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Seen coyotes, mama turkey with chicks, owl, and a blue bird that nearly landed on my rifle, but thought better of it.
One morning I got in my stand before sunup. After a bit, I started to hear some clucking, then turkeys started decending from their roost in the woods behind me. Stopped counting around 20 or so, but they kept coming. Haven't seen them since.
This year, I saw a doe leave her fawns in the hay field I hunt while she entertained a young buck back in the woods. Also watched a doe wind me and pitch a fit, but wasn't bothered enough to run away.
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While sitting on my stand one morning I heard something behind slowly turned in my stand and about 30 yards away I see a racoon climbing a tree watched as it went up and then squeezed into this hole I did have a picture of his head sticking up in the hole looking at me but I guess I deleted it.Attachment 275210
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I have seen all sorts of critters runnin, jumpin, flyin all around me. However one morning I heard something under the stand, it was a racoon sniffing around where I had set my pack down, after a minuet he started up the tree! No way i needed to get in a fight with a racoon first thing in the morning. Of course I didn't want to spook any deer in the area by shouting at him, so I stood up and had to spit on his head several times as he kept climbing. He made it all the way to the bottom of my stand (20' or so), by then I had an arrow out of the quiver in case I had to poke him in self defense lol. about that time he decided to head back down anyway, so no harm to him or me.
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Well one winter morning whitetail hunting my brother-n-law goes to his tree stand well before daylight. He is scared of heights, so his treestand was a double bench seat one . It had 3 extension... but he only used 2 lol.
Ha!ha
Anyway he begins his ascend up the ladder , right as his head starts to rise above the bench seat his there is this loud hissing /growling sound !!! His headlamp lights up this big eyeballs and and snorling mouth full of teeth !!!! ...... he falls to the ground flat of his back !!!! He isn't hurt , but his dad is close by and runs to him to see what's happening. He proceeds to climb up the ladder carefully to find a Full Grown Man Eating Opossum waiting !!!! Man oh Man , me and his dad never let him live that down !!!! ...... but in his defense he did show us why he only uses 2 extensions lol
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One day after work i rushed home , grabbed my bow and my wife ask if she could tag along ? I said sure, so we head out to this hidden 20acre wheat filled on a creek bottom . Time was limited and we were pressing the time so we just crouched down on the edge of it with our backs to the woods and fence . Behind us was about 30foot of thick woods/brush and then a 20foot drop off into a big creek .
So the sun is setting , time is getting perfect and my wife nudges me ...pssssh!! Hey look at the beautiful bobcat over on the other fence . I look , he is pretty and all spotted up . He travels on down the fence row to the corner where there is a nice game trail and a water crossing.
We go back to watching the field , we are entering the perfect time !! All of the sudden i here this light snap of a twig behind us , my wife knows not to turn fast ....... weve been down that road Lol! Anyway we both start turning slowly and my wife is directly nose to nose with that big beautiful Bobcat !!!... She starts screaming ! Bobcat starts screaming !! My wife takes off running into the wheat field, and i could hear the Bobcat tearing through the woods in a dead run screaming !!!!
... then i hear a Huge Splash of water from the bobcat falling from the 20ft drop off !! This whole time i never move ..... I couldn't, as i was laughing to Hard !!!
A once in a lifetime story , most of my good times /good memories come from hunting ,camping and just being out in nature..
Oh and all this happened when i was still living in Oklahoma , no white tails or Bobcats here ha!ha
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I was up in an abandoned board tree stand that had a cedar tree growing nearly thru it. I had a pair of kinglets start feeding in the cedar. Kinglets are tiny, think humming bird size, birds that eat insects and insect eggs. They are nearly fearless. They were giving every needle in the cedar the once over. They came within a foot of my face/head several times. Then the male flitted out of the cedar to change branches. He was about 2 feet from my head when he vanished in a small puff of feathers and the hawk that got him disappeared behind the cedar. I think it was a sharp shin, but everything was so fast I couldn't really get or have an idea what it was.It was so close I'm sure I could have touched it as it struck the little kinglet. Nature is amazing.
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Not from the deer stand, but I'll never forget the first pronghorn stalk I went on with my dad. We were moving along a fenceline toward a band of goats and we heard a gunshot far in the distance. Then this whirring sound a few seconds later that starts getting louder. I'm behind dad, we're both crawling on hands and knees. He whispers loudly, "STOP". So we both freeze. "WHUMP". Dirt flies up in the space between us. The whirring sound was a .30 caliber bullet from a hunter who had taken a shot that either ricocheted or was a skyline shot. I used my pocketknife to dig it out of the prairie. Something one never forgets. Ever.