Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire When did you first feel your mortality?

If I sit very long, I’m stiff for a minute or two.

Not that kind of stiff!

not to me, happened same way when i was 15 after a motorcycle accident that should have killed me.

While standing next to a friend when he was shot in the chest with a 12ga by a drunk.

I was doing a shamanic vision quest back in 1986. The place I picked to do it was the woods I'd bowhunted the previous 2 seasons. I knew the ground, but I guess I didn't know it THAT well. The lights went out. I came to in what appeared to be a shallow grave with dirt coming in over the top of me.

There was a breeding pair of bald eagles on the property that used to follow me everywhere. One or the other would always be circling me in my stand. When I looked up to the sky, there was one of the eagles. The next thing I knew, I was flying with the eagle, looking over the farm. Just down the road, there was had been a fatal auto accident. The Highway Patrol was at the scene. After I landed, I showed back up in camp with a wild story. Sure enough, although you could not see it from the farm, there was indeed a fatal auto accident just down the road a half mile or so.

The shallow grave turned out to be a small strip pit that the local farmers had used to mine coal. I'd been walking past it while hunting and never seen it. It was enough like a grave to really shake me up.

To this day, hawks and eagles seem to have an affinity for me. In town, there is always a pair of red-shouldered hawks close to the house. At the farm, I usually have a hawk following me around the property.

When my daugher’s boyfriend put 45 to his head and ended his young life and really messed up her life. We had counselors in our home that night and they told us to lock up every firearm and all ammo in our house. They said teenage suicide was very contagious. It was difficult times for our family. My daughter was 15 when this occurred and now at 32 she has a family and is a case worker at a VA hospital. Life’s unexpected calamities can give you enough pause to assess what is really important in our days left in life.

How do you go about re-ordering your life when you come to the place where your priorities change? One thing at a time I guess. I can imagine as you deal with all the old stuff then you realize how far off track you were and how much time was lost.

Got out of the Navy in Apr 1972. For the next 45 years 5 of my shipmates and I got together to hunt and fish on an almost yearly basis. Sometimes twice a year. May of 2017 was our most recent reunion. Then in July we lost one or our own when Steve passed.

Still doesn't seem real.

Mortality..............nope. Just running out of time.
Divorce and job loss d*cked up the timing.
Retirement moved back.

When I win the lottery, find the girl of my dreams, and have a fridge full of fantastic beer..............I'll die.

Same thing happened to me. I wasn't going to let nature take its course but guy went into me twice looking for it, couldn't find it and then determined the two tests he gave me were false positives.

that messed with my head and I haven't been the same since.

The second opinion guy was probably the reason I didn't have a breakdown.

Here's to ya buddy. Hard to believe 2 of these guys are dead. Their harmony is silenced forever.

See that little blue square under my name? I really knew I could die when the surface to air missile...missed.

Next month I wave bye-bye to age 70. I've lived in this house about twice as long as I have left, probably. When it comes, it comes. The good thing is that I won't know that it happened.

Got an unexpected deep whiff of carbon tet -- from cotton ball in jar used for butterfly and insect /"bug" collecting. Wondered if I was done for. Age 10? Dreamed a few years later I was to be lethally injected if I wouldn't deny my faith. Distinctly remember that I chose Jesus first above all. Never worried about it since. (However, pain is a whole 'nother matter. LOL)

As a late teen, doing 115 mph on a friends old 70's something Yamaha street bike wearing only swimming trunks and a pair of tennis shoes. A cross wind or something picked the bike up and turned it basically sideways in the air on the hi-way. Somehow it came back down on its wheels and the rest was up to me to try and gain control of the handle bars that were whipping back and forth. It took me a long time to quit shaking from that one and taught me a very valuable lesson in how not to be a complete idiot.

I was ticked that I didn't get style points for my landing and still am.

A great surgeon got me back 30% use of my left arm. I pay the price in Ibuprofen. There are a bunch of places here and there that "remember" the fall, but I can still walk and shoot behind the quail. .

November 5, 1966. I fell from a deer stand and broke my back in two places. I had to walk a half mile to the car. I'm so glad l could walk out. If not, that would have been the end.

When? On my 1st TOD, that’s when.

Worked with a cool dude, for about 20 yrs.
He got an illness and ate a .357 mag.
Was within his belief system......heard of his death (my old lady said she heard it on the news) and I immediately wondered what he had.
Sick a few yrs before, almost got him, didn't explain.............came out of it.

Died on Wed. Quite a few of us at work shook up. 6 of us got letters on Friday.
Explained what he had, how he'd be gone within a yr..........thanked us for the friendship and good times.

Put me in a bad place for too long. Only guy that ever understood me.
Took a while for the feeling of abandonment to chill into just being alone.

Not sure the effect.

Dead is dead.
That half dead chit kinda worries me.


Did it outside, neutral territory.

Worked a gunshop for a bit, fam brought in suicide gun........not from major PD. Wanted it salvaged...........was in plastic bag (in paper evidence bag)..........still wet.
Once fired Colt 380 Gov.

Citrus 2 medical cleaner after Gunscrubber.........after strong alcohol dunk for a good while.........kinda creepy. Became a game of "find the crud".
Funny now.

Stainless revolver outside...........my recommendation.
Another guy I knew at work got into some legal crap..........used shotgun, in the house. Dumb*ss.

First time I saw myself bleeding!

When I was 20, one autumn day at college, I thought it was a good day to teach myself how to repel off cliffs. So I gathered up a big hay rope, a pair of too-large gloves, two buddies and off we went to Palisades State Park between Cedar Rapids and Mount Vernon Iowa. I found a spot I had in mind that was down by the Cedar river at the far end of the park. We tied one end to a good tree and tossed the other end down to the bottom of the about 45 foot cliff. Not too far down the cliff I came to the conclusion the cliff was mostly sandstone, from it busting out from any footing I was able to acquire. After getting down about 15 feet, I had walked the wall to a dangerous angle and when my footing gave out again found myself bouncing across the rock face and lost my grip and headed for the bottom. I recall thinking, "this is really going to hurt!". Strangely, it didn't. One of my buddies was at the top watching my decent and upon my losing the rope he took off for the ranger shed, not even seeing me hit the bottom. I landed on my back, I believe or anyway that's where I ended up, on a large smooth rock a spitting distance from the river. I was knocked out momentarily, but came to peacefully and soon, believing for a moment I was dead and in Heaven. My buddy at the bottom had seen me fall and land and came over and stuck his face in mine when he saw me stir a bit and told me not to move. I was just seeing what was broke, or didn't work anymore. After timidly moving my appendages I found all systems seemed a go, and I slowly got up and noticed a small gash in the back of my head, but had really no other injury issues. Upon learning of my "luck" the buddy at the bottom told me, "You bounced! I've never seen anyone bounce before!". We went up to the top, retrieved the rope and walked most of the way up to our car, when my top side buddy came down the trail leading a EMT team. We visited and went up to let them check me out in their vehicle. The medics were surprised by my condition and told me I could ride with them but they would have to take me to Cedar Rapids. I chose to let my friends drive me back to the Iowa City University hospital to forgo the cost of an ambulance ride, where they took xrays and used wire sutures to close the cut in my head. For decades I took my good fortune as just that, but upon further reflection of the chances for someone to walk away from a 30 foot unbroken fall and landing on a rock, albeit a smooth rock, with no injuries to speak of to the extent of being able to walk a couple miles back out, have recently been more inclined to believe I was caught by an angel, rather than bounced.

I didn't feel my mortality that day. But on my honeymoon about 14 years later, body surfing in Hawaii showed me a bit of the power of God's creation when a small wave nearly broke me in half. At least that is what it felt like under the water bent in two with my shoulders up against the sea floor and the force of the wave pushing on my butt and legs not knowing how much more pressure was coming and wondering when I would simply break in two. Happy to say I didn't break, nor did I body surf again that trip.