H3ll yeah!

The only time something really scared me was about 5 years ago. I was in stand as daylight started to fade just looking down at the forrest floor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement right in front of me. I looked up just in time to see two big sets of talons and a pair of wings. Turns out an owl mistook my face for a broken limb and thought it would be a good place to land. If I would have turned 2 seconds later ny head would have looked like swiss cheese. Needless to say I had to throw those underwear out.

Listeding to Art Bell on the radio on the way to your hunting ground is not recommended!

Being semi-scared from time to time in the dark is half the fun of hunting. You never feel more alive than you do when the hair on the back of your neck is standing up and you are wondering whether to run or not. It doesn't happen to me as much as it used to, unfortunately.

As a teenager, I had a number of times when I'd be hiking through the woods to a stand in the dark, and I'd hear something walking parallel to me in the woods. Whenever I would stop, the sound would stop. As soon as I would start walking, I would hear it again. I spent a lot of time stopping and shining my light around... The best scares would come when that was happening, and I was kind of nervous- and then a grouse would flush close by. After that I'd stand there swallowing hard to keep my heart from pumping itself out of my chest. I kind of miss those days.

I've come out of the woods and on the way jumped some turkeys out of some brush. They are really loud when the get moving.

I had a friend who was bowhunting one afternoon and right at dark as he was climbing down, a pack of coyotes started howling and cutting up just 40-50 yds in front of him. As soon as his feet hit the ground he started walking very fast back to truck. But he could hear the pack following just 20-30ft behind him. He got really nervous and started running, but he could still hear them right on his heels. He eventually made it to the field opening after about 300yds of running through the woods and when he hit the opening he realized he still had his bow and bow string tied to his fanny pack.

The idiot had been dragging his bow behind him for hundreds of yards and actually thought he was being hunted down my coyotes. Its funny how strange we can act when we are really scared.

Years ago, my parents and some neighbors had repeated sightings of a mountain lion in the area near their neighborhood. One morning, while standind next to my truck getting all my stuff ready to head in, the "thing" screamed loudly from deep in the woods . . . right about where I was going. It sent shivers up my spine and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. My flashlight wasn't working that morning either. Very scary walk in the darkness.

Come on Dave you didn't go hunting that morning If you did you waited until it got light out or you got some serious cojones


I did wake up next to a gal one morning after a long night at the bar that scares me to think about to this very day...........I seriously considered chewing off my own arm to keep from waking her up[:'(][&:]

Here's another story my dad swears happened. He and a buddy were doing some early season bowhunting here in Mississippi. It was later in the morning and my dad had climbed down and was waiting for his buddy to show up and the designated meeting spot. Not long he heard his buddy running through the woods screaming "bear, there's a bear chasing me!!!"" As his buddy nears, sure enough a he can make out a black bear trailing not too far behind. As his buddy catches up to him they continue running, they occasionally look back and can still see the bear chasing them. As you can imagine they are scared out of their mind, we have very few bears in MS, so none of them had ever had any experience with them. Finally they looked back and saw nothing, so they figured they had out run the beast. They slowed to a walk and continued down and old dirt road headed back to their truck. As they were walking, my dads friend feels something suddenly come up behind him and lick his hand!! As he jumps and screams and turns to see that the bad mean old bear was just a huge stray dog, mix between a chow and lab!!

I laugh every time I think of that story.

A few buddies and me visited a HUGE hunting farm near the Kruger National Park a few years back. I manage to walk and stalk a young impala ram to within 40 yards. The shot placement was OK, and a found him within a 100 yards or so. Only then did I realize there were only 2 hours or so daylight left. Well, I gutted the ram to get rid of some extra weight to enable me to still make the trip to the nearest road before it’s to dark to see anything. At first I manage to cover longer distances, but later on I had to rest more often resting the “backpack” impala against a tree. With the bow being extra weight I decided to hang it in on branch and return for it later. My mind was set on getting back to the road and nothing bothered me in the near dark until I had to rest yet again. At firs I thought it was just a small animal or something making the noise, but when I realized it was a spotted hyena the impala suddenly felt a lot less heavy. Well, the hungry crowd behind me grew to something between 3 and 5, trying to intimidate me with their creepy giggling-growling-rattling growls. Gaining confidence in numbers and steadily closing the gap, I decided that we really didn’t need camp meat that bad and got rid off the impala. When we later returned the remains wouldn’t even feed a Jack Russell. Alone, without your bow or any instrument to defend oneself, ya well, what would you have done?