jrsower

I frequent another board called thehighroad.com. There is a great thread over there about the strangest thing you've ever seen in the woods. Credit goes to Johnpl for starting it. It was so interesting that I thought I'd ask the same question over here.

Tell us about the wildest, coolest thing that you've ever seen or had happen to you while in the woods.

Here's one of mine...

Probably the coolest thing I've ever seen while hunting...

Bowhunting in a swamp, I was sitting on a homemade ladder stand, literally. The only trees were old cypresses that were ridiculously wide at the bottom, maybe 4 feet across that would taper up to 12 inches across 5 feet up so I had to come up with something else. I took an old 8 foot aluminum step ladder, painted it camo, and bolted a bass boat seat to the top. Threw it over my shoulder and hiked out in the swamp with it. I could set it up anywhere quickly. Was sitting on it with my bow propped on my knee, nocked arrow about 4 inches from my face, a hummingbird flew right up to my face a tried to suck from the fletchings on my arrow. They were purple and pink. He wasn't 5 inches from my eyeballs. Flew away and then came back to try the fletchings on the arrows in the side mounted quiver. It was incredible.

BeltedMag

Thats pretty cool

I was hunting out of my cousins tree stand a few years ago. I shot a small buck at about 15 yards. The arrow zipped through so fast i didnt see exactly where i hit it. The deer just trotted off, didnt jump or react wildly in any way. He went about 40 yards straight away from me and kept looking back. I thought that i had missed so i knocked another arrow and was waiting for a shot. After a few minutes of looking back, he put his head down and started EATING, he ate acorns for about 15 minutes and then his rear leg starting shaking. After about a half hour after the shot he fell over and died. It blew my mind, after field dressing him i found that i had taken out one of his lungs and passed just behind the other, it was a quartering shot. I couldnt believe it, he had an arrow pass through his lung and out the other side and he stopped to eat like he didnt even feel a thing. It was so wierd, never seen anything like that.

shed33

A black bear sitting in my stand...chewing on the seat!

Old Faithful

I've had an alligator come walking by my stand, right in the middle of the woods. I guess he was just out for a stroll. Made me think twice about my walk back.

sho-me_bhntr

i didn't see it in the woods per se, but i saw it after it was killed...
a guy i know killed a nine point spike once. one of the weirdest things i have ever seen. it had 9 separate main beams growing from the deer's head. there were no multiple points on any of the beams. there were 4 "sets" of spikes lined up one right after another with a single spike at the back. quite odd...
mother nature can be so strange.

KBacon

This past Sept I was bear hunting up in northern Ontario. I was up in the tree and it had started to rain.. so I put up my umbrella that attaches to the tree. Then a little while later I hear this whoosh, whoosh, whoosh noise right above my head. Peek out from under the umbrella.. and it was a bald eagle swooping down on the white fletchings of my arrows that were in my quiver attached to the tree right in front of me. He banked hard when he saw me peek out from under than umbrella. Needless to say that was the closest I've ever been to a bald eagle.

JeramyK

One day last season I was perched high in my treestand watching two rabbits feed approx. 10 yards from my tree. Out of nowhere a hawk swooped out of the sky and grabbed the smallest of the two rabbits. I was amazed at how quickly the whole event happened and also by how quiet everything was. I never heard a sound from the hawk or the rabbit.

RIStrutStopper

Probably not all that uncommon, but cool all the same. Had a red squirrel making all kinds of noise about 15 yards from my tree, and saw a hawk swoop down on it, just as the squirrel got between two trunks of a forked tree and the hawk missed. The hawk then perched on a tree about 10 yards from me at just about eye level and was watching this squirrel. Out of nowhere, about 8-10 blue jays appeared and sort of surrounded the hawk. They were squawking up a storm, and basically ran the hawk off, pursuing it all the way. Pretty wild watching these little birds all gang up on a fairly large bird of prey.

davidw

I have two things I have seen that I thought were pretty cool. The first was a couple of years ago bowhunting. I had an owl land on a branch not 5 feet from me. He knew something wasn't right and kept staring, turning his head and stuff. It was really neat.

The other was last year late in November. I had a bobcat wander up to within 20 feet of my stand with a snake in his mouth. It bedded down and proceeded to eat the thing right there. Not as good as the alligator but neat all the same.

Ken/WV

I was walking to my stand and picked up a white skunk with my flashlight. So I stayed back and watched him for 5 minutes before finally getting to my stand. The skunk was all white with a small black stripe on it's back.