5 Creepy Hunting Encounters from a Deleted Reddit Post
6 years ago (As of 5/13/23 anyways) a question was asked on Reddit under its Ask Reddit subreddit. This question has since been deleted but the answers remain. That question from what I can gather was something along the lines of What is the scariest thing that has happed to you while hunting? Or maybe it was hiking or maybe it was just out in the wilderness. Regardless of what it was, here are 5 of those stories.
- u/bennedictus wrote:
- When I was pretty new to hunting, my brother and I were up in this sort of open ended, horseshoe shaped canyon up in the mountains hunting elk (with bows). We both had radios so we could talk to each other. Right around the bottom of the horseshoe, the foliage opened up and I could see my brother right down below me, about a hundred yards down the canyon. I kept an eye on him so I could match his pace, kept walking forward, when I saw something exiting the foliage that he just exited. I didn’t have binoculars, but I did have my rangefinder, which has a small zoomed in ability. I take it out, look at the thing. It’s a cougar, down in a stalking stance, following my brother. I get on the radio and tell him not to move, there’s a cougar behind him and it knows he’s there. So he just stops dead in his tracks, didn’t even use the radio. It felt like I was watching that thing for forever before it turned around and left. It’s fucking terrifying that those things are so silent. Like, it was so quiet on that mountain, all you hear is your footsteps in the snow and maybe a little wind. My brother had no idea he was right behind him. View the comments for this post here.
- u/milesdizzy wrote:
- I was out on a hike and I noticed some deer bones on the side of the trail. Odd, I thought, but there are lots of deer out here, and it’s not uncommon for them to be taken out by a cougar, bear, lynx or a myriad of other predators. Then I saw a hipbone in a tree. Later I saw the severed head had been neatly placed on another tree. Throughout my hike, someone had physically placed parts of a fresh deer carcass all over the trail and throughout the trees. It was pretty damn unsettling. View the comments for this post here.
- u/iamnotnotarobot wrote:
- I already posted this once, and while I wasn’t hunting or camping (I guess you could say I was hiking?) I think it fits the theme. Copying and pasting from another thread. Back in the early 2000s, certain states were in a mountain lion frenzy. People were claiming to see them every day. Photo were taken, but they were always obviously just large house cats. These were states that have never been home to mountain lion or states where mountain lions once lived but were over hunted or driven away. Supposedly a mountain lion was spotted at the playground of a school not far from where I lived. My mom didn’t really believe it but she still told me to be cautious. One day, me and three girls from my neighborhood were climbing up a hill that sat beside our neighborhood. The hill was steep, covered in overgrown weeds and woody plants, and led to a small patch of woods and train tracks that went into a closed off concrete factory. I used to go up there a lot. The place has a lot of rumors surrounding it and it’s a pretty creepy place, but I never felt threatened. This day was different. I could feel eyes on me the entire climb up. When we reached the top and the air was eerily still. No birds, no squirrels. Nothing. For some reason I kept looking at the treetops rather than the ground in front of us. The youngest girl in the group says “what’s that?” and I look across the woods to see a cat. At first it looked like a regular house cat, but a it started walking closer, I realized how fucking big it was. The other girls scream and run away which is a stupid move, but my dad made me watch nature documentaries so even at 10 years old I knew not to make any sudden movements. This gargantuan mountain lion gets closer and closer to me. I stay completely still and try not to show fear. After what felt like an eternity, I was face to face, up close and personal with it. I probably shouldn’t have, but I locked eyes with it. I would have fallen in love with its big blue eyes if I hadn’t been shitting my pants so much. The mountain lion starts sniffing me. It sniffs my hand and at one point it pushes its nose against my palm. This makes me think that it may have been someone’s pet. The fur was surprisingly soft and its nose warm and if I had known for sure that it had been fully domesticated, I probably would have pat its head. But I didn’t. I stood completely still. I guess the mountain lion either didn’t think I was very tasty or just didn’t want to get its claws dirty because it just turned and walked away. When it was gone I ran home and told my mom what I saw. I didn’t tell her that I had been face to face with it because I knew she’d lose her shit and call animal control and I really didn’t want them to kill it. That was 2002/2003. I don’t think there’s been another mountain lion scare since. Looking back it was horrifying but also a beautiful, once in a lifetime experience. View the comments for this post here.
- u/72scott72 wrote:
- I was backpacking in Banff with my wife. The campsite had a big metal flagpole kinda thingy for hanging food bags away form bears. We had seen a few bears off the road on our way to the trailhead so we knew they were around. Came prepared and had a can of bear mace. We went to bed a little drunk, left my shoes in the vestibule and stuck the mace in my shoe. Woke up in the middle of the night to something walking around the tent. A big something. Slowly slid my hand to the opening, stuck my hand out and grabbed the top of the can. Wife woke up when the thing started sniffing the tent. She didn’t move or make a sound but clenched onto me really tight. Laid like that for about 10-15 minutes until it went away. I’m assuming it was a bear but also could have been a mountain lion or moose. View the comments for this post here.
- u/trigger1154 wrote: (Shared 3 stories in one post)
- Okay, I’ll start out by saying I’m experienced in the outdoors, I’m a hunter, hiker, and camper. I don’t usually spook too easily because I basically grew up with a gun in one hand, a fishing pole in the other, and maybe a magnesium fire starter hidden somewhere special, as well as a knife, I always have a knife. Now I have three stories for you about being hunted, two of which I consider explainable. Story one. I hunt in MN in a town not far north of Mille Lacs Lake, one season I was fairly deep in the woods on a snowmobile trail, when I hunt I typically carry my .30-06 and my knife and pack, I feel fairly confident in the woods, but this season I had some concern, the deer population seemed lower on our property recently, and we knew there were wolves around because you can hear them howl at night and have found tracks, but they typically don’t mess with people luckily, but as I was scanning for deer tracks in the dirt, I found a different set of tracks that stood out to me, looked canine minus the nail marks and was a bit wider, the paw on it looked like a 150lb animal, then it clicked that this was a feline track, a big one, and fairly fresh, I knew there were bobcats around, but they don’t get that big and next logical step is to assume that there is a cougar around. Now I decided to double back, so I’m heading back east on the trail and my dad calls and asks me to do a push through the woods towards his stand, so I say sure, at this point his stand is maybe 500 meters through thick woods from me, and I’m concerned about predators, but I also know that I’m 6’4″ and about 190lbs before putting on my gear and that statistically speaking cougars don’t tend to attack healthy adult men, so I push forward, I get about halfway to the other stand and get concerned because I lost my marker so I stop to regain my bearings, then it hits me, my gut tells me “you are being watched”, then I notice how still the woods are, very quiet, then I hear a branch snap behind me by maybe 20 meters, I ready my rifle and scan in a circle and only see trees and brush, I wait and it’s just quiet, so I push forward towards my dad’s stand I think, the whole time I hear something not far behind me quietly keeping pace, eventually I stopped hearing it and the woods went back to normal with the birds singing and what not, then I stepped out on to a trail about 40 meters from my dad’s stand. I suspect it was the cougar that made the tracks, my guess is he/she thought I would put up too much of a fight for prey or it winded my dad and chose to back off, but I never did see it, but something definitely was following me. ___________________________________________________________________ Second story. Okay so this happened maybe 2 years ago, I decided to take my fiancee hiking after work one evening in a park with some nice bluffs to climb for a great view, was hoping to see a pretty sunset, now this isn’t a particularly safe thing to do and this time of night so I gave her my tactical knife and I carried my .40 cal pistol. So we arrive and park the car, and we start heading up a trail, about 100 meters in we spook and jump what I think was a deer, it hauled ass away from us so quickly that I only saw a flash of tan and maybe it’s flag, and honestly it scared us pretty good too, so now I’m on edge and we round a crest in a hill and I see a black mass to my left in peripheral vision, I unsnap the retention on my holster and turn to engage… a mound of black dirt, now I calm down and we continue on and it’s a nice evening, birds chirping still, bugs making noise, regular forest stuff. Now for the creepy, we get within about 200 meters of the halfway point on the trail and it starts to feel eerie like we are being watched, this time is clicked right away, the woods are now dead, but I start noticing movement keeping pace with us, so I keep us moving towards the top of the hill, the high ground which is the halfway point on the trail, we reach it and stop, and it stops, but the woods are still dead calm, and my fiancee tells me she thinks we are being followed, so we decide to move on and take a short cut back down the bluff to the paved trail, we make it and the woods get back to normal sounds again. We considered hiking more, but were a bit too spooked and left the park. Now whatever was following us I suspect was another cougar, it was quiet and we didn’t see it, and the strangest part is that the stalking noises it did make sounded elevated like it was moving from tree to tree, and big cats have been known to do this ___________________________________________________________________ Story three, the least explainable of the three. This one happened around June or July of 2007 I believe, I was around 17 years old and more cocky then, but still somewhat knowledgeable of the outdoors. My family used to own a cabin in NW Wisconsin, I basically grew up there in the summer, I knew the woods well, but at night it was wise to stay in the cabin or at least by the bonfire by the beach, because of bears, wolves, and cougars. One of the creepiest things was if you were having a bonfire, the treeline was visible from the fire pit and beach, and at night you always felt like you were being watched from that treeline. But during the day the woods always seemed normal, not so creepy, that is until this incident. So this happened somewhere between 1200-1400. Me and my cousin were having an airsoft battle, I was in full woodland camo, he was not, I retreated onto the ATV trail into the woods for a tactical advantage and our battle took us about 200 meters in to about a third of the way up the trail. We had enough at this point and were standing at the edge of a clearing on the trail talking and he was maybe 10 feet from me, when I decided to mess with him, I shushed him and said “we’re being watched”, he froze, then I realized the woods were dead quiet and I got spooked and started scanning the treeline and the other edge of the clearing from left to right when I saw it. It’s teeth gave it away, it was panting and staring at my cousin, I don’t expect you to believe me, but what I saw was a wolf as big as a black bear, at least 300lbs, but it wasn’t normal, this wolf was on 2 legs crouching next to tree with its arm grasping the tree, grasping with a clawed hand, it had reddish brown fur. I told my cousin that “we have to go” and next thing I know he is sprinting and I look back at wolfy who had locked on and sprinted a few steps on two feet and then I turned and ran when it looked like wolfy was dropping to all fours, it charged us and sounded right on our asses barreling through the brush, but for whatever reason let us go when we broke out of the tree line and headed for the cabin. What stuck with me the most was the sheer size, wolfy appeared to be nearly 7′ tall when upright, and that where it should’ve had front paws it appeared to have large clawed hands. Now I’m not sure how to explain it away rationally, I have heard wolves will occasionally kind of walk upright but as far as I know they can’t sprint on 2 legs, nor do wolves get that big, and black bears more waddle on 2 legs. The closest description is silly, a werewolf or dogman. Thank you for reading.___________________________________________________________________TL:DR: Cougar, Cougar?, Werewolf? View the comments for this post here.
