Funny Hunting Stories, Let's hear yours.

[charlz]

I sure do want to know what Berry does for a living today!!!

I don't know.... for some reason he didn't hang out with us much after that and then his Dad took another transfer a year or two later so we never saw him again.

 

[charlz]

When I was a kid in NM my Dad, Mom, and brother all went hunting every year to put venison in the freezer, I was always to young to go. So when I turned 13 yo, my Dad took me to one of their favorite places. He set me up on a boulder and gave me the lecture of safety and he was going to circle to the right while my brother went to the left. If I saw one to shoot it, but make damned sure it was a deer and not a person. Well at 13 I got bored soon and was daydreaming when this big 8 point mule deer just casually walked out in front of me. I was in awe... just starring at it when the light bulb in my head went off, oh yeah, shoot it. So I slowly raise my rifle and take aim. I take a big breath and exhale with a calm inhale I Squeeeese the trigger and he drops right there. I ran up to him and set all my gear on the ground, pull out my tag and tag him. I fire 3 shots in the air to call my dad, then lay the rifle down and grab my knife to bleed him when all of a sudden he jumps up and takes off running with me chasing him. He is up over the hill and across the next meadow when I top the first hill and hear a shot and watch him tumble and go down. I run as fast as I can and run up to the deer when this old guy ( he was probably in his early thirties but when you are 13, that is old) walks calmly up. All out of breath I am trying to tell him that is my deer. He looks at me and explains he only heard one shot and he knows that he shot it, besides I don't even have a rifle ( remember I left it back at camp). And I am arguing that NO, that is my deer, that is my tag and that makes him my deer! He looks at the tag then looks at me, looks at the tag then looks at me. Shakes his head and says... "Son, if you can run fast enough to tag him, you can have him" and walks away. After getting my Dad to help carry him back we discovered only one shot in him and one of the points knocked off. I guess I just knocked him out while someone else shot my first deer.

That's funny! I wonder how many times that guy has told the story of a kid that tags his deer _before_ he kills them

 

[newbury]

Now that is a good story!

But yours is even funnier!

For the benefit of those that had not read or did not understand the deer roping story, well here it is.


I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head.

At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slowly and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have it suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set beforehand ... kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal like a horse strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.

The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down. Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are lying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope so that they can be somewhat equal to the Prey.

I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest place, which was theCo-Op. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like ****. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling, "What happened?"

I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear... not wanting to admit that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer". I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there. I asked him to call somebody to come get me. I didn't think I could make it home on my own. He did. Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could. I was filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking the **** out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or insane or something.

EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the Co-Op has a big mouth). For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an outsider a "city folk". I have enough trouble fitting in without them snickering behind my back and whispering, "There is the dumbass that tried to rope the deer!"

Just felt it belonged here also.

 

[Ed of all trades]

But yours is even funnier!


Just felt it belonged here also.

I agree. :laughing: Ed

 

[dmccarty]

Im crying.

Yes....

:laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing:

Some danged funny stories...

Thanks,
Dan

 

[gsganzer]

I almost had a tragic hunting mistake some years ago.

Myself and two of my buddies were inseparable when it came to duck hunting. We all shared in the hunt, one friend had the trained dog, another had the duck boat and I had the truck for hauling said dog and boat. On this particular weekend, I called around to see if they were going to hunt the coming weekend, but they both had prior commitments that precluded them from going hunting that weekend. The dog owner said "take the dog" and the boat owner said "take the boat". So that weekend, I did just that and headed out by myself with the dog and boat.

I went to our usual lake out west of Ft. Worth. It was well before sun-up and I loaded the dog (named Jay) and decoys in the boat and meandered out into the darkness to cross the lake to our favorite spot. (This is in the days before GPS, so you used your instinct and stars for navigation). It was a dreadfully dark and cold morning. When I finally got into our favorite shallow slough, all the water was frozen with a 1/2" skim of ice. I found the main channel that was still open water and worked my way upstream in the darkness, the main channel was too deep and the sides were deep silt berms, so I looked for an area on the other side of the silt berms that might have stayed unfrozen. I finally found an area that looked promising, so I beached the boat into the silt berm and jumped out to have a look. I found there was a small 1 acre area of open water on the other side of the berm, but the black silt muck was nearly impossible to walk in, pulling at your feet and waders with every step. I managed to return to the boat to get the bag of decoys off the bow. Because of the thick mud, I made the dog stay in the boat until I returned from setting out my decoy spread and getting everything set up. The darkness and mud made the trek with the decoys exhausting, but I finally got them all set out in a nice j-hook pattern. I made the last trek back to the boat to get the dog and my shotgun.

There was one big problem, the boat with the dog was no longer where I left it! It was pitch black, so I used my flashlight to check the ground for my foot prints, thinking maybe I misjudged where the boat was. No mistake, there were my footprints and the keel marks in the mud, but no boat. When I pulled the decoys off the bow, combined with the dog jumping around in the boat, it must have lightened the bow and the boat slipped off the berm and back out into the river channel. I shined my flashlight downstream, but again no sign of the dog and boat. How far had it drifted? Was I marooned?

I started calling for the dog and I heard a faint whimper downstream. It turns out the boat finally got caught in some snags 150 yards downstream. It was the hardest trek I've ever made in the pitch black with deep muck pulling at my waders finally draping myself over the gunwales of the boat, with the dog licking my face, thankful for being "rescued".

It definitely made me reevaluate how dangerous of a situation I put myself in, hunting alone. It could of turned out much different.

 

[MossRoad]

Last year a friend of ours came to a spaghetti dinner we were attending and was telling us (very proudly) that his young son had taken about 20 squirrels with his .22 earlier that day.

"WOW!", I said. "Where did he get them?"

The dad says "Out in so-in-so's woods."

"NO", I say. "Where did he get .22 ammo?"

 

[gsganzer]

Another story about my old duck hunting days.

One weekend, by buddy that owned the retriever couldn't go hunting, so he lent us his dog. When we picked up the dog, he also handed us a brand new Cabelas neoprene dog vest so the dog wouldn't get cold or injured on stick-ups in the water.

Upon getting out to our favorite slough, we put out the decoys and put the dog in his new neoprene vest. It was a busy morning of calling, shooting and retrieving. During a lull in the action, my buddy says "Hey, look at the dog. What the heck is he giving us that look for?". That dog was just standing there, looking at us with the most disgusted look I've ever seen.

It finally dawned on us that we hadn't checked the fit of the vest. Seems that it ran a little long and covered his tallywhacker. As he stood there looking at us with disgust, pee was running out his front arm holes.

 

[k0ua]

Another story about my old duck hunting days.

One weekend, by buddy that owned the retriever couldn't go hunting, so he lent us his dog. When we picked up the dog, he also handed us a brand new Cabelas neoprene dog vest so the dog wouldn't get cold or injured on stick-ups in the water.

Upon getting out to our favorite slough, we put out the decoys and put the dog in his new neoprene vest. It was a busy morning of calling, shooting and retrieving. During a lull in the action, my buddy says "Hey, look at the dog. What the heck is he giving us that look for?". That dog was just standing there, looking at us with the most disgusted look I've ever seen.

It finally dawned on us that we hadn't checked the fit of the vest. Seems that it ran a little long and covered his tallywhacker. As he stood there looking at us with disgust, pee was running out his front arm holes.

OMG!:shocked: Poor puppy!

 

[Ed of all trades]

Another story about my old duck hunting days.

One weekend, by buddy that owned the retriever couldn't go hunting, so he lent us his dog. When we picked up the dog, he also handed us a brand new Cabelas neoprene dog vest so the dog wouldn't get cold or injured on stick-ups in the water.

Upon getting out to our favorite slough, we put out the decoys and put the dog in his new neoprene vest. It was a busy morning of calling, shooting and retrieving. During a lull in the action, my buddy says "Hey, look at the dog. What the heck is he giving us that look for?". That dog was just standing there, looking at us with the most disgusted look I've ever seen.

It finally dawned on us that we hadn't checked the fit of the vest. Seems that it ran a little long and covered his tallywhacker. As he stood there looking at us with disgust, pee was running out his front arm holes.

Not sure why that was so funny but it was. Thanks Ed