Unusual things you see when hunting

[Matt G]

Going off on a tangent for a second...

The last one is possibly the least likely, but I know what I saw. I was out with my dad and one of his cattle-raising partners on a place they had leased somewhere around Gonzales, Texas. I was in the back of the truck, and we were riding along a creek bed when I saw a black cat break out of the brush along the creek and run diagonally away from us. I yelled at my dad and he and his buddy saw it too. I'd never seen a cat like it, but dad identified it as a jaguarundi. They're strange looking critters, and supposedly the only place you can find them anymore in Texas is the very edge of the Rio Grande Valley. I'd love to see one again someday.

Jalexander, are you sure it wasn't a dark cougar, sometimes called a "panther"? Or was it that big? Sometimes they get coal black, here in TX. I know that we have jaguarundis here in the lower valley of TX, but Gonzales would be a tad north, wouldn't it? Also, I've not read of jaguarundi having such dark coats. [Well, wait a second, yes I have.] Was the nose pointed, like a weasel's? What was the size? Jaguarundis get to about 10 lbs, or big housecat, size.

 

[auschip]

Didn't see it while hunting, but I was at my in-laws place near Brazoria, TX and saw a "large cat". They had noticed that the barn cats were dissappearing, but thought it was hogs or coyotes, we were sitting in their living room when we see one of the few remaining barn cats running towards a large sycamore tree followed by a much larger cat.

I figure the larger cat to run about 30-40 lbs (he was 3-4 times the size of the 10 lb barn cat). They both went up the tree, and the small cat kept going up till the larger cat couldn't follow (branches wouldn't support him).

The large cat wasn't a bobcat, as he had a full tail and no ear tips, but I wouldn't call him a mountain lion as he was much to small (he didn't look like a young one either the legs were proportional to the body). I never did figure out what it was, I guess it could be a Jaurundi, but I wouldn't swear to it.

 

[kimbernut]

The Wonders of Nature

A spotted fawn(buck) right under my stand urinating on the tarsal glands of his hind knees and rubbing them together.Most hunters know that bucks do this but I had always assumed it was learned behavior not instinct.
A bobcat stalking and attacking a turkey decoy 50 feet away from me. Then I yelped litely and he began a stalk on me until I waved him off. I still get a chuckle when I remember the surprised look on his face when he realized this was not your normal turkey. He was on the decoy with both paws around the neck and off again and looking back kind of puzzled.

 

[Jalexander]

Jalexander, are you sure it wasn't a dark cougar, sometimes called a "panther"? Or was it that big? Sometimes they get coal black, here in TX. I know that we have jaguarundis here in the lower valley of TX, but Gonzales would be a tad north, wouldn't it? Also, I've not read of jaguarundi having such dark coats. [Well, wait a second, yes I have.] Was the nose pointed, like a weasel's? What was the size? Jaguarundis get to about 10 lbs, or big housecat, size.

Matt,

It wasn't big enough to be a cougar, and its legs were too short. In fact, one of the things that threw me at the time was that the legs were so short. The other was that the tail seemed so much heavier than a domesticated cat's tail. I'd say that this cat was on the heavier end of the twenty pound max that your website suggested. Not a big cat, though. I've never seen another one, before or since.

You might check these two websites for some good reading. The former's just Tech's Jaguarundi page, but the maps on the latter are very interesting. In fact, the picture of jaguarundi on the Tech page looks pretty much exactly like the one I saw.
http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/tmot1/feliyago.htm
http://www.bordercats.org/

James

 

[Battlespace]

When in HS several of us used to jack light rabbits on Saturday nights, selling them to a mink farm for about 2 bits each. Late one night we were hunting near the city dump and saw some red lights flashing irregularly in the distance. Curiosity got the best of us and we headed in the direction. We parked behind the crest of a hill and walked over to see what was going on. There was the Pontiac of one of the local jocks. As we watched the brake lights would flash on every few seconds. We sort of circled the car and pointed our flashlights inside and then turned them on. Inside was the star athlete and a cheer leader. Both dressed just like the day they came into this world. We left them fuming and ranting and as far as I know they have no idea who it was and that was nearly 35 years ago.

I guess growing up in the 60’s was pretty good.

 

[Art Eatman]

Battlespace, you could have been arrested for disturbing the piece.

Matt, back when I was involved in the Coastal Program with the Land Office in the 1970s, there were occasional reports of sightings of jaguarundis in the coastal-plains areas. These reports, widely spaced in time, have continued through the years. They're occaisionally spoken of in the TP&WD magazine...

Art

 

[grampster]

Pax listed another thread on the THR that may be alltime best. I concur. I went back and re-read it and re-enjoyed all the stories.....but I was also saddened because I read all the posts by Labgrade. Miss that guy.......

 

[auschip]

disturbing the piece

Missed that one the first time.

 

[Remington788]

I was deer hunting last weekend when I had a coyote about a hundred yards through the woods walking along a creek bottom. I figure I might be able to call him in with my rabbit call so I give it a try. After a bit of calling the coyote moves into the reeds and I never see him again. Then I look to my left and there is a bobcat about ten yards away trying to figure out how to eat a 200 lb rabbit. I guess he decided to find something smaller to eat cause he just turned around a went back the way he came.

By the way, bobcats are very rare in southern Illinois.

 

[Gewehr98]

As long as I live, I will never forget one cold November morning...

My dad and I trudged in the pre-dawn twilight to our usual deer stand in the Wisconsin woods, but something was very different. It had frozen hard enough that night to make things absolutely no fun. The marshes had frozen with a nice skin crust of ice, and the woods were exceptionally silent. Nothing was moving, neither the rabbits, nor the deer, nor the porcupines in the pine trees above us. It was too cold, closer to 0 degrees ambient, with the breezes bringing the wind chill down even lower. I had my thermos of coffee and my Seater Heater, along with my Electra-Sox, long thermals under my jeans, and several layers under my orange hooded sweatshirt.

You know the kind of cold that makes the hairs inside your nose crystallize with each breath you take? Yeah, that cold. So I sat on my Seater Heater cushion, back against the big old pine tree, with my knees tucked up towards my chest, and my rifle laying across my kneecaps, held in place with my left gloved hand, while my right hand was tucked into my left armpit to keep the trigger finger and bolt thumb warm. As daylight continued to break, I wondered if the deer would remain bedded down or get up and forage. While I was thinking about that and whether hunters ever froze alive out there in the Wisconsin woods, along came a flock of chickadees. Chickadees are friendly little birds, and rather sociable. Scratch that - they're a bit too sociable. Imagine a couple dozen little guys like the one in the picture below, vying for real estate on the barrel, scope, and stock of a deer rifle. If there wasn't room on the rifle, by gosh, there was more room on the arms and legs of that orange-covered fellow trying to sit still under the pine tree.

I could just imagine the fluttering explosion of birds that would've happened had I seen a deer at that very moment and moved my rifle into firing position. But there were no deer moving, and as the day would have it, the chickadees chose not to move for quite some time, either. Oh, they all had a lovely conversation, switched places on their newfound perch, and generally had a good old time. I was glad for them, at least somebody was enjoying the brisk morning. Eventually something caught their interest, and one by one, they all flew off in search of somebody else to talk to. I stood up, stretched my legs, poured myself a cup of coffee, then meandered over to my dad's stand. I was half expecting to see him covered in birds, too.

 

[auschip]

Had one this weekend ...

We had been in our duck blind for about an hour, enough for the sun to have come up and a lull in the birds. We were enjoying the morning, and generally basking in the excitement of the hunt (ok so some of us were sleeping) when we hear some splashing and walking noises from out in the grass in front of the blind. It wasn't the dog, and everyone was accounted for, and then through the tall grass steps a doe.

You guys who hunt flooded timber might not think that unusual, but this was open prairie (Near Garwood, TX). No trees around, mostly marsh and old rice fields. And this swamp deer comes trucking through in about 10 inches of water.

 

[mjb]

Last year while I was hunting in southeastern Kentucky I watched a squirrel walk down a fallen tree and drink from a creek.
Many years ago my dad was hunting in the mountains of Pennsylvania and while he was in a tree stand he met a squirrel "eyeball to eyeball". He told me he tried to get him to leave by shaking an arrow at him, but the little thing just wouldn't stop making a racket. It finally left him alone.

 

[tex_n_cal]

Pax, thank you for posting the link to that old thread, I stayed up way too late last night reading it.

The lease I used to hunt in West Texas had a ground blind on a hillside, and was popular for spring turkey season. I reached it one April morning just after daybreak, open the door as quietly as I could, and discovered a Ringtail or Miner's Cat curled up sound asleep in the chair. After a few seconds he raised his head, blinked his huge eyes at me, turning his head from side to side wondering what the heck I was. As cute as he was, I wasn't crazy about being at arm's length from a small wild predator, and said, "Shoo!". More blinking and head cocking.

I reached in and poked him gently with the muzzle. "Shoo!". He looks down at the rifle, looks back at me and continues tilting his head from side to side. By now I am trying not to laugh out loud, so I walked to the side of the blind and rapped it with my knuckles. That finally drove him out the door, and he went to go find a new place to curl up.

I can see why ringtails were often kept as pets - I can't ever remember meeting such a cute and docile wild animal.

 

[tex_n_cal]

camp cooking

Of course the comraderie of the hunt is always precious. Especially when your friends do something that you're glad you passed on.

A couple of guys in one camp were lifelong buddies, and one of them owned a small spice company in Texas. He was a connoisseur of hot sauces and spices. After a day's hunt, these two began hitting the firewater before dinner, and were pretty well lit when it was time to cook. It was their turn that night, and they undertook the chili with gusto, pouring in about a hundred and eleven different herbs, spices, and hot sauces in unusual quantities. The rest of us were still semi-sober and declined to eat any of it, while the two of them gobbled it up.

I was awakened by the sound of the outhouse door about 2:00am, and heard the door bang at regular intervals throughout the night. The next morning they got up...and were both running for the outhouse every 15 minutes. One of them bravely tried to go scouting with me, but in an hour of driving on the ranch roads had to head for the bushes 3 times. What made it worse was I had no paper towels or toilet paper in my truck, so he had to resort to tearing pages out of Guns and Ammo.

Did I mention that the two of them were also both really hung over? I have never, ever seen anyone as miserable in my entire life.

 

[Battlespace]

When a senior in HS, 35 years ago, I took a cousin to my favorite duck hunting spot on the Laramie River. I pointed him in the right direction and he headed out. I had told him I would probably spook the ducks and they would fly down the river toward him. As I got close to the bank and could hear them babbling I looked over to see if he was ready. He was about 200 yards away and I could see him peering at the water. Suddenly he raises his gun and starts shooting into the water. Needless to say the ducks in front of me leave post haste. I walk down to where he is to see what he shot at. There in about 18 inches of water are the remains of some decoys. It seems a local bank persident had left them out, I knew him and often hunted with him. My cousin, who is now an outfitter and guide in Montana, had blown his spread to bits. I had to fess up the next week and told Ed, the banker, what had happened. Since Ed had been very good friends with my grandfather, he sort of laughed it off and told me not to worry about it, but to keep my cousin away from decoys in the future.

 

[Yojinbo]

When I was a boy I used to hunt rabbit back home in Iowa with a .22 (not the best idea, I know). Anyway, I was stalking across a low hill in a snowy, fallow feild one day in about 2ft of dead grass. Suddenly I heard a scary noise like something large running toward me. 10 seconds later a turkey tops the hill headed for my chest in the middle of a graceless take-off.

I fell on my ass with the .22 across my chest and he flew right over me about 3ft off the ground. He either didn't know I was there or he had decided to take the fight to me.

Also (not hunting),

On Christmas eve about three years ago I awoke at around 3am having 'heard something' in my sleep. I did the standard door check and was heading back to be bed when I peered out the window into the back yard. Between the shop and the house was a mangey old coyote standing in the snow in the cool glow of the security light. He looked right at me (peeking out between 2 slats of a wooden blind) we stood there about 2 minutes until he loped off under the barbwire fence. I have never seen anything so ugly look so beautful as that night.

Now, if he and I ever meet again when I have my pants on, he's toast.

-Yo

 

[kbheiner7]

I hunt ducks in a major bald eagle wintering ground. Your dog needs to bring his A game, or the eagles will come grab your downed birds. It's pretty cool to see them - some look big enough to make a meal out of my lab.

 

[Matt G]

Goose hunting near Sugarland, TX in a rice field. it was entirely too bright and clear.

1.5 miles away was a swirling, orbiting tornado of white and blue and grey, a few thousand feet high and about a half mile wide. We watched it all weekend. My best friend's uncle, who guided us, estimated that it was made up of between 10k and 20k snow, Canadian, blues, and specklebelly geese. For whatever reason, they had congregated in that spot, and orbited it, mostly clockwise.

Between the 5 of us, we harvested ONE goose.

 

[Ryder]

Often is the time out in the woods that I feel deep sympathy for all those who never have and never will step foot into the wild. Lucky for us hunters that they have no idea what they're missing.

I once had a lengthy discussion with a possum who thought he had the right of way to the log I was sitting on. After walking all that way down the log he was of the opinion that I should get out of his way so he could continue on down his silent highway. Too bad, I had sat there too long to get up and spook every deer in the woods. He didn't speak my language but upon sniffing the muzzle of my rifle he got a clue and with some difficulty negotiated a 90° turn walking off in disgust. It was very funny.

I watched a large fischer run across a frozen beaver pond through my scope once. Probably not as rare as having an albino mink run across my foot but then such things are hard to gauge. I assume when I only see something once in my life it is rare and a privledge to view.

Being treated as prey isn't something I consider a privledge as it happens too often but it's none the less an eye opening and unforgettable experience.

I spotted a piece of dead fern the size of a dime walking on a twig once. At first I thought it was only just an ant carrying a piece of fern but upon closer inspection it turned out to actually be a whole bug shaped and colored like a piece of dead fern. I've never seen such a thing before or since. Could be unknown to science for all I know? Very koo!

Interaction with nature isn't something I'd term "unusual". No experience in the woods to me is more "unusual" than those which involve other people.

 

[RCL]

In early October of this year I was walking down an old logging road squirrel hunting. Decided to lean against an old blown down limb just off the trail where there was a lot of acorns on the ground. Been there about ten minutes when I saw movement in the woods. Couple minutes later two doe and two fawns come out and start walking down the logging road towards me. They stop where these acorns are laying and start to munch. Now I'm only 15-20 feet away and just enjoying the heck out of this. Goes on about 5 minutes, when I feel the breeze tickle the back of my neck. Both the does jerked there heads up and then wasted no time in getting away from there.

 

[mod12]

on nov 15 of 1960 (first day of small game season in ohio and first year i was married} a friend and i were duck hunting at the delaware ohio wild life area. we had a blind at the confluence of a feeder creek into the delaware reservoir. it was a blue bird day. small game hunting started at 9:00 am. about 8:30 a small four point buck walked down the opposite bank about 30 yds away and crawled into the top of a tree that had fallen into the water. we left about 2:30 that afternoon and that buck had never moved. hunters walked within 40 ft of him, on two occasions we got out of the blind and stood around and went out in the boat and changed the decoys. he may still be there.

 

[standingbear]

saw some babies of great horned owls wander past my sitting tree where I sit and watch the hillside for groundhogs.I almost could reach out and grab one of the babies but as I did, I heard a loud clicking noise and a much larger member walking somewhere behind the tree came jumping over and let me know to leave them alone.

 

[Remington788]

I heard a loud clicking noise

This is not a sound you want to hear coming from a great horned owl. One year coyote hunting I crawled up onto an old piece of mine equipment to get a better view of the surrounding area. When I got on top of the platform a Great Horned owl takes off from it's nest and lands on a guide wire and starts clicking its beak at me. I remember thinking this can't be good and started to turn around to leave. I turned around and before I left I took one last look at the owl. As I was turning, the owl was flying right at me and came real close to taking my right eye out with its claw. The thing almost knocked me off of the platform and carried my hat about 30 yards. Needless to say I did NOT waste any more time in leaving the area. The claw missed my eye by about an eight of an inch and to this day I still have the scar.

I don't really like owls much anymore either.

 

[tex_n_cal]

Birds of Prey

I don't really like owls much anymore either.

now, now, they eats lots of mice, and skunks. Pretty cool animals, actually - I once was headed into a bar in Addison, Tx, a ritzy northern suburb of Dallas, when I see something in the streetlight, get the flashlight out and see a huge GHO perched on the edge of a building. He took off as soon as he saw my light. That was in the middle of an urban area, and I suspect he made a pretty good living off stray cats. Funny, I never remember seeing a stray cat in North Dallas

We had one lease in West Texas, where by agreement we took the deer out near some tall trees and cleaned them, before taking them back to hang at the cabin. My buddy had bagged one an hour or so before I did, and had finished cleaning it and left the gut pile there. I was just starting to clean my deer, and was standing maybe five feet away when a red tailed hawk flushed suddenly out of the previous gut pile. It startled the hell out of me. He flew off, landed maybe a hundred feet away on a telephone pole, and looked annoyed at me. Proof that hawks will scavenge when it's convenient.

On the same lease several of us were gathered around talking when one guy let out his "deer dog" as he jokingly called it. She was a miniature Yorkie, a tiny, friendly little thing that was smaller than most Chiuahuas you see. We were laughing as she frolicked around the camp, this little house pet. After a few minutes somebody looked up, and there were three red tailed hawks nearby, all staring intently at the dog, who was no match for any of them. She was banished back to the trailer for her own safety.

Once I was hiking on the ranch when a turkey vulture spooked out of a fallen tree a few yards away. I was wondering what was there, walked over to look, and saw two eggs in a tangle of roots. I left the nest immediately, but came back about six weeks later to find two vulture chicks. Somewhere I have photos of the two chicks.

Just for the record, vulture chicks are the nastiest infants in the animal kingdom. They stink, they're ugly, and they growl

 

[Art Eatman]

I was driving along, slowly, in the far back country one day and saw a mockingbird "dive-bombing" a big hawk. I did my usual smile at the disparity in size, and drove on toward them. As I got closer I realized the "mockingbird" was a red-tailed hawk. Well, our area does have the occasional golden eagle wintering down here...

In the same area a few years later, I was standing on top of a very steep ridge. I happened to glance down and see a nest in an indentation in a vertical wall, with three fledglings. Not often you look down at a red-tailed hawk's nest.

, Art