Funny hunt stories?

[gnappi]

Hunting shouldn't be funny but sometimes it is. 

I used to hunt Florida WMA's and had a few good ones.

The first I was fully camouflaged (before bright orange / red became mandatory) in my tree stand with my XP and a bit of water, trail mix and bottle for piss. After the sun came up a guy wearing more bright orange than you'd see at the Mardi Gras smashed his way through a game trail and stopped right under my stand, laid his rifle down, and took off his jacket in preparation to take a leak. I didn't want him fouling my area so in a deep voice from 12 feet or so directly above him I said "Don't do that" I could see the panic in him as he looked around for the voice and I think he peed his pants. When I said in the deep voice, "UP HERE" the guy literally fell on his butt. I think he peed himself again maybe thinking the voice was divine in nature. He  got up, mumbled Sssorry, grabbed his jacket and gun and crashed his way down the game trail :-)

Next I planned to go with a neighbor who was a welder by trade and was VERY interested in my climbing tree stand and asked if he could borrow it to fab one in aluminum at his shop. In a couple of weeks he showed up with a VERY light near duplicate stand made of gleaming aluminum telling me how much easier it would be to carry afield than my steel stand.

I pointed out that he hadn't yet cut the teeth for the climbing sections and he said he wasn't going to cut them in because his weight would force the beveled edge he ground in to the bark and hold him.

Anyway, these were some VERY tall rough bark pine trees I hunted in, and even though I generally used one or two particular trees I took a small axe to trim dead branches on the way up to a new tree if needed. It's a good thing I did.

Well, Bob picked a tree that had not been prepped for the tree stand, did not take an axe and smashed them off on the way up (making a LOT of noise) and went up, up, up, then when he was nearly at the top I heard a loud scraping noise, and loud cursing. I shone my flashlight on him, and his foot section had slid down off the tree and was held only by the straps on it to his boots. Then came the loud pleas for help while he hung like an ape from the top section which for now was holding all of his weight. Gads, that would have made a GR8 pic! 

Bob was a pretty big guy and if he fell from 12'-13' with a jumble of aluminum among blow downs he would have been in sorry shape.

I slowly climbed down, and l went to look for a sapling to cut down to hold the foot section to the tree so he could climb down. I guess the  poor guy hung there 15 minutes or more till I found a sapling long and thick enough to help him with. When he got to the ground he went to the truck and tent for the day. Gads, the effort he put in to not fall was nothing short of Herculean! 

The last occasion (not really funny but a learning experience) I was alone, it was bow season and I was in "my" tree as usual. When the sun started to come up a herd of deer broke through the fog a hundred + yards away and an armadillo got under me and started making a RACKET rooting among the saw palmetto. What to do? Leave it alone? Shoot it? Dang, it wouldn't be long before the deer got close enough to hear him and bolt, so in my twenty something inexperienced youth I decided to shoot him. BAD MOVE!!!

I shot it from almost straight up on top of it and that bugger jumped up and ran in circles within the saw palmetto stand and the noise was TRIPLED so I shot him AGAIN! Now with two arrows in him (one vertically, one in one of his sides) he took off making even more noise and the deer ran. Now I had to end it. He presented me with his other side and I nailed him with ANOTHER broadhead and it took off again looking from the rear like triple crossed swords in a shield.  

I climbed down and took him out with a practice arrow tip and I felt like dirt. I came to realize that... NATURAL noise afield was better than the din I caused, and to boot I lost three hopelessly bent custom made arrows for my effort. 

 

[rufus]

Those are great stories, thank you for sharing.

[JM]

Called in a cotton tail with a quail call once. I was standing in front of my truck, in the middle of a single lane dirt road in full daylight, sounding for quail when the bunny hopped out of the brush onto the road. Each time I called, the bunny hopped towards me. Never did call in any quail.

[jack]

If we are sharing:

I have been fortunate to live my whole life in country well populated with black bears. While we spend a great deal of time fretting over what to use to fend on off should he decide to devour our boots, I have largely found them to be entertaining, and often hilarious in their own environment. Many years ago, a friend came for a visit and we decided to hit the woods and do a little early fall squirrel hunting. Now this chap was always a jumpy nervous sort of fellow, and in the woods he was always a little too fast, to hurried, to noisy, and he just couldn't seem to dial it down and relax. BUT, I had a plan. I had a little spot with nice open two tracks, great population of critters, TONS of acorns, and I figured old Steve could get around noiselessly enough to waylay one or two even if he was a bit rushed. We had gone maybe a couple of hundred yards when i heard the tell-tail sounds of a squirrel rooting in the leaves just off to the side of the lane. There was a large blow down and I whispered to Steve that he needed to sneak up SLOWLY to that windfall and he would fetch him that critter rooting around on the other side. To his credit, he did it ALL right - great stalk, nice and slow, plenty quiet on the dry leaves, right up to the tree, and when he looked over the blow down there he was, 150 lbs of little black bear doing his best impression of a squirrel rooting around in the leaves! My friend stopped mid stride. The bear stopped mid rooting. Dawning realization on BOTH faces occurred simultaneously. If you have never been close to them you may not realize that bears have very expressive faces, and this one's face expressed total shock, utter surprise, and sheer terror in rapid fire order. If you have never been in close proximity to Steve you would not know that he too has a very expressive face and in those two or three heart beats it mimicked the bear look for look. Then, the bear did what bears will do, and he let out that shocked drawn out bawl of alarms that only a black bear seems capable of, turned and ran right straight up the two track away from us. Man he was flying, you could see the bottoms of his feet, dirt was kicking up, hair was standing out all over, and the whole time he was just bawling and bawling at the top of his lungs. At the same time, my friend had dropped his rifle on the ground at the first drawn out moan from the bear, and with stunning alacrity was heading down the two track in the opposite direction from the bear - he too was hollering at the top of his lungs in a continuous series of squalls. He was kicking up the dirt and you could see the flats on his feet. I stood in one spot and laughed. After a mad dash of about a hundred yards the bear stopped just as suddenly as he started, and Steve came to a halt at almost the same instant, both looked back and I swear both had the same exact "what-the-hell" look on their faces. After a few seconds the bears seemed to gather composure and made that attempt that all scared animals seem to do to regain a degree of dignity. He turned away and slowly walked off trying to look unconcerned. My friend made no such attempt - After seeing the bear walking away he turned and headed for the truck, double time, leaving his rifle right where he dropped it. I fetched the gun and sides hurting from laughter I made my way back to the pickup. Steve was shut in the truck with the windows up. When I climbed in, I said "Your not supposed to run ya know?" He said nothing, but the hunting was done for the day and the weekend!

In the 3 plus decades since this happened, the story has been told - mostly by Steve - in our respective family circles many times. It has come to be known as Steve's bear charge story. The bear has grown some over time and is now somewhere between 500 and 600 lbs depending on the number of beers utilized in the telling. The shocked bawling has generally been replaced with roars of rage. The stunned surprise is, of course, now ferociously aggressive, raised hackle, growling,blowing, lip popping, slavering terror-on-toes. And of course our intrepid hero held his ground with a measly 22 rifle as his only protection from certain death. It was touch and go for some time but finally ended with the bear grudgingly giving way in retreat. The story usually serves as explanation for why Steve never hits the woods without a heavily loaded 44 on his hip now. Whenever the tale gets a little TOO large in the telling someone who heard to story in its original form will ask if the sound of a 44 revolver hitting the ground is more scary to bears than the sound of a falling 22 rifle . . .

[brant]

I have a similar story as jack does above. 30 some years ago I was a broke college freshman. A good friend who was neither broke or in college offered to take me bow hunting on his Texas lease. The 2 of us were joined by his father and his father’s friend who I will call Bob. Ol Bob enjoyed a drink and a yarrn at night after the hunt and we became pals quickly.
He and I were sharing a big ground blind sitting back to back and he signaled to me that he saw a deer. It was a long horned spike and was exactly the kind of cull we were told to shoot. The deer wasn’t in range yet but good ol Bob was jacked up with excitement when a skinny little black snake joined us in the blind. I was lucky that on didn’t stomp me to death! He screamed and flailed so bad that I thought he was having some sort of seizure! When he regained his composure and I eventually stopped laughing, he calmly asked, “Would you please not tell the guys?” I obliged.
I had admired his Dan wesson 41 magnum and he let me shoot it at the camp range. It was the first DW I had ever seen. He was leaving early the next morning and offered me the Dan Wesson 41 as a gift in exchange for keeping my promise and not embarrassing him. I refused the gift and shook his hand instead. We exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch.

A month or so later I picked him up a bottle of his favorite beverage and headed to his business shop that he owned. I was invited to a feed he was giving his employees and customers. As he got deeper in that bottle I gave him he retold his story of how his stalk on the 11 point buck was ruined by a rattle snake that was as big around as his calf and carried a string of rattle as long as a cigar! He picked me out a real nice steak after that!

[kevshell]

It wasn't really funny at the time but now that I'm older, it is.

I was initially taken deer hunting by a guy I worked for on weekends splitting firewood. At 14 I was happy with my Savage 24 .22/20ga over under. We hunted in a shotgun only county I used that shotgun for squirrel, rabbit, deer, ground hogs, etc. There was about 6 that went on opening day. A few had rifles (and weren't ones to follow rules) and the rest had 870s and 1100's - some with scopes. They had their prime spots picked out. They dropped me off to sit on a stump at a little draw which was 50 yards inside the woods at the corner of the field. Looking back I'm sure they had no plan for me other than "put him somewhere". About 30 minutes after light I started hearing what I thought was squirrels. About 30 minutes later I saw a nose on the ground with horns coming up the draw. He was a whopping 25 yards away. I started to raise my shotgun and he lifted his head and stared at me for a few minutes. He went back to trailing the doe and I put a slug behind his front leg. He didn't go anywhere. The group came back at lunchtime to pick me up and the looks on their faces were priceless. They looked at me, then the buck, then back to me and back to the buck. They were in disbelief. I think one guy got a scrub 4 point and mine was a nice 7 point with a huge neck. It wasn't funny then but now looking back it is really funny and more funny if you knew the guys I went with.

[cas]

My early 20's, best friend and I were up at my grandfather's hunting cabin for the weekend. Not hunting, just hanging out and doing A LOT of shooting. At some point I'm out in the yard with my then new single shot 10ga, and a crow was unfortunate enough to fly by. I'm not, and never have been one to shoot critters just to shoot them, but he was on the "we never eat one of those" list. So "Blooom! and down it comes. My friend and I find where he fell out in the field, we're standing there looking at it when it jumps up and starts running away! Ah!

I only had the one shell with me, not that I'd want to shoot it again with the 10ga, so I run as fast as I can up the yard and into the cabin and grabbed my JC Higgins single shot .22 and a couple bullets and run back down the hill to finish him off.

This bird is now making his way down the yard and towards the road. I'm out of breath as I trying to shoot a moving bird in the head so as not to damage more meat. After the first miss he double times it down the dirt driveway and starts running down the road! Praying no cars come, and being careful I don't shoot the neighbors barn down the road, I fire the last round I have and he drops. Thank goodness.

We run over to him, I nudge him with my foot to make sure he's dead. We're standing in the middle of the road, so I quickly pick him up by his feet and we vacate the scene of the crime. (can't be shooting birds in the middle of the road.)

We quick jog back up the road and into the yards a ways. I set him down and my friend and I are there standing over him, hands on our knees catching our breath. We're looking him over good, having never seen a crow up close. Well, that last shot must have hit him in the head and knocked him out. Because he shook a bit and the damn thing jumped and ran away again!

Of course I have no more ammo, so I have to race back to the cabin, then back down the hill were the whole scene repeated itself, back down the driveway and FINALLY killing it at the edge of the road.


When people eat crow, they eat the breasts. We didn't know that, don't know why we didn't think of it. Instead we eat the legs. Cooked over a campfire. Tasted like sucking on a penny.

[cas]

Thinking about something else, I remembered something funny (at least looking back) about that 10ga. The first time I shot a turkey with it.



I guess thinking too much and not enough. I was in the woods on a good uphill grade, back to a tree facing up the hill. I was calling a tom off to my left, calling him off private land into the state land where I was. All in all it went perfect, this was my first bird, first time getting one in this close. He came maybe a 100 yards or more, but coming in from my left there was no way for me to turn his way, blocked by trees and brush. It wasn't until he was about 15 yards away, straight in front of me that he cleared a large tree and I had a shot.

I was sitting low with my back to a tree, one knee raised. I had my elbow on my leg. I had been in that position for a long long time. For some reason I had my support hand in a fist, with the fore end resting on my knuckles. I guess because it was more comfortable. I think maybe for the same reason, the "grip" I had on the stock was like you'd hold a precision rifle or a benchrest rifle. Thumb straight along the right side of the wrist, fingers under the wrist but not really holding it, just barely touching it. So when I fired, it would have been 100% free recoil, except for the fact that my shoulder was between it and the tree. So when I touched it off, my body didn't give AT ALL! Smashed me into the tree hard, my head snapped back and whacked the tree. And the gun, totally unencumbered by my hands, left my body, leapt into the air in recoil, probably went a foot over my head, rolled over sideways and came down on top of my head and body. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I got my first turkey but I learned a couple lessons on shooting that gun.