'War stories' needed

[Ranger J]

I can not imagine with all the hunters out there that there isn’t a wealth of ‘war stories’ that need to be shared with the rest of us.  Come on guys and gals tell us about the ‘one that got away’, etc.  I would hate to see these true stories put in the same category of say Big Foot stories. :wink:
RJ

[Huffmanite]

OK, here is my most embarrassing hunting story.  Once I was invited to hunt deer on a large piece of land I had never hunted before.  Walked the land and found a spot to use my .43 Spanish Rolling Block.  Longest shot would be about 40 yards.  Needed a short shot because I had not fired the RB in about 10 years, but confident I could hit a deer at that distance with it.  Had never shot a deer with the 370 gr lead bullet in the 43Spanish, normally hunted with a 30-06 which I was pretty deadly with.

Went to property just before sunrise and went to spot, only to find another hunter there.  Forced to go to another spot, which was a stand that over looked a huge field.  Now I may have a shot up to 250 yards away.

Had been in stand about 30 minutes when I saw a spike white tail about 125 yards away directly in front of me.  Watched it for about 10 minutes, hoping it would move closer to me, but it did not.  Finally decided to squeeze off a shot.  Took my time aiming, but had a problem remembering how to sight the rifle, it had been so long since I had shot it.  Cursing myself for leaving my 30-06 in car.  Took a shot and the deer jumped about 3 foot straight up in air.  Son of a gun, I hit it.  Wrong, it landed and ran about 25 yards further away and stopped to look around.  Took even longer aiming second shot and fired again.  Deer jumped in air again, landed and ran another 25 or so further away.  Chambered another round, fired.  Chambered another round, fired.  Each time it was further away.  Had to use my binoculars to now see the deer and it was standing in front of a tree.  Figured I could use tree as target to hit deer and shot again.  Missed again.  Well that was my hunting for the morning, I had used up all the cartridges I had for the rolling block.  The guy that had taken my spot nailed a nice 6 pointer about 30 minutes later.  EGADS!

[Huffmanite]

Used to hunt on several hundred acres of land that was a mixture of fields and woods with a creek.  Good deer and year round squirrel hunting on it.  There was also one cottontail rabbit, that I and a hunting buddy that I shared the lease with, tried to shoot for a couple of years.  It was always in an area of heavy ground cover and brush, and if you saw it, you only got one shot.  It always saw us before we saw it and we had to shoot while it was running.  I always hunted squirrel with a 22 lr semi-auto Marlin with a 3x8 power scope and my buddy used a combo 22 mag/410.  Between the two of us, we missed hitting him about 7 times.  So here are two stories about the bunny that would not die.

One day we are squirrel hunting along a cow path thru the woods, when my buddy shouts, he's coming your way.  He had stumbled across the cottontail and it was running full speed directly towards me following the cow path I was on.  Well a few seconds before, I had put my scope on 8 power to scan a tree for a squirrel.  I could intermittently see the rabbit with my eyes as it ran along the cow path I was staddeling.  Threw my 22 to my shoulder to aim with scope, only to see large blades of grass in lens.  Oops, wrong power and the little sucker was about 10 feet away when I dropped my rifle and started firing from my hip.  He was moving so fast, my bullets hit just behind him as he ran between my legs.  I swiveled around at my waist to shoot again, without moving my feet, and fell on my butt.  

Another time squirrel hunting I spotted the cottontail as it hopped into a large hollow log laying on ground.  Don't think he had seen me and I positioned myself to watch both ends of hollow log that was about 12 foot long.  When he came out, he was mine.  I waited and waited, but no bunny appeared.  Tired of waiting I crept over to log and slowly peered into it, but log too dark to see anything.  Fired a shot into end of log, hoping it would run out of other end.  It didn't.  I kicked the log many times with my boot and still no bunny.  Darn, it had slipped out of log and I had not seen it.  How, did that happen, I asked myself as I sat on one end of log to have a smoke with my rifle cradled in my lap.  Had just lit my pipe, when the little bunny that would not die, ran out of the log between my legs into the heavy nearby brush and disappeared.  Crafty little sucker.  He had waited until I had put my rifle down.

[Ray Ford]

This is not a personal story, but I think it fits this thread.

When I was in Okmulgee (Oklahoma) High School, I had a fried and hunting buddy who was the assistant manager on the Okmulgee Public Hunting Area.  Lee had, like me, 'coon hounds and hunted the year around.  (You can tree 'coons anytime in Oklahoma.  You can only take them during the winter season.)

Lee was given to preserving game as well as hunting it.  He would not, for instance, ruin a good den tree by choping into it.  If the 'coon made it home, Lee let him be.  On several occasions, Lee's dogs chased but lost a particular 'coon.  Lee knew it was the same 'coon because he came to recognize his track: it, the track, was huge.  Lee was convinced that, if he ever bagged the 'coon, it would be a big one--possibly as much as forty pounds.  Well, one night, the 'coon couldn't throw the dogs and didn't get to a den tree, and Lee bagged him.  He was a little 'coon with a big foot!  He weighed eleven pounds.

The Okmulgee Coon Hunters Association often bought 'coons--as many as a hundred at a time--from trappers in other areas and turned them loose along Deep Fork River.  Sometimes these purchased animals were Kansas 'coons, sometimes  they came from Texas and Louisanna, and sometimes they were the big northern timber 'coons.  This particular animal must have been a cross between a prairie 'coon, maybe out of Texas, and one of those timber 'coons from up north.

[JPSaxMan]

I actually have two "the one that got away" stories.

Both have to do with deer. One was a complete idiotic mistake on my part (yes, I'm admitting it :lol:), and the other was a weather related incident (I promise).

The first one was a day when I was hunting in a 10 foot ladder stand in woods where a clear cut with overgrowth was in front of me and I had pines to my back. Around 5:00 that afternoon, several doe come circling off the ridge through the overgrowth and one, sure enough, comes right under my stand. I'm waiting for that perfect moment...so I stand up to take the shot and I decide to use my scope to aim...wow, I learned from that lesson. The bullet (I assume) went right behind her head, because she bounded off into the overgrowth to look back at me (and I sware I saw her stick out her tongue) before the clan took off.

The second story was during muzzleloader season. It was the first day and it was raining and all that other good hoo ha. So it was around 4:30, and I'm walking along the top of a ridge towards an apple tree which ultimately lead into woods. Lone behold, a deer bounds over some overgrowth next to the apple tree and stops and presents a beautiful shot. So I go to take it...I'm using a Traditions Hawken muzzleloader...and I guess my main charge got wet because all that happened was *click* *poof* as my pan powder went off and the doe took off. I cursed that darned gun until I got back to the house and had to pull the ball :roll:

SO...there are my stories.

[Ray Ford]

When I was about 15 years old, I picked up a stray pup.  He looked as though he might be part German Shepherd, but he was blue-ticked.  I assumed that he was a Blue Ticked Hound and German Shepherd cross.  I had never seen a Queensland or an Australian at that time, so the only blue dogs that I thought existed were the hounds.

I was hunting with an older man at that time--chasing 'coons in the Deep Fork River bottoms.  One evening, we went south of Okmulgee, Oklahoma, to a section of the bottoms that are now part of the Deep Fork Wildlike Management Area and closed to hunting.  I took the blue pup along--just to see what he might do.

The hounds left out as soon as we opened the dog box.  (We were in a Dodge pickup that dated to the 1940's.  The dog box was a 4x5 foot plywood structure that slid into the bed of the pickup with the door facing the tail gate.  If we lost the dogs, we could unload the box and leave it with the door open.  Next day, the hounds would be asleep in it.)  I turned the pup loose, and he headed into the woods.

It wasn't too long until we heard him throwing a barking fit.  He wasn't moving as on a track, so we went to him.  He was baying pigs!  Some ten or twelve white pigs that were some twelve inches tall were in a perfect circle, rumps together, and the pup was running around and around the circle.  Anywhere he went, he was facing snouts.  We got a kick out of the pup's frustration.  Since we weren't hunting hogs, we called the pup and headed back toward the truck--still waiting for the hounds to strike.  On the way back, my hunting partner said, "We should have grabed a couple of them and took them home."  They WOULD have been good eating.

At that time, the l950's, it was not too uncommon for farmers to turn their hogs loose in the bottom.  When it came time to sell or butcher, they would gather them up.

[Ranger J]

I had a very similar muzzle loader story.  I was setting in a sort of bent over tree about ten feet above the ground on a cold Dec. day.  It started to spit a little of what I call pill snowflakes.  I was shooting an old Numeric rifle that didn’t spark any too well on its best day.  I held my gloved hand over the frizzen to shelter it from the damp.  I sort of went to sleep I guess because I looked up and there were four does about thirty feet from me.  I took careful aim and pulled the trigger and nothing!  I did this again and again and I thought I saw sparks each time.  About the third snap the deer took off for parts unknown.  I opened the frizzen and looked at my priming powder.  It resembled black soup.  It seemed that I allowed the barrel of the gun to get higher than the lock and the heat of my hand raised the temperature of the barrel just enough to melt the snow when it fell on the barrel.  As it was a full stock rifle the moisture ran down the barrel and stock into the pan.  I dried the pan out and put in fresh powder and all I got were flashes in the pan.  About a week on a furnace register dried the barrel load out enough to fire.  The next year I had a cap and ball rifle.
RJ