Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hitchikers?

Thanks. Heck I barely remember that. Couldnt place it.

I did quite a bit of hitchiking back in the seventies. Once, I took two weeks off of work, and hitchiked from Atlanta to Boulder Colorado.
From there, back east to Minnesota, went north and crossed into Canada, crossed Canada north of the Great Lakes and down to Vermont to visit my brother for a few days, and then hitchiked back to Atlanta. Pretty good for 16 days.

Also hitchiked all across Europe in 1973, from the southern tip of Italy to Denmark, and then to England.

I figure I have hitchiked farther than the circumference of the earth, 25,000 miles. Did get lucky one time, a gal picked me up in Nebraska and we wound up spending the night at her apartment.
Now, I would have gotten real lucky had I been a gay boy.

Also crossed the continent hopping freight trains but that is another story.

As a general rule, I don't pick up hitch hikers.

Made an exception several years back.

Was driving south past Summer lake Or. and passed a van setting on a jack with a missing tire, and a Woman inside.

We pulled in to Paisley, and there was an old guy with a tire & wheel with his thumb out, heading back toward the van.

So we turned around and gave him a ride back to the van.

Turned out he was the local Preacher in Silver Lake, and owned an alfalfa field.

We were hunting sage rats, and he invited us to hunt his property.

Our good dead was repaid many times over.

Virgil B.

Picked up an old couple broke down with their old Ford Courier pickup, broken fan belt. Gave them a ride to my folks who put them up for the night. Went back the next day and fixed their truck and sent them on their way. Not hitchhiking, but in obvious distress.

Thumbed a ride -- out of gas, etc. = yes for me, both giving and receiving. Never have I actually "hitchicked".
A buddy team hitch hiked one Fourth of July weekend from Black Hills to Seattle and back. On a dare.
He said everyone who picked them up was either high or crazy.

This isn't hitching, this is common courtesy and part of who we are.

We meet again, eh?

(My last ride was nearly 40 years ago with some young dude in an El Camino....made me sit in back....he didn't want to share his 2nd-hand weed smoke with me while he tooled down the freeway 20 MPH over the limit. The ride previous to that was from a guy in a big Caddy....driving with his metal crab-hands. And before that some weird gay dude who hitched his pants down after he got the car up to the speed limit and began yanking his crank; he insisted on sucking mine. I had my Opinel primed for turning him into pepperoni if he didn't abbreviate the ride quickly.)

Not a big fan of 'hiking since then.

I knew an old farmer who picked up a hitchhiker, and the man pulled a gun on him and told the farmer to take him up Hwy 41 to Evansville, IN. Old farmer got to driving really fast on that crooked road, and the hitchhiker began telling him to slow down, or he was going to kill them. Farmer said, I have to hurry, if I'm going to get home in time to milk tonite.. Hitchhiker said slow down and I'll get out......and he did. Old man would tell that story, then say that what the hitchhiker didn't know, was that he had his pistol under his leg, just in case it was needed.

My uncle made a habit of picking up hitchhikers. Back in 67 or 68 he picked up 2 ex-cons. They put a gun to his head and told him they were going to kill him. After allowing him to drive slowly past his home and see his 2 kids playing in the yard, they executed him and stole his fishing gear before pushing his car into the river. They were later caught while fishing and tried for murder.

wabigoon;
Good afternoon to you sir, I hope the weather has warmed up in your part of the world as it has here today. That said, the warm weather did make chasing whitetail on the mountain behind the house a bit too interesting for my eldest daughter and I this morning - a foot of melting snow/ice on off camber skidder roads was a bit more than we'd bargained for. Maybe it'll either melt off or freeze by next weekend.

Anyway barring picking up obviously stranded folks, the last time I picked up a hitch hiker was the summer of 1980.

I was at the wheel of a heavily modified '71 T37 Pontiac - jacked up, bright red, low Mopar style hood scoop, rear spoiler, headers and large diameter exhaust.....

Anyway I was with two female friends from high school and as we passed this chap on the side of Highway 16 in rural Saskatchewan, one of the girls - I want to say the one that's now the principal at the same high school - said something like he looked cute so I should pick him up.

Being as we had nowhere in particular to be, I skidded to a halt about 1/8 mile past this young man, did a tire smoking U-turn in the middle of the highway and then passed him and did another so we were pointing back in the right direction.

He was a few years older than us and paused for a good while when they asked if he wanted a ride. Good call on his part in retrospect wabigoon.

If memory serves he was either going to be a teacher or was one already so they girls and he had a lively discussion while I drove him to whichever town he was headed to. Likely at a rate exceeding the posted limit, but keeping it more or less in the correct lanes of travel.

That's it for me as far as I recall wabigoon.

All the best to you as the winter rolls up on us wabigoon.

Dwayne

Never had serious problems back when I did most of my thumbing. Other than getting picked up by some drunk who was driving so bad I was ready to jump out if he slowed down enough. There were stories of guys hitchhiking and getting robbed at gun or knife point by those that picked them up. I learned that I should fold up most of my cash and stick it in my sock by my ankle and only carry a few bucks in my wallet so that's what I did on those long hitchhikes. Luckily I never got robbed.

No and No. And going to stay that way.

And I am real careful about stopping to help a motorist on the side of the road (especially if I'm not alone and there are kids / women in the truck). I will call someone for them, but if there is no obvious accident and potential injury, they'll get a phone call made for them. Out in the sticks in the middle of nowhere out hunting, and I'll stop. Short of a serious accident or being out in the sticks, who doesn't have a cell phone to call for help these days?

Google "Tison escape / murder / Arizona" from back in the 70's. I was classmates and friends with his nephew at the time (12 yrs old). The memories of that whole series of events are forever burned in, and offer a good lesson about stopping to help people "stranded" on the side of the road on some semi-desolate stretch of road. A phone call cures that problem much better than any assistance I'm likely going to be able to offer will, and far less risky.

If there's not carnage or if anything looks remotely fishy, I'm not stopping. Even back in the 70's it wasn't a great idea. And now, far less so.

In the early seventies my car broke down and I hitched to work for about two weeks. This was in Fairbanks Alaska. I was never late for work and finally got the car fixed. No drunks or queers or whatever. Just nice people giving a young man a hand. I repaid that help several times for other hitchers. Ed k

Along the lines of hitchhiking, I saw an attractive but somewhat spacey looking girl in a parking lot the other night at a big shopping center. She was talking loudly on her phone and wandering around like she was lost. I was walking my daughter to my truck, as we were out for dinner together and my first impulse was to ask the girl if she needed help, but something told me that there was something fishy going on. She was too done-up, with skin-tight leggings and a top that barely covered her rear, and at the same time, she looked a kind of tired and worn down. Too worn down for a girl in her mid 20's. Combined with the loud conversation she was having and her obvious wandering and gesturing, it made me think there was a slight chance it was some kind of baited set-up to catch an unsuspecting guy somehow. Perhaps I was paranoid, but it seemed "off".

I never made it a habit, but several years ago I was on my way to go fishing at a lake about 70 miles east of here. A pretty little young woman was standing with a big backpack on the I-65 ramp.

She was from Oregon and going to West Virginia.

Other than the fact she was risking her life for the price of a bus ticket, she seemed like a fairly reasonable person. I tried to impress on her that she was entering a part of the country where some fairly rough characters reside. I was tempted to take her on to West Virginia. But I figured she had made it from Oregon. She could make it from Cave Run Lake Kentucky.

Me too ^^^^

35 plus years ago at about 11PM , somewhere between Beatty and Tonopah Nevada, dark night not a light in sight in any direction, I picked up a gal who later told me she was 17 lived in Jerome Idaho, and was on her way home.
Seems some older guy was giving her a ride, and in the middle of absolutely nowhere had told her to f**k or get out, That's when i came along, took her all the way to Caldwell Idaho, let her out on a freeway on ramp and continued on my way.
Have often wondered how many young girls like her met the wrong guy and are buried in the desert somewhere never to be heard from again

Highway Of Tears. Many missing girls still unaccounted for.

http://www.highwayoftears.ca/

When I was stationed in FT Bliss, TX in the late 80s, me and a guy in my platoon were driving somewhere and stopped at stop sign. A young hispanic man stuck his head in the driver side window and asked Steve if he could get a ride.
Steve told him yeah get in. Spooked me bad, but it wasnt my car, he drove the guy a couple miles and dropped him off. After the guy got out I turned to Steve and said WTF did you do that?

This. Also if someone was in obvious trouble or something.