I belonged to a club that had a tremdous wild pack of dogs one year. We shot 23 of them off our 1800 acres. The pig farmer next door got 20 with poison after loosing 40 pigs. Anyway, they were rather mean. Deer killing machines. They never sounded when running deer. Pure predators. I put my 14 year old nephew in a stand one time. I told him when he heard me honk, to get down and walk out. He was only 150 yards off the road. I honked. A few minutes ....nothing. I honked again. I got out and yelled. He yelled for me to bring a gun which I had in the truck. He had already come down when I honked but got run back up the tree by the dogs. THey wouldn't leave him until I showed up with the gun. Just as I caught a glimpse of the first dog they lit out. I missed. A couple weeks later my hunting buddy had wounded a deer with the bow. We were tracking a very poor trail. We'd gone a lot further than we would have if it had been a good hit. Anyway, we went down into this little creek. When we came up the other side we were confronted by 6 dogs that started circling left and right, growling and snarling. They weren't backing off. They had cut the trail of the wounded deer. We had picked up their tracks in some sand just before the creek. We shot two with the bow and that made them back off but they wouldn't leave.They figured it was their blood trail. We stuck together trying to get close enough for a couple more shots but never could. They finally on cue turned and loped off leaving their two dead buddies. We lost the blood, probably from looking over our shoulder.

I had a pack of coyotes one night after dark just seem to taunt me until I got out of the deep woods across this beaver pond in the Adirondacks. I started down the tree and they started howling 75 yards away. I went right back up. Found my flashlight, talked to my dead Uncle Ted. Yelled a little and they moved away. I walked faster and faster when I got down. The serenaded me all the way until i crossed back over a beaver pond and got closer to the road. Just unnerving not being able to see them and have them move when you did. I put distance between us, but they didn't get spooked at all with my Uncle Ted stuff. A week before another bowhunter hunter in the same woods had to return with a gun to claim a deer he'd already gutted. He had gone to get his truck, when he came back the coyotes had claimed his deer and wouldn't back off. That's when he raced them to his truck for the gun. When he came back one shot sent them packing.

We got spooked a lot hunting in Vietnam.