Most Dangerous Moment Afield

[putm2sleep]

Most dangerous moment : did not happen to me, but affected me deeply. It happened to a NR who tried chasing a big bull and small herd in shorts and tshirt one evening. It was over 10 years ago now. We bid the man farewell and wished him good luck as we headed to town for a shower. I still remember what he wore and his southern draw. We returned several hours later to three 4-wheelers sitting in our camp. They were flashing their lights in a wicked thunderstorm and pouring down rain trying to 'light the way' for their friend. Long story short, his solo hunt on a gorgeous afternoon quickly turned to disaster in a few short hours with driving rain and high winds at night. No visibilty. No clue where he was, and no survival gear. Bad combo. He tried to make it back to camp, but never did. The flashing lights led him straight off a cliff, he fell ~800 ft to his death.

 

[gundog]

Had a 250 lb. wild boar attack me along a river bank when I was hog hunting with a bow. He charged at me several times slashing with his tusks before I jumped in the water. He didn't come in after me. He stood on the bank for several minutes making a lot of fuss before wandering off.

 

[TOM IN TENNESSEE]

An Afrikaner PH friend told me the most dangerous sound in the world was that of the tent zipper when alone with the Client's wife when he thought the client was out hunting...

 

[IdahoBugler]

Probably not dangerous to most but for me it could have been real ugly. I was up hunting one of our late archery hunts here in Idaho. I was driving my 4-wheeler on a dirt road in some pretty nasty snowy weather at about noon. I started hearing this screaming and thought I better stop to see what's going on. I pull over and stop to look back. 100 yards off the road is this hot springs with two chicks in it. One of them stands up completely nude and waves at me. I could see all she had and didn't need my 10x's to tell she was a true brunette. I simply waved and continued on. I couldn't get any hunting done that day as I was awe struck at what could have happened in my younger days. This is a true story and still scares the he!! out of me.

 

[noharleyyet]

...the dangerous part was the hook that the 'proof de brunette' was camouflaging.

 

[elk_hunter]

LMFAO Bugler...that is funny!

 

[TOM IN TENNESSEE]

An opportunity lost is an opportunity lost....

 

[Goldtip]

My closest call came back in the mid-80's, bowhunting back home in the NF of the Flathead. Was bugling up a storm, didn't do much cow calling back then. Heard a bull ripping up the alders on a steep slope so I decided all covered in cow elk piss like I am I will crawl in after him with the wind in my favor. Got in there a ways and came upon a just shredded up stump and looked about 15' to my right to see a grizzly standing there watching me.

At 6'2" and 280lbs, I am a fairly good sized fella, but had never before felt so immediately small and inconsequential, I immediately knew this was bad. I slowly stood up and did everything wrong, according to the experts your not supposed to make eye contact as that can be challenging, or I read that somewhere later, but I wanted to be facing him. I wanted to know what he was doing, not exactly sure what I was gonna do with that info, but I wanted to know it. He laid his ears back and popped his teeth and I was quite sure he was coming, but he never did. He simply circled me and would pop his teeth and stare at me. I am sure the whole episode lasted less than 30seconds to a minute, but seemed much longer. After he walked off down towards my trail in, I went ahead and hunted on into the drainage, and walked out after dark. Stupid mistake number 2 which my old man pointed out quite readily. I simply wanted to hunt that drainage and was scared that if I didn't do it that night, then I never would.

 

[CJ...$]

Probably not dangerous to most but for me it could have been real ugly. I was up hunting one of our late archery hunts here in Idaho. I was driving my 4-wheeler on a dirt road in some pretty nasty snowy weather at about noon. I started hearing this screaming and thought I better stop to see what's going on. I pull over and stop to look back. 100 yards off the road is this hot springs with two chicks in it. One of them stands up completely nude and waves at me. I could see all she had and didn't need my 10x's to tell she was a true brunette. I simply waved and continued on. I couldn't get any hunting done that day as I was awe struck at what could have happened in my younger days. This is a true story and still scares the he!! out of me.

Come On... you can tell us the "real Story"... we won't tell Its in the "Vault"

 

[mightyhunter]

This happened a few years ago. I was walking in the Wyoming backcountry in late spring by myself. I had my bear spray but left the .41 magnum at home. The bear spray was in the cordura holster on my hip. I had to cross a small tumbling stream with a hop to a rock in midstream and a jump to the other bank. I stopped in the middle of the stream on the rock and looked up. There was a boar grizzly bear about 6 ft. from me with his butt turned towards me eating a little grass. Another step forward, and I would have kneed him in the rear. I froze and started wobbling on the rock. I couldn't get the bear spray out of the too tight holster on my belt. I dropped my pants and pulled the spray with its holster off my belt and tried to hop back to the other side with the spray raised in my right hand and my left hand holding my pants up. The bear never saw, heard or smelled me. I never went back to that spot again without my .41 magnum. In fact, I have never been hiking without the .41 magnum since that day. A couple of years before this, I had been bluff charged by a grizzly bear during hunting season. I can honestly say that the bear charge paled in comparison to this incident. I still shudder when I think about what could have happened.

 

[arffdog875]

My very first hunt in CO, I was 19 and hunting alone. It was archery season, I had been hunting this area for two weeks, all my buddys warned me there were bear in the area, I should probably carry a pistol. I was 19 and stupid...why do I need to carry a pistol??? I found out...My first set up of the day next to a stand of scrub oak in the brush. I had been there for about an hour when I heard rustling above me about 30yds, it kept getting louder, then it seemed to split up, like there was more than one animal! SWEET! here comes my elk! OH S*$T !!!! A bear cub popped out of the brush...then a second...then a third! Thank goodness earlier I had reapplied my scent cover! I heard mom still feeding in the thicket, the cubs were playing and feeding in the opening right in front of me about 30 yds, not a care in the world. Mom finally came out of the thicket, still feeding along the edge, the cubs had started coming closer and closer, they were chasing each other, tackle each other, now they were 5 yds in front of me! The winds swirled and mom picked up her nose, and looked around for the cubs, she started walking around sniffing the wind ( I am guessing she winded me, but didn't know exactly where I was) She was 15 yds away when she bolted off to the left of me back in the thicket with the cubs in tow. I sat there for a while, before I got up and left for the day! I knew I was in a real bad spot and luckily all ended well but I think back if she would have thought I was a threat to the cubs???? Now I carry a pistol EVERY time I go into the woods!

 

[AZ Ron]

Great stories guys. The one time I feel was probably the most dangerous was during an AZ coues deer hunt in 2009. The night before the last day I had to hunt I'd shot at a buck right at dark and was pretty sure I had missed, but wanted to hike back up on the mountain the next morning to look around in the light to make sure. My buddy who I'd been hunting with the whole time didn't want to go up there and was looking for a last minute shooter. I hiked up the mountain in the dark, a couple of times looking up and thinking I saw a flashlight or something up above me. Wasn't sure if it was real or my eyes playing tricks on me.

I got to where I'd shot at the deer and hiked up to where the deer was standing and wasn't seeing any blood or anything. Dropped my pack where the deer had been standing and hiked up the ridge following the tracks. After searching for 45 minutes or so that morning (after searching an hour plus the night before), I convinced myself that I had missed.

I was almost up to a small saddle allowing a view into a bowl a couple of ridges over, so I hiked up to the saddle planning on doing some glassing. When I got up to the saddle, I saw a gallon water jug. No surprise, since I was 12 miles north of the Mexican border and was seeing them everywhere. What I saw next put me on full alert. I found two bales of pot (see below) up in the saddle, one out in the open, and the other hidden under a tree...

I wasn't sure how old the bales were and my thoughts went back to the possibility of me seeing a flashlight flicker above me up near where I was early that morning as I was hiking up. I locked and loaded, then backed out of there. I really wanted some pictures and my camera was down with my pack, so I hiked back down to get my pack, then hiked back up to take some pictures. I didn't stick around long and dropped down a bit to try and do some glassing. Felt very exposed sitting on the ridge with my attention focused out in front of me, so dove off the mountain and back to camp after making a quick call to border patrol...

Ron

 

[A-con]

Back in the mid 80s, my first trip to Wyoming hunting deer and antelope.
We filled our antelope tags and moved to a different spot for opening day of deer season.
The weather had been nice, blue bird sky’s and warm temperatures, so I hiked out of camp wearing my usual “California” hunting clothes.
Tennis shoes and cotton gym socks, blue jeans, a T-shirt under a long sleeve, light cotton shirt.
A bit chilly at dawn, then I warmed up as I hiked and hunted all day.
Sometime in the late afternoon I noticed it was getting darker and colder, funny, it’s not that late is it ?
I looked at my watch, still over an hour before sundown, so I looked up in the sky. That’s when first snow flake hit my face.
Within minuets, the temperature dropped to below freezing, and the snow was coming down, hard. Like white out blizzard hard.
I had a general idea where camp was (several miles away) , but I could not see fifty feet through the snow, and could not see any landmarks. I made my best guess and started hiking hard. I made it back to camp, ½ hour after dark with over a foot of snow on the ground. A few wrong turns and I could have been a popsicle.

 

[MuddyBull]

Opener of Archery elk season here in Western Wy several years back. A massive thunderstorm arrived about the time the sunrise should have. The air was warm and still and dawn came with an erie yellow cast of light. I could hear the storm approaching and then saw it as the dark front broke over the SW rim of the basin I was hunting. The wind then hit and lightning seemed to be hitting every where. I took cover under a thick low pine to wait it out and realized the prized brand new Hoyt Defiant I held in my hands was probably a bad idea. I left the bow there and hustled over to another hide. The wind, thunder and lightning increased to a combined roar and was joined by hail. The yellow glow was more intense and the hairs on arms were standing up. I was trying to maintain a 1 point contact with the earth ( tough to do a 1 legged squat) and waiting for the big boom of a strike.Amazingling nothing hit real close., After the storm passed a plane was overhead and smoke jumpers were landing just down the basin.
My buddy was hunting about 5 miles away and the first sign of the storm for him was a barrage of hail. He was watching a cow and calf elk in a meadow and when the hail hit both ran over to a pine tree and rammed their heads into the branches for protection. He quickly realized he should do the same thing!

 

[Lawnboy]

AZron, that is a crazy story and find. In montana we have to pack in weed free hay. Somehow I think yours was a different kind of weed Would make you nervous if they thought you knew. It's getting real ugly with these scum bag cartels down south

 

[2rocky]

Bumped a Griz in Wyoming at first light in black timber. No charge but I was pretty tense for a while.

 

[CJ...$]

Az Ron did you test it to make sure?... We can't blame those poor illeghals for everything... could be green tea:W:

 

[Gunner46]

This one isn't about me, but my son's mother. She was completely blind to the peril she truely faced. It wasn't a pleasant child custody issue. She was really trying to cut me completely off from my Boy. My attorney (and former CO) had packed the hall with the Marines I had been deployed to Desert Storm with, as character references.

Miss Smart A$$ boldly stands in front of the presiding Judge and announces, in her snootiest &itch tone, that " I had abandoned her, to go 'play' with my buddies" !!

(Ok, I Did have my hand up doing my best impression of Horshack going "Ouuuu, Ouuuu, Ouuu..Me, Me" when they called for volunteers), but the court didn't know that, and she was at her 'Finest' that day.

The place went completely silent ! Jaws dropped, WTF glances were shot everywhere. Veins on necks and foreheads started to bulge like a sweaty 300# fat chick in size 2 spandex slacks, in the middle of August !!!

To this day, she has No idea how close she came to being a casuality of un-friendly fire, when we left the court !

(And Yes.....I got full shared custody of my son )

 

[Mikeflies]

My first time in Colorado, back in the early 90's, we went up near Rifle to hunt Muleys. My Buddy & I got turned around in the woods & mountains and were lost. It took us about 6-8 hrs to figure out where we parked and how to get there. I know it sounds dumb, & we were at that age, but it made us better hunters and taught us to be more prepared for the mountains. Going from hunting in box blinds to walking the moutains was a huge change & lots of mistakes were made that trip. I just thankful we kept are cool and both killed deer on that trip & not ourselves.

 

[JLG]

Stuff

I guess, off the top of my head I can think of 4 different experiances I have had thru the years, a couple early in my life and the last 2 more recent. I guess a certain amount of living to older age really can be attributed to luck or someone looking out for you or a combination of both.
The first time I was probably 19 and on one of my first ever Javelina hunts. I grew up without a dad and while I had a few mentors thru the years, on this trip it was just me and a friend of mine the same age.
We were in unit 21 in Az. hunting off the Verde River and for some reason, we thought instead of going back thru the same canyon we had hiked in, climbing out would be a better idea. Nothing bad happened in the end but it wasn't for lack of trying. I can remember what was probably a 1/2 hour or 45 minutes of terror, as we belly crawled our way to the top of this lose rock covered mountainside grabbing plants to keep from falling to our deaths in the river below. Crazy kid stuff, but it wasn't our day to go. I can still remember how much fear I felt.
Second time was two events in one trip, probably a year later, another Javelina hunt. We had had no success on prior hunts, to that point Javelina were a myth. I had never seen one dead or alive. Javelina season in Az can be blue-bird weather or rain, rain and more rain, it seems to alternate each year. That year it had rained in bunches, we where in school and couldn't make it out opening day, we got up opening evening to see two pigs hanging in another camp. We got so excited we decided to take off right than and there and find some for ourselves. It was maybe 45 minutes before dark, just our guns no other equipment. I had never been there before, my friend had and he said we could hit the wash at the bottom cut the 2-tracker and walk back to camp in the dark. It sounded ok, but in practice we missed the road and it was a moonless night. We had sweat shirts on and not much else to keep warm. We ended up spending most of the night making a lean 2 and used prickly pear pads for shingles. We finished about 2 in the morning and crawled in to try and stay warm. If it had rained that night, we probably would have died from exposer. It didn't rain, once the sun came up, when we climbed out of the canyon we where maybe 400 yards away from camp.
Not having enough we went back out and it did start to rain and rain hard. I got soaked to the bone and was hypertheimic. My buddy and I had split up and he was smart enough to go back and get his truck and come back and look for me. I was on the verge of not being able to think straight when I heard his truck horn. I can remember how much pain I was in when my fingers started to warm-up again. It hurt so bad, I had tears in my eyes. Once we got back to the tent, I climbed into my sleeping bag and slept for the next 18 hours.
This one happend 3 years ago on the San Carlos reservation, we had pig tags in unit C. The weather was crap and I should have went out the way we went in, but I took the high road. We battled our way for 15 miles of downed powerlines and washed out roads and raging washes. We hit an area on the road that had been washed out. It was 6 feet across and 4 feet deep. I tried to skirt it, but we got buried to the frame in mud. We spent 3 hours trying to dig free, but it wasn't going to happen. It started to snow, 3 maybe 4 inches. I had been in this area before and I was almost positive that we were a couple miles from hardtop and a couple more miles from an area we could get cell service. It was almost dark and I decided we would spend the night in the truck and hike out in the morning, but I all I could hear running thru my mind was people who leave their vehicles end up dead. We had plenty of gear, food and water, so I spent most of the night thinking of things to bring with us if I was wrong, to survive on.
Morning came and we started hiking, turned out we where only about a 1/2 mile from the paved road, we had walked about 400 yards when a truck came by and they gave us a lift to the Nantac Rim, where we could get cell service. We where a day late and our wives had already call the San Carlos Game and Fish. They sent a ranger to get us and he took us back to my truck and winched it out and we where on our way home. I can remember how good it felt to be sitting on the Nantac Rim, all snow covered looking at the amazing beauty of the surrounds knowing that we were going to be ok, while waiting for the ranger to show.
The last one was more along the lines of Ron in Az's. I like to hunt in a unit down on the border, it has a ton of Coues. We where 8 miles from Mexico, we had a great hunt, we where into deer all day. I had my friend on about 110 inch buck, he was about 200 yards from getting into shooting position when the big buck and his buddy took off like a bat out of hell. If you have ever hunted down there all the passes have trails running thru them going north and south, the trails from the volume of human traffic are worn smooth and a foot wide in places. Well to make a long story shorter 15 UDI's came thru the same small canyon the bucks where in and blew my buddies chance at a Coues deer of a lifetime. We got back to camp that night and had one more chance the next day which would be the last day of the season. For the 2 days we where there Border Patrol had trucks and Helos running all thru that country, it wasn't very quiet or peaceful.
The next day we hiked a highpoint and I glassed up a nice buck, I sent my friend after him and the buck boggered out. I watched him rebed and got my friend to about 20 yards over the course of a couple hours, but the buck took off like a rocket and he never even had time to get his gun up. At this time we were running out of time. I glassed up one more buck just before dark, he was able to close the distance and kill him just at dark. As I was heading over to help him we got litup by a border patrol Helo using a searchlight.
That country at night is a scary place to be. We both made it to the deer and boned it out. We saw a flashlight for a couple of seconds about 500 yards away from us. Between seeing the UDI's, the Border Patrol in trucks, on foot and in Helo's knowing we where probably 3 miles from our truck, it was really pretty scary coming out. I carried my 9MM in my hand but if 5 or 10 folks had meant to do us wrong, I could probably have killed two or three before they got my gun away from me and gave me a 9MM enimma. I love that country and it has a ton of deer, but you put your life in your hands going down there. Take Care, JLG.