Strange Things Found In The Woods

[Dale Moser]

TTT for more cool stories, bring'em!

[AtTheWall]

I’m young, 14 years old, hunting Robertson County Texas (between Houston & Dallas). Back in these days, the Texas wolf was alive and well and we spotted two during my early years on my Dad’s place there. Bigger than a coyote and not quite as large as their northern Timber Wolf cousins.

The scene is an afternoon deer hunt, 30-30 Savage in my hands with a Weaver fixed 4x scope. I’m sitting in my treestand about 15ft up positioned on the edge of a timber line and a large open field. The typical afternoon smoke-pole ambush. As I scan and hunt, off in the distance, along the river bottom 3 miles away I hear them…howling and getting ready for their evening hunt.

I sit there, a few does way out of range and I notice these deer are very nervous for due reason. As the sun settles, I listen to the sound of this pack working their way toward me. I’m contemplating getting down and working in with low light to camp but opt to sit till the end, absolute pure darkness before leaving my hunt. I unload my rifle to string it down safely and climb down out of my stand. As my boots hit the ground, I rechamber a round just in case and start my hike back to camp, roughly a half mile away. As I work along the edges of the timber and open field I realize the pack is now within 100 yards of me. I have the wind working down from them to me as I slowly work into the heavy timber, following a well memorized sendero. I hear them now, they are literally within 50 yards of me,. leaves rustling with the occassional yip. Little did I know my Grandpa and Dad have been sitting in camp listening to the entire deal knowing these wolves had worked their way over to my stand following a dry sandy loam creek bottom that fed through our property and dumped into the river. All I can say is I had my rifle off safety, ready to rock and roll every step of the way. I would stop, they stopped. I moved, they moved. The darndest deal I’ve ever experienced and needless to say I was a little bit nervous. Once I closed within 100 yards of camp, they simply moved off leaving me alone.

I strolled into camp, and Grandpa and Dad both looked at me with big smiles on their faces. Grandpa simply stated, “I was wondering if I would hear that 30-30 bark!”

Darn good memories from another time!

[AtTheWall]

Hunting with Dad.

Once again, Robertson County Texas. Dad and I are on the back of the property, He's working the North Corner with me at the far end working the South corner. A sendero runs the entire back fence line between him and I with a high point dead center in the property. Ground blinds, packing heat. Well the hunt went down and I note Dad working his way to me along the sendero. So I simply stand in the sendero, camo head to toe and wait. As I stand there I notice something running towards me between Dad and I.

I freeze and simply stare realizing this is a big huge bobcat. The cat continues to run right at me, wind in my favor and closes to 5ft and hits the skids. It stands there staring at me and I stand there staring at it, eyes not blinking. It seemed like time stood still as we both stared each other down and as quickly as this scene unfolds the cat busts out of there like nobodies business.

Dad walks up with a big grin on his face and simply stated "I was wondering if you were going to shoot that bobcat."

[AtTheWall]

Fishing with Steve Mikeska near Pearland.

This scene is 1973. Steve and I fished Mary's Creek literally everyday. A slow moving drainage that runs through Friendswood and dumps into Clear Creek and then into Galveston Bay just to the east. We have roughly 2000 acres of prime ag (rice fields), cattle operations (broken prairie) with Mary's creek running between both sections of this property. Mr. Alexander owns the land and now it's been developed, park, school and neighborhoods now...a shame.

We wrap our day on the creek and start our pack out hauling our gear. As we work the narrow trail through heavy grass, me on lead, I feel something strike my right Converse tennis shoe. I look down and WTH!!!! A cottonmouth has it's fangs buried into the rubber of the outside of my tennis shoe and now it's hung up, fangs inpaled. How it missed my foot, only the Lord knows but now I've got a 3ft cottonmouth on my right foot and he's not happy at all. Thank goodness I watched way too many episodes of "Dukes of Hazzard" and wore a buck knife on my belt. I throw my gear quickly, grabbing my Buck, flipping the blade open as the snake is now wrapping around my right ankle in an attempt to gain leverage to pull it's fangs free. This entire deal seemed like it would never end from a time standpoint, adrenaline has a way of making time stand still.....I sliced the snakes head off with one shot and then the shakes hit.

A close call and all Steve could do was stand there watching the entire deal unfold in disbelief. If I was ever going to dump test my drawers, this was one of those moments!

[AtTheWall]

Gulf Coast Fishing Pier Stories.

During my early years I fished the Galveston Gulf Coast Fishing pier every weekend during the summer. Sea-A-Roma was alive and well on the opposite side of the Galveston Seawall. Dad and I build custom rods, made friends with the hard-core surf fishing locals, and we watched each other's back. There were weekends Dad would drop me off on Friday evening after work, fish till the wee hours of the morning, go home leaving me on the Pier, to pick me up mid-afternoon on Sunday. Times were good, folks were good and in those days you could leave a teenage son somewhere for days, in public without worry from fruit loops.

THE LOUDMOUTH

Fishing the left most side of the Gulf Coast T-Head. About 15 custom long rods are out, the crew is there and the early fall mullet migration is in full swing. A school of mullet, literally 1 mile long and half a mile wide is swimming, literally a moving island of fish. In the middle of it all, huge tarpon are busting through on a wild feed. Literally dozens of them, getting airborne, slashing and scattering the schools so wildly, the sound alone was all you could hear. Underneath this huge school of fish were King Mackerel. As we all hooked up with fish, a long haired, loudmouth hippy type kept running his mouth as if everything out there was his. He started casting, crossing lines and getting in everyone's way....absolutely no manners or respect to us and the crew. He wasn't a local, folks knew him but his attitude was bad, real bad...no Texas manners....looked like a surfer dude from California. Well after about 15 minutes of this one of the guys, a bull rider from N.Houston had enough of it all and simply grabbed this guy and in one move lifted him up off the deck, pole and all and threw him into the Gulf of Mexico. I swear that SOB cussed all the way back into the beach...all 1000 ft of it LOL! He stormed back up to the T-Head, gathered his stuff cussing us all out and left. We never saw him again ever.

THUNDERSTORM

Summertime, I'm fishing the left side of the T-Head alone, mid-week. It's a hot as heck Texas summer afternoon and off on the horizon a nasty Thunderstorm is working it's way inshore. Folks start to scatter further off to my right but I sit tight. The sky goes dark, wind starts to howl and rain coming down in buckets. I sit down low on the deck, lowering my profile just in case lightning strikes nearby and continue to fish. Thank goodness the deck is cement and wood planks, not a good conductor and the pier lights are all aluminum and way higher than anything out there on the end. It's prime time and suddenly my 10.5 Fenwick lights off like it's on fire. I toss care to the wind, jump up and set the hook....good GAWD!!!!!!!!!!!! This fish is huge and line starts screaming off my Penn Squidder faster than anything I've ever experienced before. My leader is 4ft stranded steel at 350lb test, My hook is a commercial grade, forged tuna hook in the classic J-Hook design, 12/0. Tough as crap steel, made for tuna well over 300lbs. I'm holding on, rod bent way over and the line is nearing the end, 30lb test, about to spool and things suddenly go slack. I crank in as fast as I can work the reel hoping this fish has turned in on me. The weight has been ripped off the leader, I didn't know this till I reel my line up and note, my 12/0 forged, commercial grade J-Hook has teeth marks and its bent over like a pretzel right at the teeth bites. Solid steel, bent like it was butter. I do believe no matter if I had shark gear or not this day, that fish was not stoppable on any rod from a stationary position.

[AtTheWall]

Buxton North Carolina (Cape Hatteras)

It is a weeknight, late fall, weekday, no one out on the Buxton pier but one other fella, nd an old guy, and me. We are both on the end of the T-Head, he is casting a trout rod chasing rat reds and I am soaking my big stick Fenwick spooled with 600 yards of 30lb test mono. I have a foot long bluefish out, long steel leader and hoping for a bullred (the world record was caught off this same pier = 98lbs). As the old guy and I fish, about 20 yards apart on the backside of the Tee head, working lures downwind and down swell my Fenwick lights off screaming and bucking on the rail like it is possessed!

I drop the trout rod, run over, grab the big rod, and hammer the hook home. The old guy stops fishing, grabs the drop net thinking, finally a big old bull red is on....SON! As I sit and hold my rod, I realize this fish is huge and line is coming off the reel steadily with a heavy rhythmic move that is slower in rhythm than a typical fish of 50lb size. It’s huge, it’s steady and I can’t do a thing but watch line pour off the reel. At about ¾ spool out, the fish just stops, heavy weight and I try to gain line by thumbing down the spool, backing up to the back rail and running forward gaining line. I managed to do this three times, gaining roughly 20-30 yards of line, pulling this huge weight slightly backwards with huge stretch in my mono….line whistling in the wind. At that point, this fish realized something was wrong and OH MY GOD it lite off like afterburners at speed that rivals marlin, makos any of the big top feeders in the open ocean. The last 200 yards of line zipped off that reel at such a high rate of speed I probably got about 3 eye blinks in before it hit the end and popped.

The old man stood there, dropped the net and simply stated. “Well I guess the net wasn’t going to do us any good tonight, but if you had mananged to turn him and get him close, I would have grabbed my shotgun outa the truck to finish the job.” LOL!!!!

[Roy D Mercer]

Great stories Rob. My best friend lived in Robertson County. I spent many a day hunting all over that county growing up. Late 70's and early 80's. You ever have any BBQ at Ralphs? (Bremond) Dang good from what I remember.

[cosmiccowboy]

funny things found in the woods...

Six 1 gallon water bottles, 3 old sleeping bags and 3 bundles of old clothes wrapped with twine....

OK this ones a little sad but funny too...

We lost a great lease in 1970 south of Fowlerton that we had been on for many years...the usual...we were good hunters/tenants but the ranch sold.

We moved to a great new place west of Uvalde out the old Eagle Pass highway...it was 1500 low fence acres that actually belonged to Exxon but had been leased by the ranching family that owned about 5000 acres on three sides of it for 60+ years. We were personal friends with the rancher and thought we had a new long term home. We fixed all the roads, built low water crossings, built a camp house, put in stands, feeders, etc. and got the whole 6500 acres on the same management plan...in 5 years we were just starting to really see the results of all our work...We were starting to see 150-160 class deer on a regular basis...

Then some guy from Exxon came down to check on their property. He realized what we had there, went back to Houston, canceled the ranchers lease, leased it himself, and gave us 30 days to get all our stuff off.

We were there the last weekend finishing loading our stuff and had all the trailers, trucks, etc. loaded down. Unfortunately we still had about a cord of good dry mesquite we had cut for the camp and no room to haul it off. As you can imagine we weren't very happy with the situation and decided to burn the wood instead of leave it. It was bad enough having to leave our house. After dinner we built a huge bonfire...

Did I mention that alcohol might be involved in this story?

The house was in the middle of a 2-3 acre clearing that normally had a lot of jackrabbits. About 11 o'clock we decided to use the truck headlights to see if any jackrabbits were out and try to shoot them with our pistols...44's were fairly new and we all had one...I popped the headlights on and one was sitting there about 60 yards away...All you heard for about 30 seconds was those big cannons going off and those big bullets skipping off the hard pan a whining off into the distance. We raised a lot of dust but didn't touch the jackrabbit.

The next morning I took one last drive around the ranch before leaving and started out on the fence line about 50 yards behind where the jackrabbit was.

I turned the corner and there was a trail of stuff for 200 yards thrown everywhere heading south for the border. Those poor guys must have seen our bonfire and walked to it to try to bum some food...(not an uncommon occurrence)...they were probably out there in the dark behind the jackrabbit debating on whether to risk it when we popped the lights on and unloaded...

They probably ran all the way back to the Rio Grande.

[Roy D Mercer]

My best friend will find this in his stand later on this season.
I know he will never forgive me for this one.

[Roy D Mercer]

I am going to make the frame like this.

[cosmiccowboy]

I got the opportunity to hunt a large private ranch in South East Colorado for one day a few years ago...It was mostly shin oaks but had a couple of hills with pine and Spruce on top. It was a warm September day and I saw an elk herd heading up the side of one of those hills with the pine/spruce on top. I waited till they bedded down and still hunted them into the wind and ended up killing a big 6X6 but thats another story. As I was still hunting through that forest on top of the hill I came up on a big "bear tree"...a 20" pine tree that had almost all the bark scraped off up to about 15' from a bear climbing up and down. I told the ranch hand about it that night because I knew that they were supposed to have some bear hunters in there later in the year...

The cowboy just spit a big wad of tobacco juice and drawled... yeahhhhh...*spit*...that there bear climbs up in that there tree so he can see you hunters from Texas coming...*spit*

[Arrowsmith]

I was bow hunting elk in Colorado. We were up in Hotel Draw about 20 miles west of the old Purgatory ski resort and east of Rico. I was hiking up a steep grade. I stopped to catch my breath. I looked down found a partially buried rifle clip. It was from a Remington 760 pump action. It had three .270 rounds in it along with a lot of dirt and spruce needles. I bet the hunter that lost it was not a happy camper when he discovered his loss. His Rem. 760 pump had become a single shot. I still have the loaded clip.

["DOC"]

Waaaaaay back in the 60's when me and my buddies ran wild and free and terrorized Sterling county, (We thought we owned it all) and most of the other ranchers tolerated us somewhat, we were prowling around north of town on an old practice bombing range one morning and on the side of one of the hills (mountains to a young boy) I found a ringtail cat in the claws of an owl, the owl had the ringtail with both feet but the ringtail had the owl by the throat. Both dead, fresh kill, I didn't own a camera and wouldn't of had money for film anyway. I still remember it vividly though and think about the cartoon that says Never Give Up.

[HPD96G15]

Last night after I read this thread I was driving my patrol car and observed a gray fox seating on the wall of the Hardy Toll Road (Harris County) watching cars go by. This is the fourth time I saw him. I got him on video use the video camera in my car but he was about 100 yards away. I get to see all kinds of things at night on patrol.

[Mike Murphey]

n a previo lease I was looking for shed antlers and found a old titlest golf ball...it was under a tree at least a mile from any fence...I have it on my mantle with other sheds that I have found over the years....