Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What Scarred You the Most While Out In the Woods

Woods have never scared me, but grizzly definitely are the ones that give me the most anxiety.

I was in 3rd grade reading a book about Bigfoot at about 9:00 at night. Dad hadn’t got home yet from combining sunflowers, so it was just me, mom, and my younger sisters. I had just read that Bigfoot makes a Erie scream and all the sudden the dogs start going nuts barking at something in the tree grove behind our house. Well the barking really had my attention when all the sudden a coon or some other critter started squealing and growling back at the barking dogs. Needless to say I was convinced Bigfoot had taken up residence behind our trailer house. Mom didn’t seem to take the whole matter real serious and that really made me question her intelligence. Anyway, I was normally out with my BB gun wandering around the trees whenever possible, but I didn’t work up the courage to go back where the dogs had been barking for about three or four days and when I did the safety was off on my crosman 760 and my finger was on the trigger. Lol

Bitter cold day, and my Lab and I were taking a woods walk. She ran out onto a frozen irrigation pond and broke through. She couldn't get herself out and soon stopped struggling. I found a stout tree limb and, breaking the ice in front of me, waded out to her, about 50' out. By time I got to her, the water was almost up to my pits, but with every step, I was expecting to go in over my head. By the time we got home, my clothes were frozen like a suit of armor. Didn't really feel scared until we got home and I started thinking about the "what ifs."

In East Texas one summer many ages ago, my date and i drove out into the woods to park on a warm moon lit night with the windows down. She had her left arm around my neck as i sat slouched down in the drivers seat while we swapped spit.

Just as i came up for air and glanced ahead she raised her left hand by my face to pull me back for more. The peripheral movement of something inside the window by my head....

Then there have been plenty of snakes. As a kid, walking from my cousins through a scope of woods to Grandads out in the country at night when I got to the trap pasture gate and when i grabbed the top oak plank and suddenly realizing my hand was full of a big moccasin or chicken snake .....

Black bear coming at me while elk hunting after it stood up over a huge broke necked cow it was eating and threatened me and i shot it with an arrow and instead of running off it charged me from uphill as i waved my bow and little belt hatchet before falling and rolling and flopping and giving its death moan....

Which brought the big freaking bear to show up and circle downwind, as i reloaded, to catch our scent before coming for me...shot that biotch with an arrow too and PTL it finally turned and left after stopping to reconsider a little bit while i was jumping up and down screaming and hollering and shaking my bow and little hatchet overhead. Felt i was so happy it was like floating on air untill i realized it was adrenalin high and i had to sit a while and suck air to calm down a while before heading back to camp in the dark.

A female sasquatch. Needed eye bleach after that.

I've been startled by rattlesnakes, nearly stepping on a coyote once in the desert east of El Paso (not sure if the coyote was more surprised, or I was), and stuff like that. I've been concerned about situations I've found myself in such as getting caught in a lightning storm while backpacking into the Chiricahuas in southern Arizona, or getting my pickup stuck in the snow in the mountains in Nevada.

I do recall being genuinely scared when I was about 12 years old, camping in the mountains with my dad, a pair of uncles and a cousin all of whom were older than me. A bear came into camp shortly after we bedded down. We were sleeping in the open on a ground tarp and the bear was helping himself to our groceries maybe thirty feet away. I was pretty sure at least one of us was gonna be barschidt pretty damned soon. All we had for breakfast the next day was spuds, but I was really jazzed about all of us having survived an encounter with a bear. I thought we were all Davy Crockett that morning.

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first time I heard a bobcat at night I was just a teenager, I thought someone was strangling a woman

also one time I was fishing near Georgetown SC in the evening and walked between a gator up on land and the water. He let me know I was blocking his path to the water, I was more than happy to get out of his way.

This one is the most interesting! Can't believe you didn't send slummy right into the heart of it...for research purposes.

When I was bow hunting this past November and someone texted me and told me that Biden won!

Ron

The realization that sooner or later I had to go back to work

Yep. Leg caught a loose piece of barbed wire while running through the woods once as a kid. Ripped my shin to the bone about 5 inches. Country Dr was afraid to use anesthetic as i had asthma and was allergic to horses so he sewed it up with me hollering.

Having the smell of blood on me and a pack of coyotes in a frenzy and fighting with each other right outside my 2 man pup tent, while bowhunting in southwest CO. I had just killed an elk w my bow, while backpack hunting in the San Juan National Forest. Packed the meat back to my campsite and strung it up high. During the Middle of the night, Coyotes came in making all kinds of racket, right outside my tent. Sounded like they were fighting And growling with each other. I yelled through the tent walls and they finally scattered. But the same scenario repeated itself 3 times that night. I had no fire arm but slept with my hunting knife by my pillow and a broad head tipped arrow in my hand. I am sure my blood soaked backpack, in which I carried the meat back to camp, was quite the attractant. I had never feared for my safety while hunting till that night. I was concerned about black bears coming into camp, but never even thought about coyotes.

He give ya a bullet to bite on? 😃

Forrest Gump braces after that? 😀

I've had a momma bear popping her jaws at me while her cub was up a tree. I was about 20 yards away.

Another time I was walking in the dark and I walked by a wild willow shrub, real thick one, and on the other side of that bush something let out a real low, gutteral growl. Could not have been 10 feet away. Always assumed it was a cougar but man o man my radar was beeping on that one. I was after a big bear I knew to be in this thicket but don't know if that was him or someone else.

A friend and I flew into a remote lake in Alaska to fish for pike for the weekend. Pilot dropped us off near some high ground we could pitch our tent on. We found an old ax and later found an aluminum boat overgrown with brush along the shore line. Huckleberries were on and bear sign everywhere. Saw some browns on the flight in. Used the ax to cut a pole to push ourselves around the shallow shoreline in the boat and caught hundreds of pike up to 3' long. So many our backs ached from pulling them in. Blood all over the bottom of the boat and us. Next morning about 4 am we hear a bear splashing around down by the boat. A little later he came up to camp and was circling the tent. Only had a 10" Bowie knife, no gun. Thought maybe our luck had run out. Turns out the splashing noise was a beaver and who knows what was breathing outside the tent. LOL Dumb kids.

Had a couple close calls due to weather. One hunt it rained 17" in 3 days, lots of fog, hard to navigate around the mountains. Another got turned around on Broken Top in Sisters, Oregon in a blizzard. I would have been fine but the girlfriend I had at the time panicked. On top of that she was slowing me down. Finally found our way out but my fear was that I was going to be the cause of someone else dying. Very unsettling.

Had a close call in some cliffs once, slippery moss and blacktail deer hunting.

Been traumatized a few times wish I hadn't shot an animal at the bottom of a canyon or so far from the truck in steep terrain and swore I wouldn't do it again, but by next year all that's forgotten LOL.

Been startled too many times to count by something coming into camp at night and knocking things over. One camp buddy and I were convinced we had a bear coming in at night so we left out a cup of pudding with a trailer camera on it. About 2 am a doe comes in, gobbles up the pudding and helps herself to the potatoe chips (salt). Another camp had something wake me up in the middle of the night by shaking the RV. Dog woke up and I turned her loose on it, but she ran back to bed shaking. Never seen her shy away from chasing anything up to and including bear and cougar. Don't know what it was.

Went to a buddies cousins house in Alaska in winter. One way in by land was impassable in winter, the other way had to cross a frozen lake. It was the time of year you didn't know which way was safe. Tried the land route first and lost control on an icy hill. Truck carreened down the mountain sideways until it slid to a stop with 4" between the passenger door and a big birch tree. Not a scratch on either of us. Had to chain up all four to claw our way back up that mountain, schit just a flyin. Came in the next weekend and took the frozen lake route. Family was all out on the lawn watching us when we drove up. They told us we were the first to try it that winter and they were pretty sure we weren't going to make it. We could feel every pound of that old Fords weight on the trip back across the lake. That one gave me the willys for sure.

When I was 12 my father caught me out in the woods with two girls.

On reflection, even though I’ve had some dicey encounters w bears. 9-11 was unsettling. Was in the middle of nowhere up the tikchik River via motorboat, w a moose hunting client, met up w my amigo that was floating down river w his two clients.

Called my broker via Sat phone to get an update on my positions. He told me we were under attack via the WTC terrorist actions.

Then when the skies went empty it was eerie. Had never experienced that before. Of course my wife was unsettled by the events just like everyone else & she was home w 3 kids all 10 or under. She wanted me home & for a few days I had no idea how I was gonna get there.

My poor client was a wreck, he was already on pretty significant amounts of anti depressants. When he received the news from me he went down hard over it. Thought once or twice he might be thinking about ending all his pain.

With everything else going through my head I could just envision me being the first guide to bring back a dead client.

I felt bad for the guy but he had me on pins & needles till we got back to Dilly & I could get shut of him.

How scared would he have been if you had been with 2 boys? 😬

I cut my hand gutting a deer, and got a pretty good scar from that.

I had the loudest most un woods wise client ever shoot a big boar black bear, which promptly ran into the dog hair along the river. I gave him instructions to sit tight and not to come in there for any reason as I didn’t want him getting chewed up or us shooting one another.

I’m easing along on high alert picking out the blood trail when all the sudden a loud crack behind and to my left. I whirl around safety off and rifle coming up, ready to let one fly. And the dude had somehow managed to silently sneak right up on me all the while videotaping! He probably had some good footage of the muzzle of a 458 and a bunch of cussing!