed active for years as new members discovered it and wouldn't let the hapless fellow live it down.....He had already put the dog in a kiddie pool and scrubbed it with Oxy-Clean (over the vigorous objections of the dog), with no luck....

Can you get a picture of that dog??

 

[Savage30L]

Can you get a picture of that dog??

Many of us urged the O.P. to post a picture, but he refused sheepishly. As far as I know no picture exists.

Edit: I did, however, manage to find the original thread....and (I'd forgotten) that he did take polaroids of the dog....but never shared them with us.

So here's a link:

How to remove hair dye from your dog

 

[Laphroaig]

Back in the day I used to deer hunt with my dad and a couple of guys that I worked with. We hunted opening day (always a Monday back then) and every Saturday during the season. One year, I shot a buck on opening day with the right antler broken off. Oh well, like they say: "horns make thin soup".

I went along the following Saturday to push for the other guys. I was busting my way through a thicket and stopped to rest. It was so thick that I couldn't stand fully erect so was kind of bent over. As I was catching my breath, I saw a tip of a horn sticking up through the leaves. I picked it up, and it was the broken horn from my buck! Talk about a needle in a haystack!

ETA: I remembered where I put that rack. I tried to glue it on many times, but it always fell off. The year was 1983 BTW.

 

[Savage30L]

Note to Retired USNChief: the fellow in question had an important job in quality control, building nuclear-capable USN submarines.....

 

[Savage30L]

Back in the day I used to deer hunt with my dad and a couple of guys that I worked with. We hunted opening day and every Saturday during the season. One year, I shot a buck on opening day with the right antler broken off. Oh well, like they say: "horns make thin soup".

I went along the following Saturday to push for the other guys. I was busting my way through a thicket and stopped to rest. It was so thick that I couldn't stand fully erect so was kind of bent over. As I was catching my breath, I saw a tip of a horn sticking up through the leaves. I picked it up, and it was the broken horn from my buck! Talk about a needle in a haystack!

Here's another "needle in a haystack" (from fishing, not hunting): back in 97, I was fishing 25 miles offshore, out of Winyah Bay, SC, with my good friend and saltwater fishing mentor, Dr. Eric Heiden. We saw something floating in the water, and as it drifted closer to us, he recognized it as his wood-handled gaff, that someone had accidentally dropped overboard, a week before!!

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Note to Retired USNChief: the fellow in question had an important job in quality control, building nuclear-capable USN submarines.....

Oh, WHY does that not surprise me!

 

[red rick]

I was deer hunting during muzzleloader season . I climbed a tree in my climbing stand . It wasn’t long and heard all this noise coming towards me . I saw 2 does running and a buck chasing . The does split off and ran by me the buck still chasing one of them . She tuned and ran back by me and stopped about 25 yards from me . Then the buck got on her and bred her . I had the scope on him , but didn’t pull the trigger during the act . I figured the bullet would pass through and kill the doe also . After he finished she and the other dow ran back off the same direction that they came from . It took the buck a few minutes to get himself back together again . I had plenty of opportunities to shoot him then , but I was looking for a nicer buck , so I let him go .

 

[usaral63]

Old Dixie's been gone now 40 years.......hard for me to believe. She was a purebred Bluetic coon hound......heavy dog with feet bigger than a fat biscuit, had a voice that absolutely boomed except when she was running, then it sounded like a faraway train. First wife bought her and her mother for me from a fellow from Tennessee that'd migrated to Florida with little money and too much family. He had no time to hunt and thus I wound up with the dogs. Now Dixie was supposedly a 'coon' hound, in reality she was an 'any critter' hound that was more fun to hunt than nearly any other I've owned, and that''s a bunch. She'd run a coon in a heartbeatl but when she heard me thrashing thu the bushes she'd usually leave it and find something else......cold nosed and a born trail hound that would work a track all day......wet/dry/cold or steaming hot.....mattered not to her.......when you heard her booming voice you knew it was for real.....usually if you stuck her in a pack of deer dogs, she'd run deer, bay up a piney woods rooter in a heartbeat and I don't know how many stiches she had from those pigs.

One real slow December near seasons end I turned her out alone to work out a big deer track on our lease......she was probably on it the better part of an hour when a really senior member stopped by to shoot the breeze.....now that old man was well into his 80 's, but pretty spry. Dix started warming up and then just kinda turned off..........Old man and I were still together when he looked out past a cattle fence into some tall grass.........said there's your dog....she was sort of trotting toward us, head up, tail raised, looked like she had something in her mouth but the grass was so tall you really couldn't tell........when she made it to the fence she stuck her head thru and she'd caught a juvenile armadillo........maybe the size of a half grown rabbit........tickeled the old man so bad he sat straight down in that sandy road and declared in all his day's he'd never seen a Bluetic hound retrieve a live armadillo..............in her defense she was nearly 15 at that time and was missing most of her teeth.......................I never did live that one down!
When I grabbed her collar she dropped that half shelled possum and it promptly ran off.................I believe the old man pee'd his pants at that !

 

[Wildfan99]

A few years back I was sitting behind some camo fabric I was using for turkey hunting. I had a pair of hummingbirds start to fly around the blind. They ended up perching on the top edge of the material for a couple minutes to preen themselves.

I was walking down a minimum maintenance road into my deer stand while it was still dark.
There was a doe sleeping right in the middle of the road facing away from me.
I walked right up on her and stood over her for about 10 seconds before she woke up and took off.

About 30 minutes later I was in my stand and saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. All of the sudden there was an owl coming in on me with its talons out trying to land in the tree.
It came in and flew off completely silent.

I'm pretty sure I screeched like a little girl, scared the crap out of me.

 

[Hugger-4641]

This wasn't really funny, but was surprising. Now you have to realize I was raised by my grandparents on a 500 acre farm and grandpa didn't give a rip about deer season. If we needed meat, he sent me out to get a deer or whatever. Well I was about 14 and one foggy moming just before daybreak, I took his old Winchester 30-30 and walked into a bottom field and sat for a while. Fog was about 4' off the ground at daylight but it was slowly lifting. After a few hrs I still hadn't seen anything, so about 9 or 10ish I start heading up out of the field. As I near the top the ridge where the trail turns into the woods, the fog is about 2' off the ground. About 50yds away where this dirt lane enters the woods, a 6pt buck has his head down eating Honeysuckle in the fence row. I pulled the hammer back and could have dropped him right there but he started to raise his head so I froze. If you've ever watched deer, they usually wag thier tail just as they are about to raise thier head. So I decided to see how close I could get and start creeping towards him. Every time the tail moves I freeze. So I get within about 30yds and the fog has now lifted and he spots me. I am frozen with a good cheek weld, hammer back, finger on the trigger with a bead dead on him, and he starts heading towards me. He gets a few feet away from the end of my gun and just stands there moving his head slightly and flipping his ears back and forth. He gets so close I could have taken one step and hit him in the nose with the muzzle. We stood there like that for what seemed like an eternity and my arms were about to fall off. I just couldn't pull the trigger. Something was just wrong about shooting him between the eyes at that distance, there was no sport in it. He finally lost interest and walked off across the field as I watched. Wish I had it on video.

 

[Wolfshead]

This wasn't really funny, but was surprising. Now you have to realize I was raised by my grandparents on a 500 acre farm and grandpa didn't give a rip about deer season. If we needed meat, he sent me out to get a deer or whatever. Well I was about 14 and one foggy moming just before daybreak, I took his old Winchester 30-30 and walked into a bottom field and sat for a while. Fog was about 4' off the ground at daylight but it was slowly lifting. After a few hrs I still hadn't seen anything, so about 9 or 10ish I start heading up out of the field. As I near the top the ridge where the trail turns into the woods, the fog is about 2' off the ground. About 50yds away where this dirt lane enters the woods, a 6pt buck has his head down eating Honeysuckle in the fence row. I pulled the hammer back and could have dropped him right there but he started to raise his head so I froze. If you've ever watched deer, they usually wag thier tail just as they are about to raise thier head. So I decided to see how close I could get and start creeping towards him. Every time the tail moves I freeze. So I get within about 30yds and the fog has now lifted and he spots me. I am frozen with a good cheek weld, hammer back, finger on the trigger with a bead dead on him, and he starts heading towards me. He gets a few feet away from the end of my gun and just stands there moving his head slightly and flipping his ears back and forth. He gets so close I could have taken one step and hit him in the nose with the muzzle. We stood there like that for what seemed like an eternity and my arms were about to fall off. I just couldn't pull the trigger. Something was just wrong about shooting him between the eyes at that distance, there was no sport in it. He finally lost interest and walked off across the field as I watched. Wish I had it on video.

Great story!
I had a similar experience one year, but the six didn’t come as close as your deer did.
He came to about twenty yards, and we just stared at each other for a few minutes until he got bored and wandered off.
that was opening day and I let him pass. I didnt end up getting a deer that year, and thought about that moment, but had I to do it all over again I would probably still let him walk.

 

[Patocazador]

I have a friend who told me this story. I won't vouch for its veracity.

He was hunting on some undeveloped lots across the street from his house where he had seen deer tracks. In order that he not "spook" his neighbors he had camo clothes stashed in the bushes of the lots. He hunted with a recurve bow and after donning his camo in the bushes he heard movement coming towards him so he backed further into the bushes. He saw a doe real close through the shrubs and drew. She stopped right at the edge in front of him about 1 to 2 feet from the tip of his broadhead. He was afraid to release because he figured the arrow wouldn't have enough space nor energy to leave the bow when he released and penetrate the deer without getting caught up in the bow. He couldn't hold his draw any longer and let up thereby spooking the deer.

He hunted those lots before and after work for a couple of weeks and never saw another deer.

 

[burrhead]

My niece spent many hours of her childhood in deer blinds with her dad. She is now a 35 year old women with two children. Anyway, when she turned 13 it was decided it was time for her to get her first deer. She, her dad and I were in a blind and along came a fat doe about 60/70 yard away. She made a perfect heart shot with a 270 and the bullet went through the doe and spined another doe about 30 yards behind the first one. None of us had seen the second deer until it went down. So her first deer was two.

She’s taken a lot of game since then but this story still gets told.