Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Ever hurt yourself hunting?

I forgot, I went to Africa with a broken trigger finger.My Doc taped into a hook for pulling,worked well.It began to heal while I was over there and the last couple of days shot without it.My "huntin Bud" really thought he would get some free shooting in....

Better let me do your next several hunts...

I blew out my right knee packing out 100 lbs of caribou, tripping and falling over rocks and roots for a mile in the dark- after amile of 45 degree downslope into the timber. Knee surgery.

Slipped on a Super-Cub step while loading a moose hind and sprug a couple ribs- dunno- they might have been cracked, then a 5 mile hike out after the plane was gone. Wasn't much fun breathing for a while, and sneezing or coughing was no fun at all for several weeks. Never went in for them - nothing much they can do for ribs anyway.

You will note these were only after the hunting was over. That ain't so bad for 50 years of hunting. Near misses don't count.

It's a wonder we haven't all killed ourselves off long before now.

Many years ago, despite what I knew was not the right way to do things, I was 'carving' a stove jack from the walls of a metal gasoline can. One more whack and I had intended to find a pair of gloves for handling the sharp-edged sheet metal. Of course, that 'one more whack' was the one which opened my thumb wide open, right to the beautifully striated muscle beneath. Foregoing home remedy sutures, I taped it up for the time being to get the bleeding stopped. Since it was winter and snow was the only water readily available, I washed it out carefully the following day in the gallons of blood that were pooled in the chest cavity of a bull moose we had come for. Everything healed up fine.

A few years later, while hurriedly gutting a caribou on a cold, windy hill top, I slightly nicked a knuckle on a finger. I was barely aware of the break in my skin until I felt blood pooling in my mitten several miles later. That finger was carefully washed in warm soapy water. A couple days later it swelled up with infection which required oral antibiotics. Go figure. (It's little wonder that superstitions arise sometimes.)

Ive got hurt tons worse chassing puzzy than chassing deer and elk.....

Now thats dangerous game!!!!

Once I got too close to a muddy canyon rim in the Pryors here in Montana and went down about 150 feet ass over teakettle. Somehow I missed all the rocks but wrenched a few things pretty well. Had one hell of a time climbing out of there, too.
My only consolation is that there was no one around to see it happen; it's one thing to know you've been a dumbass but quite another to prove it to others.

A few years ago, cut my little finger to the bone field while dressing a buck in South Dakota. Fortunately, one of the guys in my hunting party (to my embarrassment) helped me finish the job. I was totally unprepared and did not have a bandaid or anything else in my pack to patch the wound. I now carry a first aid kit with tape, wound-wrap and much more. I learned my lesson.

I've cut myself several times over the years and had a couple of bad falls when rocks or the ground gave way on hillsides that resulted in a couple of broken fingers.

This year I headed down into a pretty isolated part of the National forest for an annual deer camp that an old friend and I have done for years. This year though,due to scheduling at work we had to wait until later in the season which unfortunately coincided with his wedding anniversary so I went by myself.

It wouldn't have been a big deal at all except for the second morning when I started to climb up a tree in the older tree stand I have. This one has the nylon straps on the bottom platform that you stick your feet in to climb. I had initially hung the stand high enough that I could just barely get onto the bottom platform from the ground.

I heaved my ancient butt up on the stand and tightened the straps over my toes good so they wouldn't slip and reached over my shoulder to grab the strap on my safety harness and the left foot strap snapped and I went backwards off the stand with my right foot still cinched down tight.

I hit the ground with the back of my head and shoulders and apparently was out for awhile because when I came around my right leg which was twisted and hyper extended was "asleep" and I didn't have any leverage with it at all and I couldn't get it out of the foot strap and I couldn't pull myself up enough to reach the strap to loosen it.

After about an hour or so I finally wiggled my foot out of the strap and after resting for awhile I hobbled back to camp before the feeling started coming back to the leg much. I spent the rest of my trip sitting in camp putting ice out of the cooler on the ankle and calf muscle that got bruised all to hell on the edge of the platform. I had lots of time to think about the whole thing while I sat there pissed off because I couldn't hunt due to my own stupidity and a cheap tree stand.

When I got home I went down and bought a Summit viper with the stirrups for climbing. I'll never use a climber with those foot straps again. If I hadn't been able to get my foot loose I would have had several miserable days before I was late getting home and my wife sent my buddy looking for me.

Three times for me. All very different.
Fell from a tree deer hunting when I was 18 and fearless. Sprained my ankle, hunted the rest of the day then on crutches for a week.

Hit my head on a sharp broken limb getting into a tree stand on a bear hunt in Ont. Split my scalp to the bone, gash was as wide and long as my index finger. Stopped the bleeding by applying pressure with a spare shirt. Hunted the rest of the evening. Never got stiches and my head hurt all week.

Last was on a elk hunt. Had a flat rock break off the trail and dump me on a freefall 8 feet down the slope. Fall was stopped by a large Douglas fir tree. Had a hemotoma on my shin the size of a grape fruit. That was the minor injury. Had surgery 9 months later to repair the crushed disc in my spine.

I try to be careful, really I do.

Yes, I spent too much money and didn't need any ammo, or a rifle.

While quartering a pig, I sent the point of my sharp Buck 110 straight down into my thigh. Lucky I had sense enough to sit down when the dizziness hit: the next thing I knew, I opened my eyes staring up at the sky and feeling woozy.
It was a big pig, too. I'd been thinking about caping and mounting it. After the stab, I decided to just get the meat and skedaddle.

I didnt exactly hurt myself...a four wheel ATV helped...alot.....

Dislocated my left knee cap while rabbit hunting with my dad and brother when I was 14 years old. Luckily we were only a couple of hundred yards from the truck. It was about 3 hours from the time I did it till they got to the hospital. The doctor that set it was an old Army doctor that went all the way across Europe during WW 2. When he set my knee, I screamed like a mashed cat and dad had to peel mom off the doctor. That was funny. In nearly 50 years of hunting, that is the only time I got hurt.....knocking on wood.

PaPa260

Tripped over a root dragging a deer out. Landed on my shoulder. Initially the doc thought I had a labral tear. MRI revealed nothing. Ended up being a severe rotator cuff strain. Been just over a month and it is almost back to normal.

Pmc

Had a last minute chance to hunt with family back in PA, SIL offered her normal tree stand for a morning hunt, I should have looked it over closer since no one had used it that year (and she is a lot smaller that Me). I got to the sixth step when it and I came off the tree, landed on a rock that bruised my side and back.

Chased a buck out of a cornfield in Iowa while I was in college there, he had some distance on me and for some reason I thought I could cover enough ground to get a shot before he dissappeared into the woodline. There was a 15 foot creek between me and a clear shot and I tried to jump it,,,,, didn't make it and walked with a limp for 4 weeks until I had a buddy who knew how to work on knees popped it back in. Don't know exactly what he did, but have not had a single problem with the knee since. Come to think of it I should send him a Christmas card.

God bless
MM

"...a 15 foot creek" !!!!!!

Did you do a bellyflop halfway across?
I know I would have.

was at a full sprint when I hit it, came up about 3 feet short and bounced funny and landed on the bank, was not pretty I'm sure but didn't have an audience thank God.

I took a roll in a prickly pear patch last weekend. Hell yeah it hurt.

True story:
My grandpa (born in 1901, he is no longer with us) had a group of hunting buddies who would go out to chase elk. My grandpa was the only one to ever kill elk, as the other guys probably just wanted to get away from their wives and drink all week.
They found this old cabin off in the woods that they used as their camp. Four walls and it didn't leak too much.

Well, grandpa ends up shooting a nice 5x5 a couple miles from camp, near dark. He gutted the bull and cut off the head to bring to camp. Everyone got excited and they broke out the white lightning to celebrate.

Halfway down the jug someone came up with the bright idea to go get that bull, who cares if it's dark outside and the snow is up to your "little feller." So off they went.

It's a miracle that no one got hurt (yet) during the pack out. God loves a drunk, they say.

They make it back to camp and start on the second jug. Backstrap and taters sounds pretty good right about now, so one guy fires up the cookstove and puts some taters on to boil while another guy starts to cutting on the backstrap.

It's at this point that the entire hunting (drinking) party encounters BOTH the first and second law of thermodynamics, to wit: energy transfer as both work and heat, as well as the irreversibility of a physical process (combustion).

How is this, you might ask? The answer is as simple and clear as the similarity, in an altered (drunk off your ass) state, between water and white gas. With one, you boil potatoes. With the other, you blow the back wall off the cabin.

KABOOOOOMMMM...smoke and flame and burnt taters were everywhere! It's a wonder that no one was killed, although a couple got nasty burns and no one could hear well for a while.

The moral of the story? Once you start drinkin', keep drinkin'. Adding cooking will just burn down your cabin.