My scariest moment was just this past deer season.
I hunt on public land in Iowa, which can be a scary experience in and of itself. On opening day of the 2nd gun season, I saw 8 other hunters and no deer. 4 of the hunters came within 20 yards of me and 3 of which didn't see me until they were less than 20 yds away. This scares me since I was wearing all blaze orange in the woods sitting directly in front of a down tree.

The next morning, I parked my car and started walking to my spot about 5:45AM (an hour and a half before sunrise). It was less than a quarter moon with heavy cloud cover so much so that I had to use my maglight most of the way out to my stand which is something I usually try not to use at all when the moon is sufficient to walk by since I know the mile to my spot pretty damn well.

I got to my spot, settled in, re-descented, and put some cover scent on the trees around me. At this point, it is so dark in the woods I can barely see my gun across my lap and not much else. When I extend my arm, I can't see my orange shooter gloves at the end of my hand. It's about 20 degrees out and very little wind if any.

I hear something walking in the leaves near me. I assume it's another hunter, or a squirrel since it's making a lot of noise, but I sit as still as I can as it moves closer to me. I get the sixth sense feeling where the hair on my neck and arms is standing straight up knowing that I am not alone and whatever else is out there is very close to me.

The sound splits into two separate entities, 1 sounds about 10 yards straight ahead of me, and 1 is about half that distance to my right. I can hear them both rustling about in the leaves and occassionally pausing as if they know they aren't alone. The smaller (I'm guessing because it was quieter) one is the closer one, and it gets to where I can vaguely make out a silhouette about 10 feet from me and I'm pretty sure it's a doe, but all I can see is it is about 25-30 inches high at the shoulder and looking at me. I shift a bit to try to get a better look and it startles and moves about 5 feet back.

The bigger one moves closer to me as if trying to see what startled the smaller one. It's still nearly pitch black out, but I can see the outline of it about 15 feet from me walking straight at me and it's at least 3 feet tall at the shoulders. At this point, I have nearly filled my boxers and I am getting really freaked out. I move my shotgun to a position where I can fire it quickly should whatever the hell this is decide to attack. It hears me move and stops cold. There is about a 20 second silence that seemed like years. I can feel the sweat running down my face and I am really wishing I could afford a stronger gun than the 20 guage I got for my 13th birthday.

The larger one lets out a snort and begins pawing the ground slowly moving a little bit closer and a little bit closer. I shift the gun up to my shoulder preparing to have to use it for defense for the first time in my life. The big one spooks and they take off running.

I spent the remaining 45 minutes until daylight re-living what happend and working on convincing myself that it was a buckand a doe and not a coyote or whatever the hell else roams the woods of rural Iowa.

About 2 hours after sunrise, the woods is still quiet, so I slowly get up and move towards where whatever it was was scraping the ground. Thankfully I found rather large deer prints in the middle of the scraped area. About 40 minutes later, a large 8pter came within about 100 yards of me and kept looking in my direction. I can only assume it was the same guy, but I never had a decent shot at him within reasonable 20 ga distance.

The following Saturday, I bagged a good sized doe, so the season had a positive end result, even if it wasn't a repeat of the 13pter from 2005.