Ever get Spooked while hunting ?
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While reading about Pastor Harold’s bear hunting, I got to thinking about all the hunting I have done. I couldn’t even start to guess at the thousands of hours I’ve spent hunting. Deer and quail mostly but some dove and even crows. My dads side of the family lives in the eastern part of N.C. while I’ve lived in the western part most of my life. When I got old enough I started spending a great deal of time there hunting and fishing. Some of my relatives thought they would join in and the outcome was quite funny at times.
I have taken a relative deer hunting and told him I would come back for him after dark only to get there and find him gone. But I could see his flashlight moving around in the swamp 4 or 500 yards away and waded that swamp watching the light till I was about 100 feet away when it just winked out. I get to that spot and the water is clear ( nothing has walked there in hours and the trees are empty. Foxfire is my guess but I get back and learn the he was out of the woods an hour before dark. Something about the place spooked him..LOL
I took the same person hunting another time. We had to walk in on an old road bed between 2 year old cut timber and old growth hardwoods right past a very old grave yard with markers from the 1700s. There was to be a full moon that night and this was the first time I had hunted here so I told him that I would be a while after dark getting back to him because the deer most often move late on a full moon and though I could not and would not shoot, I wanted to see what was there.
Same as the time before. I got to the tree I put him in and nothing. The moon is so bright that my flashlight is still in my pack. I called and I whistled and nothing. I double checked to make sure I was in the right spot and I was. So I know he has run out and left me yet again. Now there is a bend in the old road more of a wagon path than a road but the bend is right beside the graveyard and as I started getting near it I started seeing something in the air that seemed almost to be glowing like a coal. I thought for a second that maybe this was what had caused Rick to leave but then he would have had to go through half a mile of saw briars and blackberry thickets or deep into the woods to skirt around it.
As I got nearer, It got brighter and it was like a long and very thin snake floating about 6 feet in the air. About the time I was getting to the near end of it something that glowed like a ball of orange fire showed up around the bend and this caused me to stop in my tracks but after a second I reached and got the near end and I could hardly walk for laughing !
Now this land we were hunting belonged to his wifes family and had been theirs for many generations. It was a warm evening and when I got to their home all of them were outside sitting at a pic-nik table waiting on me. I asked them how long Rick had been back ( he was sitting there too) And they said about dark.. And so I said Rick, where is your boggin ? And he sheepishly says he don’t know. Well I know I said and I started telling everyone what Rick did.
I put him in a tall hickory tree in the edge of the big woods where the cut timber made a 90 degree turn to the right. I had not thought about it at the time, ( We used climbing stands ) but from up there he had a perfect view of the grave yard and did not want to sit there in the dark within sight of it. He might see something he don’t wanna see ! So he starts getting down but he has to pack up his stand so he is later than he thought. So its dark 30 by the time he starts passing the graveyard. He is thinking hard about what might be in there when something pulls at his blaze orange knit cap and Rick, not needing more info than there is something pulling on his boggin at dark beside a 250 year old graveyard, Takes off running leaving a trail of yarn hanging off the briar that had snagged his boggin until 5 or so yards later when spook number two ( another briar ) Takes his boggin from him ! He don’t even look back !
Now I’m telling this tale and trying hard to breath and talk and laugh at the same time.. Ricks wifes family is in tears from laughing and I say one thing more that really brings down the house.. Rick, You know your scared when a booger makes you give up your boggin ! And I pulled the boggin out of my pocket. yard after yard of yarn and then a partly unmade blaze orange boggin…….
Now this was all about someone else, But I have tales about my self being scared about out of my wits as well. Anyone else ?
I have taken a relative deer hunting and told him I would come back for him after dark only to get there and find him gone. But I could see his flashlight moving around in the swamp 4 or 500 yards away and waded that swamp watching the light till I was about 100 feet away when it just winked out. I get to that spot and the water is clear ( nothing has walked there in hours and the trees are empty. Foxfire is my guess but I get back and learn the he was out of the woods an hour before dark. Something about the place spooked him..LOL
I took the same person hunting another time. We had to walk in on an old road bed between 2 year old cut timber and old growth hardwoods right past a very old grave yard with markers from the 1700s. There was to be a full moon that night and this was the first time I had hunted here so I told him that I would be a while after dark getting back to him because the deer most often move late on a full moon and though I could not and would not shoot, I wanted to see what was there.
Same as the time before. I got to the tree I put him in and nothing. The moon is so bright that my flashlight is still in my pack. I called and I whistled and nothing. I double checked to make sure I was in the right spot and I was. So I know he has run out and left me yet again. Now there is a bend in the old road more of a wagon path than a road but the bend is right beside the graveyard and as I started getting near it I started seeing something in the air that seemed almost to be glowing like a coal. I thought for a second that maybe this was what had caused Rick to leave but then he would have had to go through half a mile of saw briars and blackberry thickets or deep into the woods to skirt around it.
As I got nearer, It got brighter and it was like a long and very thin snake floating about 6 feet in the air. About the time I was getting to the near end of it something that glowed like a ball of orange fire showed up around the bend and this caused me to stop in my tracks but after a second I reached and got the near end and I could hardly walk for laughing !
Now this land we were hunting belonged to his wifes family and had been theirs for many generations. It was a warm evening and when I got to their home all of them were outside sitting at a pic-nik table waiting on me. I asked them how long Rick had been back ( he was sitting there too) And they said about dark.. And so I said Rick, where is your boggin ? And he sheepishly says he don’t know. Well I know I said and I started telling everyone what Rick did.
I put him in a tall hickory tree in the edge of the big woods where the cut timber made a 90 degree turn to the right. I had not thought about it at the time, ( We used climbing stands ) but from up there he had a perfect view of the grave yard and did not want to sit there in the dark within sight of it. He might see something he don’t wanna see ! So he starts getting down but he has to pack up his stand so he is later than he thought. So its dark 30 by the time he starts passing the graveyard. He is thinking hard about what might be in there when something pulls at his blaze orange knit cap and Rick, not needing more info than there is something pulling on his boggin at dark beside a 250 year old graveyard, Takes off running leaving a trail of yarn hanging off the briar that had snagged his boggin until 5 or so yards later when spook number two ( another briar ) Takes his boggin from him ! He don’t even look back !
Now I’m telling this tale and trying hard to breath and talk and laugh at the same time.. Ricks wifes family is in tears from laughing and I say one thing more that really brings down the house.. Rick, You know your scared when a booger makes you give up your boggin ! And I pulled the boggin out of my pocket. yard after yard of yarn and then a partly unmade blaze orange boggin…….
Now this was all about someone else, But I have tales about my self being scared about out of my wits as well. Anyone else ?
I’ve never been hunting in the traditional sense- where I grew up I could walk out the back door and shoot a deer standing 50 feet away. But when I was a kid we attended Greenbottom Baptist Church, a little country church surrounded by a cemetery. I loved walking around out there at night and scaring myself to death.
Then there’s the time that I heard a preacher wonder if the departure of all the saints of God from the church created a vacuum, and all the nasty little demons came in as Christians went out. I would be cleaning the church at night and hear things that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. I never dropped my dust rag and headed for the door though.
Too many formative years spend hiding under a side table late at night while my mom watched Chiller Theatre and The Twilight Zone have made me immune to boogeymen and things that go bump in the night. The only things that still creep me out are store mannequins.
Then there’s the time that I heard a preacher wonder if the departure of all the saints of God from the church created a vacuum, and all the nasty little demons came in as Christians went out. I would be cleaning the church at night and hear things that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. I never dropped my dust rag and headed for the door though.
Too many formative years spend hiding under a side table late at night while my mom watched Chiller Theatre and The Twilight Zone have made me immune to boogeymen and things that go bump in the night. The only things that still creep me out are store mannequins.
Store mannequins…watch the first episode of Doctor Who (new series).
As far as being spooked, I cannot remember if I ever was. Then again, when hunting with my family, we tended to stick together for the most part. I think I was more scared of being bit by a rattlesnake (almost happened. We were sitting and my dad told me not to move. Then I realized why, a rattlesnake was slithering but a few feet from me.) or walking through poison ivy than being scared of lights or noises.
btw, I had to look up foxfire, that is amazing stuff.
As far as being spooked, I cannot remember if I ever was. Then again, when hunting with my family, we tended to stick together for the most part. I think I was more scared of being bit by a rattlesnake (almost happened. We were sitting and my dad told me not to move. Then I realized why, a rattlesnake was slithering but a few feet from me.) or walking through poison ivy than being scared of lights or noises.
btw, I had to look up foxfire, that is amazing stuff.
I used to love to tell ghost stories to the neighbor kids. They would get so wound up and scared, they’d be terrified to even walk up their own front steps without me right there to watch them. I confess I indulged in a sense of superiority in that I knew full well that none of the things in my stories were real, and I would happily skip home after tormenting them. ;)
I think I got repaid for that attitude later though. Once I watched an episode of Unsolved Mysteries where aliens were sneaking into kids’ rooms and doing experiments on them. I couldn’t sleep at all that night, and thereafter for years couldn’t sleep without hugging a stuffed animal. :D In that same episode there was a posessed TV that had eyes in the screen, even after it was unplugged. I had a hard time facing the TV in my room in the dark for a while after that too.
Funny the battles our irrationality wins.
I think I got repaid for that attitude later though. Once I watched an episode of Unsolved Mysteries where aliens were sneaking into kids’ rooms and doing experiments on them. I couldn’t sleep at all that night, and thereafter for years couldn’t sleep without hugging a stuffed animal. :D In that same episode there was a posessed TV that had eyes in the screen, even after it was unplugged. I had a hard time facing the TV in my room in the dark for a while after that too.
Funny the battles our irrationality wins.
I had a friend that once hunted pretty deep in the mountains. Huge old growth timber and very hard hunting for a number of reasons the first being a low number of deer per square mile.
At any rate, This was not a person that had a fear of being alone in the big woods. He is in his tree stand with a bow and about an hour before dark he hears footsteps in the leaves. But they don’t sound like a deer, they sound like a person. ( A deer that thinks it is safe will make as much noise walking as a crowd of people. I don’t know why they do it but they will drag their legs through dry leaves while they walk )
But the steps kept getting louder and closer but he could not see a thing. And when I say old growth I mean that you can see a good distance under them save for a patch of laural here and there. So he can pin point where the sound is but there is nothing there. He lets it go until the sound is almost under his tree and he can stand it no longer. LOL This is the mountain where the “Brown mountain lights” are found ( Do a Google search) and even a brave man has to give way to what his eyes and or ears are telling him now and then.
So he climbs down out of his stand and even standing flat footed he can here the walking and there is no one there. So he goes where the sound is and nothing. But after standing still a couple of minutes the sound starts up again. It is almost under his feet and still he can’t see a thing but dry leaves.. So he moves leaves that are a couple of feet deep and there is his walker.. A box turtle ploughing under the leaves..LOL
At any rate, This was not a person that had a fear of being alone in the big woods. He is in his tree stand with a bow and about an hour before dark he hears footsteps in the leaves. But they don’t sound like a deer, they sound like a person. ( A deer that thinks it is safe will make as much noise walking as a crowd of people. I don’t know why they do it but they will drag their legs through dry leaves while they walk )
But the steps kept getting louder and closer but he could not see a thing. And when I say old growth I mean that you can see a good distance under them save for a patch of laural here and there. So he can pin point where the sound is but there is nothing there. He lets it go until the sound is almost under his tree and he can stand it no longer. LOL This is the mountain where the “Brown mountain lights” are found ( Do a Google search) and even a brave man has to give way to what his eyes and or ears are telling him now and then.
So he climbs down out of his stand and even standing flat footed he can here the walking and there is no one there. So he goes where the sound is and nothing. But after standing still a couple of minutes the sound starts up again. It is almost under his feet and still he can’t see a thing but dry leaves.. So he moves leaves that are a couple of feet deep and there is his walker.. A box turtle ploughing under the leaves..LOL
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