Strange hunting experiences?

[surewood]

Anyone have any strange hunting experiences? Something memorable that happened during a hunt? I can't think of anything to out of the ordinary, but I did run into a guy out duck hunting that knew my family from when I was a toddler and younger when we lived in central MN. It was almost thirty years ago, and 150 miles away, and it was interesting to hear him talk about my family and our old farm after meeting in the middle of no where.

[drewevans]

animals that have a strange tolerance or curiosity to humans, i have had yearling deer come within inches of me and even had one lick my boot once, at one of my deer stands i had a great horned owl that would join me nearly every night i was there he would sit about 5 feet away for a while every night..... he was hunting squirrels i think. one of my buddies had a grouse join him three days in a row while he was turkey hunting. he had video tape of it sitting on his gun barrel and his shoulder and it even pecked at his hair.

[surewood]

I've had a muskrat chase me. Agressive little animals.

[BobT]

I had a young doe once walk up behind me and sniff the nape of my neck. It was a windy, snowy, rainy Sept. day and I was kneeling on the ground along the edge of a CRP field bow hunting. I could hear the noise of her breathing and just thought it was from the wind until I happened to turn my head and see her eyeballs! About filled my pants right there.

Another time while bow hunting I was again kneeling on the ground along the edge of an alfalfa field when I saw tow does and two fawns come out about 100 yards upwind. To this day I don't know how but one of the does happened to notice me sitting there. All she could have seen would have been my face above the grass but she saw me nonetheless. Not knowing what I was she walked toward me until she got to within about 15-20 yards and then she stopped, stomped her feet, snorted, and danced back-and-forth for about 20 minutes. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. As I anticipated, she eventually decided to circle downwind. As she circled around I could watch her reflection in my glasses. She got downwind, caught my scent, and decided to leave. She trotted down to the other three and all four went back into the woods.

I normally don't deer hunt around my home here in Osakis but last fall my brother had a house full for opener so I decided to go out with my pistol and sit along the south edge of my alfalfa field where my neighbor had left about a 2-acre stand of corn because it was too wet to get in there. After watching the sun disappear behind the horizon I decided to head back up to the house. I was cutting across my alfalfa when I caught a glimpse of three deer heading across my neighbor's corn stubble to the south. Figuring I would stand out pretty good I ducked down behind a lonely small bush along my southern fenceline. The bush was only about 2' tall and not very much cover but I decided it would hide my form enough to watch the deer. After about 20 minutes I noticed that they had started to walk toward me. I guess they intended to come out into my alfalfa. The path the leader was taking would have had her literally stepping on me. I decided it would be fun to see how close she would get before realizing I was there. She got to within about 10 yards and suddenly she stopped. The only way I can describe her look was, "What in the heck is that!" She danced, grunted, blew, and stomped her feet for a while. I figured it was a matter of time before she would try to circle downwind and sure enough that's what she did. When she finally caught my scent she just nonchalantly headed southeast with the other two in toe and left the area.

[someday]

A few years ago deer hunting on a rainy cold morning my son and I decided to just sit together in an old wood shed we have moved out by a brushy area. About a hour after sunup three fawns, two smaller and one bigger began racing in a 100 yd. oval passing 30 yards from where we were watching. They would run passed us cross the ditch and back the other way on a road I'd pushed through the woods. they ran the same route many times for at least ten minutes before a doe showed up in front of us and stopped them. We wished we had a movie camera as we didn't think anyone would believe our story. while we usually take doe's we could not shoot the mother of those fawns after watching the race.

[Fowlmouth]

Had the same experience with muskrats, chase after me a little. Pretty aggressive little rodents!

Not sure how strage this is to others but to me it was: Had three does come out. Dropped two and the third, a yearling just wouldn't leave. When I got down to dress the two it just kept circling and coming withing a few feet of me.

[reinhard1]

maby not strange but unusual. a few years back i was firearms deer hunting north of duluth. i heard this loud crunching of twigs and brush. finaly there he was, a big bull moose looking straight at me. cold morning, steam comming out of his nostrils. he knew i was there but stood there and came towards me in my stand. then he stopped, and i raised my shotgun slug gun slowly and aimed right at his throat just to see what he would do.. he was maby 20 feet away. well he didn't get too excited and slowly walked away. that was exciting! good luck.

[Red Cabin]

While duck hunting, almost 20 years ago a couple friends and I, sitting in our boat looking over our decoys, another boat passed by about a hundred yards away, then did a 180 started angling towards us and passed right through the center of our spread, and left the direction he came from!

After thinking about it for a while we pulled up our anchors and went about a mile down the lake to where he was hunting to ask what the reason for that was? He said it was because he knew it was us that came out in the middle of the night and tied red ribbons around the necks of his 100 or so decoys!

It was our first time on this lake!!!!

[hawgchaser]

I was late fall duck hunting on the Roseau River Wildlife Management Area...a 15 mile long impound on the Canadian border designed to hold back flood water from getting to the Red River. I'd walked about a mile and a half in from the west end on the levee road, had finished hunting and was coming back, so decided to walk the Brush below the levee on the South side on the chance of getting a grouse. About a half mile from the parking area, I had the sense I wasn't alone so I stopped, looked around, and spotted a timber wolf trotting parallel to me on the levee road a couple hundred yards away. He stopped, too, when I did. For the next half mile, he kept the same distance, stopping when I did and resuming when I'd resume.

Needless to say, the plug was removed from my gun and the duck loads were replaced with T shot. When I got to my truck, he just sat and watched me load up and drive off with a forlorn "there goes my lunch" look/posture.

[tacklejunkie]

maby not strange but unusual. a few years back i was firearms deer hunting north of duluth. i heard this loud crunching of twigs and brush. finaly there he was, a big bull moose looking straight at me. cold morning, steam comming out of his nostrils. he knew i was there but stood there and came towards me in my stand. then he stopped, and i raised my shotgun slug gun slowly and aimed right at his throat just to see what he would do.. he was maby 20 feet away. well he didn't get too excited and slowly walked away. that was exciting! good luck.

Your story is the same as mine except mine was a cow. That happened back in the early to mid 1980's sometime. I wonder if there are still moose around the Cloquet River?

[reinhard1]

i have seen moose tracks while fishing for trout in tributaries of the cloquet about three years ago. good luck.

[tacklejunkie]

i have seen moose tracks while fishing for trout in tributaries of the cloquet about three years ago. good luck.

Really? Whereabouts on the Cloquet?

[reinhard1]

little cloquet, west branch cloquet, and some unamed creeks entering the cloquet. dont do that anymore. no trails like the north shore streams to walk the side of the waters. basicly brook trout, while the upper cloqet has some brown trout. personaly i believe island lake has brown trout as well but very few, for you never hear of any cought. lots of deer flies, and mosquitos that spray just gives them life support instead of repeling them. there are also creeks that cross good ol no. 4 with native brook trout. in the upper cloquet some of the cold feeder creeks held some nice brookies where the entered the upper cloquet. they were in pools where they entered the river. i dont think many fish in those areas anymore. probably a good thing. good luck.

[BobT]

One year on the night before the early September goose opener I half-heartedly asked who was going hunting with me in the morning. To my surprise my 9-year old daughter piped up. Spent the next couple hours searching through the house for clothing so we could "camo" her up. Didn't see anything the next morning but she had a good time "practicing" with my goose call.

That evening I asked if she wanted to go again on Sunday with me to a friend's house near Foley and she said yes despite me telling her that we would be getting up at 3:30am. We got our decoy spread set up and my buddy took a position on one side and my daughter and I on another side to my buddies left so we were at 90 degrees from him on the outside of the spread. My buddy had this low profile chair that allowed him to sit in a half sitting position but my daughter and I just laid on our backs on the ground and threw a burlap blanket over us. It wasn't too long before about a half-dozen geese came in. They landed on the ground behind my daughter and I so we couldn't see them but he could see them just fine. Unfortunately, we were in his line of fire he could only watch as those geese were wandering around on the ground. At one point my daughter said, "I just saw one right next to me!" I told her to just stay real still. My buddy said it was funny watching those geese runnin' around within just a couple feet of us and not be able to do a thing about it. Our live decoys paid of and it wasn't long before a flock of about 50 came right into our decoys. We got a couple and that was exciting for my daughter but the story doesn't end there. After gathering up the geese we heard some more coming so we quickly got under our blanket and I told my daughter to lay real still and maybe we could get them to land on us. A few seconds later I could hear her whimpering a little so I ask her what was wrong. She said, "I don't want them to land on me!" All I could do was laugh.

[matchset]

i once was hunting with my dad... we didn't see any deer that night; but we did hear the Roar of a male Lion! kinda strange!

[fr0sty]

Had a chickadee land on my cap this year during firearm season.

[Archerysniper]

I had a lynx walk by past my bow stand a few years back at first I thought it was a yearling and started to grab my bow till the biggest dang cat I have ever seen stepped into the clearing.

A years ago I was sitting in my blind turkey hunting and kinda dozeing off when I looked out the window by my head and had a hen stareing right at me only inches away.

[Outdoor Authority]

I was sitting in a ground blind. I proceeds to doze off. When I woke up my dads face was inches from mine. Startled I jumped and nocked nocked the blind over. Not funny well ok maybe a lot.

[motley man]

Calling fox with a friend along edge of cornfield with buddy 30 yards down from my spot, when I hear rustling behind me in the corn. Thinking it was deer or fox I laid prone & still with my rifle ready. The sound passed behind me and kept going, so I was watching to my right when a large bear comes out of corn 20 yards away. Looked behind me after he went away and he had been 5 rows of corn behind me. Always have something at your back in big predator's area. Had a deer stand where 2 flying squirrels lived for years and would come out and run around and glide from tree to tree.

[surewood]

A few things I remembered. I watched a red squirrel run off a flying squirrel, flying squirrel would glide the red would jump tree to tree running it off. I also watched a red squirrel grab a mushroom off the ground bring up a tree and stash it. The most interesting I've saw was last November. I watched two porcupines. One was making a high pitched noise for better then an hour (to attract males as I found out later). The other would get up on two legs and waddle towards her. She would growl and snap and he would back away and put on a display on two legs and go over the top of small sapplings around her. I assumed leaving scent and showing dominance. This went on for almost two hours. I googled it and found out that it was a mating ritual and when he went up on two legs he was spraying urine on her. Found out it is rare as the female only allows mating for maybe 8 to 12 hours a year. I would leave that ritual to the porcupines.

[Musky hunter 82]

I was deer hunting in Northern MN a couple years back (when we actiually had snow). I just got into the portable stand and was on my knees pulling my gun up when I looked behind the stand, and in the brush I can see deer legs, well it turned out to be a big heavy 8 pointer, I couldn't get a shot since I was still pulling my gun up. Well after 5 mins I hear the sound of antlers rubbing on the brush coming from the direction that the buck went. My heart was pumping as the noise kept getting louder and louder. I figured it was the buck so I got my gun up and ready. Then I see the small trees start to move, and out steps a huge bull moose at 15 yards. He was so close that when I had my scope at 9 power all I could see was his eye. I counted 16 points on the one side and 15 on the other, he also had a brow point on each side that bent down like a drop tine. I actiually saw 3 different bulls out of that tree stand that year.

[Ebiz]

Quote:

I googled it and found out that it was a mating ritual and when he went up on two legs he was spraying urine on her. Found out it is rare as the female only allows mating for maybe 8 to 12 hours a year. I would leave that ritual to the porcupines.

I would too...