Remember those hunting camp stories???

M

msinc

Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2010
Messages
1,196
Reaction score
930
Location
Maryland
Anyone out there remember going to hunting camps when you were young and some old hunter would start telling a story about a certain deer or bear {or any other animal.} It usually had some readily visible defect or just a rare for the area animal. Like the infamous "black panther" everyone is still seeing today that never even existed. Always the same animal that was supposedly seen year after year??? By a bunch of hunters with a gun in their hand but nobody ever shoots it???

I think guys used to come up with these stories to see who was stupid enough to claim they saw it and have a good laugh the next time that guy went out.. In some cases maybe even to help seperate the honest kids from the ones that will lie just to try and impress somebody else. The one I remember was about a bear in Pa. called "crooked jaw". The story was told that crooked jaw got shot by some hunter but it was obviously a bad hit and it destroyed his lower jaw. The bear is now around 600 pounds and would have to be at least 50 or 60 years old. I guess it's all in fun but guys still tell these stories at the old hunting camps today. Any one else out there got a customized "snipe hunt" story they would care to share????
 
Register to hide this ad
Well, its not a hunting camp story. Its a 4-H camp story. Every year the new campers get taken out to a big field and set to snipe hunting. Many of them had pie plates and spoons to bang on and make noise. Then the older,more experienced kids would sit about and laugh. Of course even back then the leaders didn't fully approve. It was something about taking 30 or so 10 year olds out at night and leaving them to their own devices.

I was luckier than most. I had a best friend who knew what was happening, and an older brother who told mom and dad. So when it came my/our time my buddy and I just slipped off and went back to the cabin (yes, we were a wealthy camp). Then we did what most 10 YOs do, we went to sleep. And the older kids, councilors, and leaders had to look for us for a few hours. Man were they upset when they found us sound asleep. :) Back to play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
 
Several years ago my buddy and I were Elk hunting and noticed a lot of Elk “sign” and had an idea for a piratical joke to play during the next years deer hunt in California. I bought a box of junior mints for the upcoming prank. My buddy and I and his wife and son were out hunting and I noticed a pile of fresh deer “sign”. I palmed a couple of mints and faked picking up some of the deer sign and placed a mint in my mouth and stated that I thought the sign had been placed earlier that morning and was piping hot. His wife told us where to go as she was not falling for that stunt. Later their 12 year old son joined us and while the wife was not in the vicinity I pulled the same trick only this time my buddy asked for some of the sign and he proceeded to disagree with me and told me if was much fresher. The look on his son’s face was priceless as he was horrified and thought surly we had gone completely bonkers. My buddy fessed up right away as he did not want to harm his son’s psyche. His son is now in his 30’s and that is one of his favorite memories of the hunt. This is a true story and actually happened.
 
I had a friend that had no experiance at hunting or camping. I took him on a camping trip in the sierras. We were sitting around the fire at night in the middle of nowhere (not a regular campsite.)
We were shareing a bottle. There was a noise a little ways off. I figured it was a couple of limbs rubbing together in the wind. Daves eyes got big and said, whats that? I said aw thats just probley a cougar. They probley are just curious about the fire. He insisted we leave! I had to talk hard to talk him out of breaking camp!
He later got to be pretty adventerous going on rafting trips etc.
 
"Like the infamous "black panther" everyone is still seeing today that never even existed."

...but it does.
 
What I have to say about Bigfoot and such is that it's pretty hard to believe with all the hunters/armed citizens out there every year. If they did in fact exist why has nobody, not a single solitary person produced a single solitary shread of factual evidence??? The best anyone can come up with has been verbal stories and fuzzy grainy photos that sort of look like what they are saying. As to the "black panthers"...dude, read up on some biology. There are black jaguars {in South America} there are black leopards {in Africa} and there are some of both in captivity. But it is a proven scientific fact that there is no such thing as a black cougar, panther, puma, catamount, or mountain lion. Period, end of story. It is physically impossible because of genetics for the cougar {or any of the other names the mountain lion of North America is known by} to have the condition known as melanism. Sorry pal, hate to burst your lie wide open but it cannot happen. You got a better chance of seeing a great white shark flopping around in the woods...at least they factually do exist. I think these stories were put out there to see who will lie or swear to one. I have to laugh every time I hear the infamous black panther sighting because what the person really says to me is "I got no problem being known as a liar." There have probably been more "black panther" sightings just in the state of Pennsylvania last year alone than there are Bigfoot sightings in Canada. The state of Pa. has more hunters per square mile than most states...they close schools down for opening day of deer season. Yet nobody has shot one with a bow or gun????? Come on guys, I know you want to be "the man" with the news but.....for real??? Grow up. All that said, I will add that I hope there is such thing and you can believe this...if I ever see one and have a gun in my hand I dont care what the fine is I have deep pockets and will be the guy with the proof. But until that day when I either kill it or see it as a fact and not a fuzzy picture of story being told, It aint happening.
 
Last edited:
This isn't really a hunting story but along those lines.

As some of you know, I returned to college while in my 40s to finish my degree(s). After I got my Bachelor's but during the summer before I started grad school, the Science Chair asked if I would be interested in taking a course in Tropical Ecology taught during the summer in Central America. Trick was, each student had to do a research project. Mine would be that I would be an unpaid teachers assistant/research assistant. Most of the students were business majors who needed 4 more units of upper division science. Now, this is a Southern Baptist College, so my duties included chaperoning.

Well, the first week was in the lowlands of Belize, near the Maya Mountains. Real rain forest stuff. Research station had elevated walkways because of the poisonous snakes. We found a fer-de-lance in the kitchen one morning (Texas Star=don't quibble on geographic ranges, etc).

Well, we were moving camp to the National Park at Tikal, Guatemala. This is totally different "jungle". The night before, I made an announcement. I told everyone that the area was inhabited by the bushmaster (a very large, deadly pit viper) and that bushmasters hunted primarily by sight. So, I recommended that everyone wear the brightest colored clothing they could. Also, that there is a correlation between tattoos and snakebite (there actually is but we won't go into why here). The next morning it looked like a hippie war-zone with the clothes and bandages over the tattoos. Of course, the good Dr and I were in our surf t-shirts and Bermuda shorts of "normal" colors.
 
Here's another one but more a hunting story.

While in grad school, I worked part-time as a hunting guide on wild pigs in Cali. We had a contractor buy a hunt for his crew because they finished a job ahead of schedule. Well, we did a short hunt Friday night and the guys had a few beers and drifted of to sleep. Now, this ranch had smallish hogs everywhere but we tried to manage it for trophy hogs (3-4" choppers). So, we could watch the mommas and babies while we sat around the fire, eating and drinking.

Being central Cali, everyone was sleeping outside on the ground (we had our own trailers/campers). Well, the contractor leashed up the two Rhodesian Ridgebacks the head guide used for tracking wounded hogs and started running over the guys in their sleeping bags while yelling "pigs in camp!"

There were a bunch (6-7, I think) of tattooed, pot-bellied construction workers in their undies and wife-beaters, running around trying to get boots on, guns loaded, lights lit, etc.
 
msnic,

Don't hold back dude, just call a man a liar!

The two cats I saw may have been the same one within the year? And it could be a pet that's been turned out?
But for sure, I do know what I saw.

But, I do hope you have a good day...
and I don't have to hide behind the internet to say that either.
 
Eskimo snow goggles

Not a hunting story at all, but my first year in law school at the University of Minnesota, there was a kid in our class from Arizona who had never experienced a winter or even seen snow, except at a distance. As November rolled around he began to express some trepidation about the upcoming cold weather.

"It's not so much the cold as the snow blindness," I told him. "The sun reflecting off the snow can blind you for hours, or even days. What the eskimos do is take a piece of seal skin; we use deerskin here because there aren't any seals. Cut slits in it to look through. Tie it in place with a leather thong or even a shoelace."

"Only a fraction of the light gets through, and your vision is saved. You need good night vision here because it gets dark so early. The best deerskin you get over on Franklin Ave., where a lot of Indians live. Their women chew it to make it soft, otherwise your skin will chafe in the cold."

The kid was really going for it before somebody tipped him off. I had even offered to drive him over to Franklin Av. tomorrow to find him a piece of chewed-up deer skin.

I actually read about this trick once on the back of a cereal box. It was the Lone Ranger, I think, who had told me about it. The cereal box had a pattern for the snow mask you could cut out if you didn't live in seal country, with dotted lines to show you where to cut the eye slits.
 
Marshwheeling and Bearbio those are some funny stories. Thanks for sharing.
 
ACP230 said:
Faulkner's "The Bear" might have started out as a hunting camp story.
Click to expand...

You are probably right...wasn't that the story where the kid would only see the bear if he left his compass in camp and really "got lost" ??? Probably started as a prank at some camp to see just how many idiots can get lost without a compass looking for a certain animal. All the while the guys that thought it up are back in camp drinkin' all the whiskey and having a good laugh while the idiots are out chasing black panthers!!!! {or Unicorns...same thing}
 
Panther attacks N. Ala. man
Big cat clawed man's leg

Updated: Saturday, 04 Dec 2010, 2:43 PM CST
Published : Saturday, 04 Dec 2010, 2:43 PM CST

UNION GROVE, Ala. (AP) - An Alabama man says he's recovering after being attacked by a panther near his Marshall County home.

Frank Harmes says he was walking his dog in a cove behind his home near Morgan City when he heard something behind him and turned to see a black panther.

Harmes says he moved to try to scare the panther away, but instead it attacked and clawed his leg. He says he stabbed the animal twice with a knife and it ran away.

Residents of the area have reported seeing panthers in the past, saying they sometimes come out looking for food.

Harmes says he will undergo a series of rabies shots because of the attack.-AP

Could this be possible? Could this be a "lost pet"? Maybe it was a large house cat?:D
 
You mean stories like the one about the somewhere between 16 and 24 point buck that wandered around near Molena, Georgia. He was so smart he always knew where the hunters were and would only appear when the sun was low on the horizon. That way when the hunters looked in their scopes all they would see was orange light from the rising/setting sun.

CW
 
Well this is the hunting camp story this year! This is a true story.

This summer south of Kalispell, MT at night a girl driving south on Hwy 93 hit a bigfoot! The car right behind her ran over the bigfoot killing it.

When the highway patrol showed up they found a dead man in a ghilley suit. His family said that he said he was going out to create a bigfoot sighting.

This was the news story for a couple of days around here. This is a true story.

Back when I lived in CO I hunted a spot near Kremmling,CO. Every year the same guy from CA showed up and told how he saw two bucks fighting in an aspen patch "today". I guess he never recognized me from year to year! ha ha

John
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top