What is your "fear factor"?

My buddy who is native told me that owls are traditionally real bad juju. His Grandpa will go out of his way to go back to the house, grab a rifle and kill one if he sees it. There are the spirits of evil men back from the dead apparentely.

Anyways, I am scared of grizzies. Never was back home in California but for some reason there are scarier here. Maybe it's 'cause the woods are unfamiliar here, if that makes any sense.
 
I got a healthy respect for hogs at night folks. Was in a tree stand on my lease S. Texas near border. Lots of bogs, creeks etc, the particular place where I was. Dark, listening to turkeys thinking about coming out of the trees, about 30 min before you could actually see, owls hooting. Snapping teeth and growling around the area, Javalina. Next thing I heard put the hair right up. Very low growling and very very close and off my starboard quarter of the stand. I eased very slowly around and had my handgun in my right hand. Growling got closer and I still could not see what it was, only that it was coming! I was only about 6 feet up the tree and looked straight down the short ladder. Man it was a huge bore looking right up at me and just growling, really low rumbling growl. I can still remember thinking, "If you have learned to climb a ladder you are toast" was hunting deer and did not want to just shoot this thing unless he decided to test the ladder. He just kept look up at me and growling. He finally went away in no hurry. No deer that day and when I came out of the stand about 0830 I was very careful going back to my ATV. Got to the ATV and there were huge hog tracks all around it. Looked back and that sucker had tracked me to the tree from the ATV.

Went into a dense Mesquite thicket after a big wounded sow one evening turning dark and that is another story. Don't ever do it!!!
 
snakes dont bother me, but around here we have timber rattlers(LOTS) and copperheads. so i dont usually overturn rocks or stick my hands under fallen trees:rolleyes:

black bears are the issue in my immediate vicinity. they are protected, and by some folks even fed. they arent mindful of people.

we got some bears

PICT4747.jpg
 
Last edited:
yes. but its a odd place, some state law, mostly national forest law, lots of national park law, and some state park law. then where i live is nature preserve. this is off my balcony, but its very confusing even getting in a car and driving down the road with a firearm. seriously. would like to put a truck gun rack in my pickup, but i think it would cause me more problems than its worth. so it all has good and bad. game is everywhere. hunting that game is something else tho.

i hear the moonshine is ok:)
 
Last edited:
I can't even look at that picture of that spider without getting the heebeegeebies. That is down right wrong. I'm not sure that I could walk around in a place where I know I would bump into something like that. When we encounter spiders here the largest ones are maybe the size of a dollar coin. I usually have to get the missus to help deal with any spiders encountered, she hates them too but seeing how much of a little girl I turn into when around them is enough for her to milk it. Just thinking about them stands the hair up on the back of my neck, nothing else does this just spiders.

Indy.
 
60083264ph_7913WaspFace800-1.jpg

Any time I have a close call with one of these guys I can feel them crawling all over my skin for an hour or more. Oddly enough, bees don't bug me, but any kind of wasp immediately puts me into panic mode.
It comes from when I was 12 years old; I was walking through the woods with my younger brother on a camping trip. He stepped on a log and his foot went right through it (and got stuck). As he was trying to get his foot un-stuck, I could hear a buzzing sound that got louder and louder until I started to get stung. I looked down and saw that my sweat pants were crawling with yellow jackets. I ran back to our camp site, and jumped into our car and shut the door. Then I realized I still had lots of these little bastards stuck to my pants and was now shut in a car with them and they weren't happy. You can imagine how that worked out for me.
After all was said and done I had about 30 stings. Interestingly enough my brother didn't get stung once - even though he was the one with his foot in their nest:confused:. Now I have a full blown phobia.
A few years ago I was in our attic and stepped on a big paper wasp on the floor with my bare foot. Somehow it didn't sting me, but it buzzed it wings (right under the arch of my foot). I still cant go in there without my pulse quickening and getting real jumpy.
 
Oh, I do recall my first bowhunt up a tree that I had to climb up on nails, in oversized boots, in the dark, with no safety harness, in an unfmiliar place...that was NOT fun.

And another time when th bottom part of the climber started to come undone when I leaned a little too much to the right. I had a harness but still, talk about a focusing of attention. That was the last time I didn't bother to ratchet the pieces in!!
 
Nothing like walking out of the woods in the dark and the night animals stop making noises. Then you start smelling cat pee where it wasn't when you went in the woods in daylight. The bobcats here run in size from slightly bigger than a house cat to one Mrs. Meek and I saw which was the size of a pit bull. So I'm really afraid to meet one in the dark.

I don't know, but it mumbled like an old grumpy man as it circled the tent, in the woods, 12 miles from a dirt road.
Click to expand...
Sounds like it may have been an armadillo. They make weird noises. First time I heard one it sounded something like Popeye the Sailor talking to himself.
 
A "whoof" sound when I'm battling my way through an alder jungle... Also any noise at all when I'm on a solo backpack hunt laying in my tent at night. Little critters tend to grow into big critters in the minds eye and you hear every stinking one of them when there's nobody to talk to.
 
let me put my fear of spiders liek this: iud rather box a grizzly bear barehanded and covered in honey then see a spider in the woods. when i was 16 or 17 we went campign and had a black widow crawl on my arm, im 6'1" and then i was 275 and could bnch 495 lbs to give you idea about my build....i screamed lieka 2 year old girl and booked it from the tent to my truck, and was back in town in 30 minutes. we were camping a hour and half out from town.
 
I have to admit, I was pretty squeemish about spiders for most of my life. The military helped with that though. I've walked through lots of Banana spider webs while on night (training) patrols in Asian jungles, that sucked esp. when you can feel the bugger crawling on you.
What was worse was sleeping in the sand every night in Kuwait during the summer... Lots of critters really "get to know you" and are "there to great you" in the morning. Snakes haven't really bothered me too much, we used to eat lots of Rattle snakes when I was growing up in Montana. I did however "drop trou." in Kuwait only to have a pit viper appear and start chasing me. Maybe he wasn't actually chasing me but when you are back peddling with your pants around your ankles it sure seems like the chase is on. After about 6 swats with my e-tool the "chase" was over.
To me, something that can pick me up and shake me in its' mouth is really scary.
 
I'm fearless! :D

The aliens thing bothers me a bit though. I know aliens have never visited Earth and they probably aren't coming in my lifetime either, but my little brain stem always say "what if" when I'm in the dark woods or driving a desolate section of road at night.

Alien is the only movie that ever scared me. None of the sequels did and no other movie has come close. I'm always looking for another scare that would equal that. Tried "Fire in the Sky" but it just didn't do anything for me.
 
Don't really have one.

Had a Puma sneak up on me once, that would have been a H*** of a fight.

Got charged by a big boar hog, that was pretty intense for a few seconds.

One that really raised the hackles was finding two pairs of of non-human footprints that were still filling with water when my youngest bro and I were rabbit hunting south of SR84. We were both carrying 12ga's so not too much to worry about but we both went on full alert. I have believed in the Skunkape ever since.

Those Banana spiders will put a hurtin' on you. I had a buddy got bit on the belly and he sported a purple patch the size of a dinner plate for about two weeks. I walk the dark with a small branch in front of me.
 
Had a puma near me. Didn't know it. All I knew was it got really quiet and I got really scared. Walked away and didn't sleep well. Found the tracks about 50 yards from where I had been hanging out. That's not all that close, but it was close enough to scare the hell out of me. And they say there's no mountain lions in East TX. Not many, but they're there. That's what scares me most in the field. The unknown.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top