Interesting things seen while hunting....

Black Panthers

I read somewhere that animals near the edge of their normal range are more likely to have black ones in the population. Don't remember why. So if there are mountain lions in a place near the edge of their range there must be black ones there too if the article was applicable to panthers.
 
Angry Hummer

I bought a tree stand and climbing stick last year, mainly to try to get over my fear of heights. I was sitting in the stand and heard a dreadful buzz. Startled, I thought a bee swarm was coming. I looked to my left and a humming bird was hovering by my head about 18 inches away. He buzzed all around me, calling "pik pik . " He landed on a limb about a yard away from me and kept angrily calling "pik pik . "He looked like that grumpy bluebird picture.

He flew away and I wished I had gotten out my camera. About 5 minutes later he was back and buzzed me again for a couple of minutes. I thought he went to the Bird Tavern and told his friends, "You'll never guess what I found sitting in a tree." His friends probably told him he'd had too much to drink and he just came back to check and see if it was really true. :cool:
 
Nothing too exciting; I have frequently observed grey fox stalking birds & squirrels, while I was perched in a deer stand. I also saw one pursuing a rabbit. Good reminders I wasn't the only hunter in the area. :D
 
Well he wasn't black, but it sure was a mountain lion I ran into about 10 years ago deer hunting down on the border.

I was wearing all tan, against a backdrop of dried sage grass and desert, he probably couldn't tell what I was.

I actually raised my binoculars to me eyes, trying to convince him I was a tool-user, and thus he should be afraid. :rolleyes: He wasn't :eek:

I pointed my rifle between his eyes; yes I know, this was all stupid, but I thought if I could just convince him I was Homo Sapiens, the classic "cowardly" lion would shy awy from human contact. He didn't.

We had a stand off for about five minutes. When I started to whisper for my hunting buddy who was supposed to be right behind me (he wasn't :eek: ), he started to freak at the sound of the human voice.

It was at that time, between the vegetation and the scant 30 feet between us, that I realized I could only get one shot off if I had to before he was on me.

I exited stage left, he went stage right, and that was the last kitty I saw.

Now every year, I get a lion tag (there over the counter in Arizona, about 11 bucks or so) "just in case". I also always carry a hunting legal revolver as a backup, in case I need quicker, close range shots.

That's probably my best hunting story; I have more of them then I do filled game tags, though :o
 
Ohio Annie. The Texas Parks and Wildlife did a DNA study of the mountain Lion and they said! that the mountain lion does not have the DNA to make a black lion. I think the DNA missing made a pigment called melanin which make animals black. There is a (I think) gray squirrel that is also black because of melanin. Most people just call them black squirrels
 
I saw a show about the large number of people that keep large cats [lions, tigers, leopards, etc] as pets. maybe he escaped someone or was a desendant of one that escaped and interbred. all I know is that he was the size of a mountain lion and black.
 
We used to trap hogs and put them in a pen near the Nueces River in S. Texas to fatten up. The river has quite a few alligators in it. Once when we were down there, one of the dogs ate a hole through the fence and was harrassing the pigs. About a 175 pounder got out of the hole and took off across the river. It made it about half way before an alligator took it under. It reminded me of a bass hitting a topwater lure!
 
watchin

dont really know how long i watched but sky went from black/grey to pink/red and visibility got huntin good as i watched a river otter divin and eatin
in fast water,never left general area and never acted as if he was fightin the current.
Wasnt huntin but at work(dont get paid for this) saw an owl stoop and take a huge rat,lay on the ground with said rat in outstretched talons,rise and fly off.Were all three of us better off for that?
robert
occupied georgia
 
I sat in a deer stand one morning for almost an hour watching a pair
of roadrunners engage in what I can only assume was a "mating dance".

The two birds walked out into the clearing, and began walking in a circle, facing each other. Every few seconds one or the other, or both would flap their
wings, jump up in the air, fan their tail feathers, then light back down and commence the circling. After a few minutes they would break off and run in separate directions into the brush. Five minutes later they would both strut back out into the clearing and resume the "dance".
It reminded me ot the old "Wild Kingdom" TV show.
They eventually both ran off into the brush, one chasing the other.

A couple of years ago I watched from a tree stand as a bobcat stalked
a fawn feeding with a pair of does in a clearing. The cat got within about
15 feet of the fawn, when I guess one of the does smelled it. She snorted,
jumped straight up, :eek: , and all three deer were gone like a puff of smoke.
I shifted my rifle to get a bead on the cat but it got down in the dead grass
and I lost sight of it.

Walter
 
For some reason squirrels always seem to want to either climb up or climb down whatever tree I'm set up in. Real uneasy feeling when your eyball to eyball with one.
I see red-tailed hawks all the time up close but they always spot me right away, they have great vision.
I always think its funny when I see something moving out of the corner of my eye and its a leaf blowing on a tree 100 yards away. It's amazing what your senses pick up when you're "tuned in" like that.
I saw a scarlet tanager for the first time while hunting. They are the brightest red color I've ever seen.
 
Three Things I Remember.....

Years ago squirrel hunting in Maryland, shot a squirrel out of a treetop with my shotgun.....before it hit the ground, a hawk grabbed it out of the air and tried to fly away with it.....a shot over it's head into the leaves persuaded it to leave the squirrel behind. :D

Three years ago on Alaska moose/caribou hunt, watched two wolverines chase a couple of big bull caribou away from their (wolverines') den. My buddy and I hiked after them (about 2 miles above the river in the hills), but when we got up there both wolverines and cribou were nowhere to be seen - still amazing to watch though!

This past year in Alaska, was fishing on the bank of our camp with my buddy when a mink ran down the bank and wanted to get around us - I was standing in his path - so he retreated, went under the bank, used one of his tunnels, and popped out about 15 feet on the other side of us!

Michael
 
Saw a moose get spanked...

Just the other day, a buddy and I had just hiked out of a canyon and spotted a baby moose heading to a pond along the rim. We snuck up onto a hill about 100 yards behind it, and then my buddy went down behind the moose while it was drinking, and threw a stick at it. Hit it right on the rear. That moose jumped and swam the pond in record time, then headed out into the canyon. We figured he had gone to fetch Momma, and since we had one .270 between us, and it was out of season, we ran half a mile to his rig, trying not to keel over with laughter.
 
Mastadon Bones

My dad and his hunting buddy drug me along on what was one of my first hunts with the grown ups. We were living in the village of Bethel, AK. So we went via boat up river for the hunt. It was late in the year, and cold enough for an evening fire, so when one of the other fellows tried to cut a piece of bowed wood out of the river bank he found it unusually hard to chop with his axe. It turned out to be a mastadon tusk, so it was fossilized ivory. The rest of the animal was in the bank also. We still have the tusk.
 
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It turned out to be a mastadon tusk
Click to expand...
Now that is really fantastic! I've heard there are fossil bones in some of the Florida springs but I didn't know they were in Arkansas. :D


Found what I think is a piece of meteorite last week, but I'm not sure. Nothing as exciting as a mastodon tusk.
 
AK is Alaska. Dads buddy was a local eskimo. Yeah, I used to carve little necklace pieces and give them to sweethearts. The axe marks are still in it. The outside is dark brown like dirt but inside is like a yellowed ivory color. I don't think that kind of stuff is super rare though. There were lots of fossils and bones because everything both froze and stayed very dry in the low humidity you get around artic type air. I was at a Gold camp in the Yukon and found a bunch of tools from the original guy who started the camp in 1933. He got sick and died in town so he left a bunch of stuff. They were barely rusty.

I saw my brother catch a duck with a lucky cast from a fishing rod. It flew into his line, not the lure. The duck came out from under a bridge he was standing beside. That was cool. That happened on Kodiak Island. I also saw a sea otter (I guess, it was the 6 foot kind) follow his lure and pop up on the bank right underneath him. The otter bailed and Rob hollered. That happened in the Yukon. But they were talking about hunting...
 
interesting things

A couple years ago while deer hunting hear on my 40 in n.e.Mn. I had 3 wolves chase a red fox right past my stand, one of the wolves was coal black. You don't see that every day.
 
Meek and mild, I can still recall the one and only indigo bunting I saw when I was a Boy Scout camping on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I went wild, and the rest could have cared less that such a bird existed.

I have on the camcorder a bald eagle trying to pick off a crippled hen mallard in open water. It made five passes, each time the mallard waiting until the last minute to raise up and flap its wings to make the eagle flinch or throw its aim off. The eagle gave up, and went to hang around the snow geese.
 
We don't have many mastadon bones ;) in the deep south, but if you get away from the cities and areas where there is heavy agricultural pesticide use you can see many indigo buntings. The major trouble they have is the brown headed cow birds like to parasitize them, so a certain percentage of nests are lost each year. It would be nice to be able to legally shoot cowbirds, but that isn't allowed except with special permits.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/MigratoryBirds/Fact_Sheets/default.cfm?fxsht=3
 
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