close calls in the bush?

This is a story about a day of close calls
Me and my hunting buddy decided we were gonna walk from the one of his back fields to a bridge on a ditch that runs through the middle of a big swamp to see whose property it was on. We were only 14 and were too dumb to realize that you can't walk in a straight line through a swamp. so we set off into the the woods without a clue. We walked and walked and walked for what seemed like forever. finally we came to a spot where we could smell something dead close by, so we followed our noses and found the remain of the two bears that I had shot the previous weekend(this is when I got the nickname bearslayer). Now I know where we are so we walk to my huning camp and scrounge in the fridge for some drinks. After our refreshment of month old warm grape juice we head to the field where i shot my bears. When we get there i show my buddy the treestand i shot the bears out of, he proceeded to climb up in the old wooden stand when he was just about to the top and the ladder gave way collapsing the stand on him. I pull the stand off him and we continued on into the woods. We were about 30 feet into the woods when we heard the sound of claws on a tree and then a loud thump,then the sound of footsteps in the dry leaves about 40 yds away. We watch in the direction of the noise and finally see a young bear on the ridge in front of us and we both froze. I kept walking back and forth in a semi-circle
trying to get wind of us. It probably did this a half dozen times before leaving. we slowy backed out of the woods and as soon as we hit the edge of the corn field(which the bears had flattenned about 5 acres of) we both took off running back to the road
 
tiriaq said:
Had a compass go wonky on me once, and didn't realize it until I cut my own tracks after walking in a circle. A bit disconcerting.
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I had the same thing happen to me , but unlike tiriaq, I couldn't believe that I was walking in a circle so continued on . When I came upon the "second" set of tracks joining "our" trek I started to get suspicious . I wrote my initials alongside the tracks and took off again down the now fairly well beaten path . After about 45 minutes of brisk walking I returned to the signed site .:confused:
My compass hadn't/wouldn't give a true reading even after placing it on a downed log ,away from any metallic contamination(gun, wrist watch, metal buttons on hunting jacket) so I lined up two trees(in the direction I figured was camp) Just before reaching the first tree I lined up a third , and so on and so on till I finally came to one of a chain of lakes that we had hunted moose on ...about 1 1/2 miles from camp .
The day was heavily overcast , no shadows and no wind in typical 40-year old second growth timber .
 
On the subject of following ones own tracks.

I was out hunting with my aunt and uncle, my aunt had taked a snap shot at a running whitey and connected, but it crawled into a hole to die, so i had to track it, (theyre both colorblind). as i loaded my stuff into the truck to get over to them i accidently cut my thumb but didn't notice. so Im "tracking" this deer and notice that the animal seems to be going in circles that get progressivley smaller, finally im walkin in about a 5 foot circle and then notice my thumb, i started to laugh out loud and 30 yards away the deer tried to get up and got a quick one high in the neck. got a good drinkin story and the animal
 
JohnC said:
this isn't really in the bush but I was out potting groundhogs at a cattle farmer's place, shooting into a 400 yard depression from next to a barn. To get a better position I crawled inside an enclosure next to the barn and proceeded to nail 5 of them from inside the paddock in a prone position. All of a sudden I heard a snort behind me and turning around slowly saw the bull of the herd about 5 yards away. I guess he had come to investigate the commotion.

there nearly was a change in the normal barnyard aromas that day.:redface: ..
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The two most dangerious thing on the farm, the loaded rifle and the quiet Bull!!
 
Nothing too exciting, just comical NooB lessons learned.

My first time out last season I ran into a pack of dogs owned by some sort of crazy Indian hermit living in a truck in the woods...no shots fired, but sure woke everyone and everything up for a KM with the racket everyone made. :D

The same day several KM down the road I began following a small covey of grouse through the bush, and then noticed that I was being followed by a rather large black bear, and I only had a small slide action .22 with me that day. :eek:
After meeting eye to eye about 40 feet away we both ran in different directions. :D

A few Weeks later I tried another grouse spot the locals use...

This time with my pump 12 gauge loaded with 7 1/2 shot, and two Deer walked out of the bush about 20 feet in front of me, and by the time I reloaded with buckshot to fill my Deer tag, they jumped back into the Brush, and told all their Deer friends about me. DOH! :(

Adding insult...While marking the spot with my GPS a Ruffled grouse flew by...but still had buckshot in the shotgun. DOH x2 :(

Still beats a day of house/yardwork, and I'm hoping this year will be better. :D

Signguy I love your TP story.
 
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hands full

I do alot of camping here in Eastern Ontario. We have more Beavers here than I've seen anywhere. It was getting dusk, I was collecting firewood along the shore of the lake I was camping beside. Arms loaded to the max, I headed towards my campfire with the last bit of wood to get me through the night. Going up a slight incline away from the shore, I slipped and fell hard flat on my chest. Remember the Beavers I mentioned ?, they had freshly chewed down a 1.5" diam sapling and when I opened my eyes after falling, it was sharply pointed into my neck. Don't worry though, this thread is about "close-calls", it just missed. I like to thank my "thick, manly chest" for giving my neck enough clearance. HA HA HA !!:redface: :redface:
 
6 years ago I was Moose hunting in the Cape Breton Highlands (Nova Scotia) and I hunted hard all week without shooting a moose, finally on the last day my guide took me on a 3 hour bike ride up the mountain. When we were walking to "the spot" , I kept hearing a grunt, finally i looked down the hill and there was a bull about 65 yards away.

SO up with the gun I go, POW... down goes the moose right in his tracks (.308)... I turn around.... congrats the guide says as i put the safety on my Remington 740 Woodsmaster and breifly looked back to see the moose trotting up the hill towards me... a little nervous (he is now at about 50 yards) ....SO... Pow.... I gave it to him again, with the bullet not phasing him he is now in full stride coming up the hill on an angle towards me and the guide... so.. POW... POW... the guide is now in full stide down the path about 20 yards yelling at me to move my A** before the thing kills me... Having one shot left in the clip I fired at close range as he lowered his antlers and went around a stump just giving me a slight broadside shot, it hit him in the shoulder and broke his shoulder going though to the other side and broke his leg leaving the bullet lodged on the very edge of his skin...

His front end dropped and his back end dug and dug till it was in a ditch about 4.5 feet deep... The moose finally dropped at less than 3 paces away from me.... Thank god for a semi.... The guide told me I had balls for doing that... I neglected to tell him I think i actually #### myself....

Probably the scariest incident for me... Hopefully never again...


Oh... 2 shots through the heart and 2 through the lungs.... wow are these animals tough... dress over 1000lbs...
 
4 or 5 years back I was over at my uncles where he had a bear skin hanging up, and I could see what seemed like 100's of places where light was coming through little holes. I commented on how he sucked at skinning.
Thats when he said him and his brother were shooting crows with .22lr when the bear came in for some free eating but desided that the crows were too small and started to come towards the larger peices of meat. I remember he said they put 40+ rounds downrange befor the bear dropped. (2 20 round mags each plus what was in their current mags).
To this day if he goes out shooting anything he brings his 300 winmag with him too.



On the topic of getting lost, me and a buddy go quading all the time, and at a new place started to follow some trails, we always bring neon pink spray can to new places and put arrows on the ground so we can get back. After we have lunch we start heading back out when our arrows turn into 2 sets of arrows, so we put an x there and a new arrow, we come up on a second place where we have two sets of arrows, so we mark an x again, 10 minutes later we come head to head with another pair of quaders with a pink spray can. We all have a good laugh and then used the setting sun to get back to camp. We now use a GPS.

Another time quading we came up to a hose slightly under the trail crossing it, so we get off the qauds and follow the hose down the hill, after 10 minutes of walking we find 40+ weed plants, as we are looking around we notice 40-50 shot gun shells in the dirt, so we booked it back and took off.
Since then we have ran into many crops off old BC logging roads, we dont stop anymore.
 
Well, I am sure it wasnt life and death but I wanted out of the hole pretty bad!

I was out shooting some gophers north of Edmonton. There is this one field that backs onto a swamp so its easy going if you sweep it from the other side. I was walking along with my custom 10/22 popping them as they appeared and I noticed a badger or coyote hole just before stepping in it. I stepped long and put both feet down on the other side of the hole, about a foot past it. And then kerplunk! I was up to my waist in some animal den. I laughed for about .02 of a second and then my imagination quickly gave me images of a badger going to town on my crotch, now almost a foot below ground. I wanted out of that hole NOW. But I couldnt! My legs were pinned together and couldnt move them. I struggled for a moment and them the adrenaline got going. I put my rifle down and did the heaviest dip I have ever done. Whew! Even if there was nothing in the hole it sure would have sucked when all the cows came buy to see the strange new animal in the field!

I now give badger holes a WIDE berth.

I'll leave the tale of the hidden electric fence for another time.
 
Hunted unsuccessfully for a week up around Lillooet so on the way home I took a side road up into the mountains off the Duffey Lake road, saw nothing and came home.

Couldn't figure out why the bedding and everything was wet in the canopy when we go thome.

It had been raining on the way up too and nothing got wet.

About a week later I was getting into the truck and noticed a .30 calibre hole in the canopy directly above the passenger seat.


We'd been hit by a stray bullet up that logging road. The hole wasn't there when we left our campsite. Six inches lower and it would have hit my wife in the head.

I never did find the bullet. It hit the next aluminum strut of the canopy and only dented it, it was exhausted I guess, probaly a 30-30 from a long way off.

It must have fallen out when I unloaded all our stuff.

*

Not a hunting, but a shooting incident, there was the time, we were picnicking along the Alouette River during blueberry time and there were all these banging noises all over from those pneumatic bird scaring devices.

Suddenly there is a big rustling inthe trees overhead and some leaves fall down. That's funny, there is no wind, I thought, then there was a big pattern of shot spalshed in the water righ tin front of us.

Some dingbat was shooting at starling sin the trees on the other side of the river and we were just about getting hit by the shot.

"Hey! There's people over here!" I yelled.

We heard a tractor start up.

We packed up faster than you've ever seen anyone pack a picnic before, jumped on the bikes and cycled along the dike over to the road to the next farm. My wife was ahead of me and saw a guy jump off the tractor and take a shotgun into the barn.

We then found a phone and called the RCMP. The dispatcher didn't believe me at first, teling me about the noise makers, blueberry season yadayada. I said I know what shot inthe water looks like and she asked if we saw a gun. I replied yes and she sent a cop.

After interviewing us he went there and confiscated two shotguns and a variety of shotshells. One gun was still loaded with buckshot.

"That could have killed you," he told me.

I don't know about that, but it woulda hurt!
 
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(1) I was hiking alone on the Bruce Peninsula many years ago during the summer. I hear the most blood-curdling sound I ever heard in my life - it sounded like a high-pitched woman's scream ,followed by a deep rumbling growl. At the time, I had no idea what it was, but whatever it was, I fully intended to introduce it to my 7 1/2" blade, custom-made knife. Not really a close call, but I was also hoping that my bowels would continue to resist the temptation to "let go"... I later learned that it was the growl of a lynx. The mind loves to wander when your alone...

(2) The close call: I posted this in another thread... A buddy of mine was standing his ground firing a .44 mag on a charging griz. He hit it with every shot but it was still going. I fired a 12g slug broad-side. The slug shattered the left shoulder and forelimb and left a blood splatter 2 feet long, but it did not drop immediately. It stood for probably another 2 to 3 seconds and then rolled to its death about 10 feet away from my buddy. Like I said before - I still hate the fact that I killed that bear, but I am sure glad my buddy is still around. Damn strong animals!
 
Many years ago, I decided to bring my younger brother and his buddy out duck hunting. I had a canoe hidden on the shores of the Bow River downstream of the Carseland Dam. I noticed that the ducks seemed to be flying over a small island. Wanting my younger brother and his friend to have some success, I urged them to quickly get into the canoe and paddle out to the island. They both got in, one at each end......facing each other. Then they proceeded to argue about "which one" was facing the wrong way. I had never considered murder before that day....:slap:
 
gitrdun said:
Many years ago, I decided to bring my younger brother and his buddy out duck hunting. I had a canoe hidden on the shores of the Bow River downstream of the Carseland Dam. I noticed that the ducks seemed to be flying over a small island. Wanting my younger brother and his friend to have some success, I urged them to quickly get into the canoe and paddle out to the island. They both got in, one at each end......facing each other. Then they proceeded to argue about "which one" was facing the wrong way. I had never considered murder before that day....:slap:
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Should have grabbed the paddles and pushed them on thier way down the river :D . That would have cured that situation.

Pretty slow water there though, but still would have been funny.........
 
As a junior geologist in the Kazan River area of the NWT I was flying in a chopper (an Enstrom - as if just flying in an Enstrom isn't a terrifying prospect) to an outcrop that required a small bulk sample.

I pointed out the outcrop to the pilot, as he started his approach I started getting my gear together. The pilot asked me if I really wanted to land on that outcrop. I tersely told that yes, I knew what I was doing and that that was the outcrop. The pilot said "Take a close look at the outcrop.". I looked down and there was a sow grizzly on two legs looking at us and 2 cubs hightailing it.

I decided to sample that outcrop a little later in the season.
 
This is the nut shell version of a story called " A Cougar Too Close" that was printed in the May 2000 edition of BC Outdoors Magazine.
I was on a camping and fishing trip with my son, who was then 9 years old. We were trolling on Muchalot Lake, near Goldriver, on Vancouver Island. Jesse had a fish on and we stopped to land it, when a couple with a dog, came along side. They told us that just in case we planned to go ashore where the river comes into the lake, they had seen a cougar there about 30 minutes earlier. (It was probably looking at their dog and wondering what it would taste like)
As it turned out, we were planning to go ashore right about there, so I took my rifle (94 big bore in 356) out of the case, loaded it (one in the chamber with the hammer down)and placed it on the seat in the midle of the 14' boat. My son was in the bow of the boat and I was in the back. I ran the boat onto the beach and turned to pull up the motor. As I turned back and stood up, I saw the wide eyed look on my son's face and the cougar coming out of the bush about 12' from the right side of the bow. It was moving low to the ground like a cat going for a bird. When I stood up, the cougar stopped, looked at me and snarled. I turned and grabbed for the rifle. As soon as I looked away from the cougar, it went straight for my son. By the time I had the rifle up, cocked and pointed, the cougar's hind feet were still on the ground and his front feet were on their way into the bow of the boat. KABOOM. The cougar looked at me as if to say, what the hell was that, and landed dead on the beach.
The cougar was young and hungry, its stomach and intestines were empty. Jesse's ears still ring after any load noises and since I had a cougar tag, the hide is on the wall.
 
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