Did that just happen?

My strangest one was watching hogs hunt coyotes.

Like any self-respecting rednecks would do, my cousin and I were spotlighting coyotes one night and saw a little piglet half running/limping around in a little clearing. Well, pretty soon the 'yotes got to yipping and we could hear them as they got in on this little pig. When the coyotes got close the little pig bolted for the brush and the coyotes gave chase. They were met by what was probably 8 or 9 large feral pigs that ran out of the bush and trampled and gored them. Crazy night.
 
Fishing a small local lake from a kayak, I saw a rather large water snake swim from one shore to the other. Then saw it start to swim back across, about halfway across there's a huge splash (like someone dropped a cinder block into the water from high up) and no more snake. No idea what kind of fish got it, but it had to have been enormous.
 
It all started out innocent enough.
A Septemeber camping trip with Mikey.
A warm weekend with fishing at dawn and dusk and loafing in lounge chairs and a bit of beer drinking the rest of the time.
We were parked under a stand of Oaks and big acorns were falling.
BOOM! when one landed on the tarp.
OUCH! when one landed on your head.
Just after lunch on the second day, while layin' up in the shade,
Mikey noticed that the chipmunks would run out when a fresh acorn fell.
They'd grab it and scurry off. This went on for an hour and a couple of beers or so.
Walking back from the Gents we started picking up acorns, since it seemed like the thing to do.
Once parked back in the lawn chairs, fresh beers in hand, and when things settled down some, the chipmunks resumed retrieving bouncing acorns.
Mikey did it first.
He threw one of his gathered acorns. A high 'fly ball' arc of a toss, so it landed as though it came out of the tree.
It worked!
Ol Chip ran out, grabbed it and disappeared.
Now, Mikey & I have been getting into trouble together since grade school. We can make a game out of anything and we just discovered a new sport!
So there we are, a beautiful fall day, drinking beer in the shade, tossing acorns for the chipmunks.
Everyone was having a ball, including the little furry ones.

Then it happened.
I ran out of acorns.
I picked up a rock.
The very first rock.
There wasn't a chipmunk in sight.
I lofted the rock up.
As the rock reaches the top of it's ballistic arc and starts to come down...
A chipmunk appears.
He runs out into the clearing.
The rock hits him square in the back of the head.

The woods became still.
Quiet.
Deathly still.

We walked over to him.
He was lying in the dirt.
Not breathing.
Not moving.
He was splayed out, face down, arm sticking out on each side, legs split, feet pointing outward.
Just like in the cartoons.

That ended our little game.
I've been looking over my shoulder ever since.

They point at me as I walk thru the timber.
Squeaking their sinister little squeaks.
Peeking out at me from the rocks.
Scheming, plotting, waiting to strike...
 
A few, but the most memorable right now is whe I went to the archery range in the Lake Tahoe area. I parked the vehicle off the road and climbed over a barrier, then started up an incline to the first target that I wanted to shoot. Just as I crested the trail I was on, a Golden Eagle had launched itself from a stump not 20' in front of me and as he glided over me, I could feel a gush of wind. He was close enough that I ducked. It was cool! :thumbup::D
 
Ebbtide, your story reminds me of something I saw in Cooke City, MT. Was camping there with my family several years back.

There were several squirrels around the small camping area, and somebody decided to have some fun with them. There was one tree that somebody had nailed a small can to and filled it with some whole peanuts(with shells). These guys took all the peanuts out and put one back in, but tied it to a string, and tied the other end of the string to a nail. The squirrels would come down, grab the peanut, and go running back up the tree.

You can imagine what happened when the squirrels got to the end of the string. The best part was that the squirrels kept at it for quite a while. Got some real good laughs off that one.
 
I was hunting deer in the early eighties and an owl took a liking to my blaze orange tuque. Must have taken five runs at my head, with me swinging my winchester lever butt at it. Good times.
 
I was driving home one day from the grocery store and I stop at the stop sign at the end of the street. I live in a small city next to a big city(Portland) so imagine my amazement when I saw a chicken hawlin' ass as fast as he could go down my street. I think he may have escaped the pot that night.:D
 
Classic story, Ebbtide!

This is a great thread. It has been interesting to see how many "WTF?" stories involve owls (mine included), which I usually find to be creatures often heard but seldom seen. It seems that when they decide to make appearances, they tend to be memorable!

- Mike
 
When I lived in Panama I use to go spear fishing with a bunch of locals. None of us used scuba gear, just snorkels, masks and flippers. One day when we were out, a guy brought an underwater camera with him to film the whole ordeal. Now I couldn't dive nearly as deep as these local guys, so a lot of times I'd just end up watching them from above. Well below me was the guy with the camera and another guy with the spear gun. I was about 20 feet under and they were probably a good 30 feet below me. Well the guy shoots this big 'ole tuna. The fish dives right underneath the guy with the camera and the cord from the spear gets wrapped around the cameraman's ankle. I don't know how deep the water was because I couldn't see the bottom. The guy immediately started sinking like a stone, being drug deeper and deeper as the fish tried to get away. The guy who shot the fish dove after him, and barely caught him after the fish had drug him a good 30 feet deeper. He whipped out his knife (no, sorry i don't recall what it was) and cut the cord off his ankle. The whole ordeal probably took a minute- but mind you they were free diving, already 50 feet underwater and they had been down there for about a minute before the crap hit the fan. I just floated there and stared. I was sure I was going to watch him get drug into the dark, never to be seen again. We never got the fish.

When you shoot fish this big, you tether the gun to a buoy on the surface because it is impossible to drag them up while you are swimming. There was no way this guy was going to be able to over power the tuna. To say the least, it scared the tar out of me.
 
And dats da troof!

Fishing in the canoe with my bud.
Teeny tiny popper on a 4wt fly rod.
I got a little bitty bluegill, 3" or so.
As I bring him back to the boat a pickeral that was 18"+ grabs the little guy crosswise in his mouth and takes off.
I played him back to the boat, he was never hooked, just wouldn't let go.
He did let go when I tried to grab him.
So now I take the beat up, nearly skinned bluegill off the hook.
I dropped him into the water thinking he'd just sink out of sight.
As soon as he touched the surface that pickeral rushed out from under the canoe and slammed him.
Scared the heck out of me and he got me half soaked!

Did that just happen?
 
I can only think of one. I was walking home around 2am on a very windy night in July. As I passed this old house that had a huge oak tree in the front garden, I heard this loud crack and a noise like a big wave hitting rocks. When I turned around, the tree had almost split in half. It had fallen maybe 4 feet behind me, destroying the garden wall and blocking the road.
 
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jlouis976 said:
... Well the guy shoots this big 'ole tuna. The fish dives right underneath the guy with the camera and the cord from the spear gets wrapped around the cameraman's ankle...
Click to expand...

Glad to find some more spear fishers here in Blade Forums! I never tried Blue Water Hunting (tuna and alike) but I have read a lot. They use bungee cords tied to buoys so they can let go the fish so it gets tired on its own. Trying to fight one of those beasts is asking for trouble. One of the greatest risks of this method is getting tangled in the cord while the tuna is sprinting... scary.

Mikel
 
that and blacking-out. I've seen people blackout while free diving/spearfishing a few times; you overestimate your limits and often end up focusing on your prey so much that you forget everything else.

When I was younger and first learning how to spearfish, my uncle and one of his friends (both experienced divers) had taken me out and were teaching me how to spot octopus holes. My uncle's friend found one octopus that refused to hold on to the spear, so he was forced to come up for air and then return for round two. He managed to get the stubborn thing out and was headed back up when he just stopped moving. It took me a second or two to realize something was wrong, but my uncle immediately grabbed him and brought him to the surface. My uncle managed to revive him (i don't think he swallowed much, if any water, luckily). We weren't even in water deeper than 40-50 feet. The guy was out of it and told us he didn't even feel it coming on. Seeing a blackout like that firsthand definitely knocked some caution into me from that point on :)
 
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Just thought of another fun one from two years ago... It was our first night in on a week-long trip in the Wind Rivers. We made camp at the East end of Fremont Lake, I believe. The mosquitoes were thick that night. So thick, in fact, we had problems cooking supper. They were flying into the boiling water creating a thick mosquito soup. We had to dump out the first batch of water because we weren't watching it and it was just solid mosquitoes.
 
Awesome thread guys, I have had a lot of fun reading this. My "did that just happen" moment was I was in my backyard and I noticed a hawk way up in a tree watching an unsuspecting squirrel on the ground. After a little while, the squirrel climbed into a tree began jumping branch to branch as squirrels do and all of a sudden the hawk sprung into action and caught the squirrel in his talons mid jump. It was one of the most incredible things in nature I have ever seen.

Oh just thought of another one. I used to deliver newspapers when I was about 13 and it was dark in the morning during the winter months. Anyway, I was walking up someone's sidewalk and then all of a sudden a bobcat jumped out from the bushes literally a foot in front of me. I guess I somehow surprised it, but not nearly as much as it surprised me. I refused to deliver newspapers for the next week unless my dad went with me.
 
My wife came in from outside one afternoon and let out a little scream. I looked up to see a dove whizzing past my head and a little perigrin falcon flash past her head into the kitchen where it bounced off the opposite kitchen window and turned around and flew back past her head in the blink of an eye. We had to pull the terrified dove out of the window where it kept thrashing to get out and let it out the door.
 
Nothing like the rabbit story but here goes.

Several years ago I lived in a house in a well developed area of Vancouver WA. I was outside one fall morning warming up my car and talking to my neighbor Jim who was just getting home from work. As we were standing there talking I glanced up the dead end street that ended at the high school ball fields. Down the middle of the road comes what I though was one of Jim's huskys. I turned to Jim and said hey I think one of your dogs got out again. He looked and said not one of mine it's a coyote. We stood there and stared as it walked past us and out of the neighborhood.

To this day I still shake my head in amazement.
 
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I was fishing for Largemouth Bass in a beautiful dam at the foot of the Natal Drakensberg in South Africa – wonderful setting. Wintertime and cold as heck. I’m casting out to a dead tree about 12 yards out when my favourite lure gets caught. I’d walked in so I didn’t have many lures with me. What to do? After some deliberation I strip off, walk-in to the freezing water and swim out to the tree. It’s freezing!!! I manage to untangle the lure, bite through the line underwater, put it carefully in my shorts pocket (while treading water) and then make my way back to the shore. I have no towel, so I stand in the weak sunshine trying to dry off. With shaking hand I reach into my pocket for the lure, extract it carefully only to find it’s not my lure! Some other, wiser fisherman left his there!!! So, its back to the tree I go….
At least I scored a free Rapala!!!


Another strange occurrence - I’ve twice come across a bush that is on fire. One time it was winter and a small bush quite a long way from the road was on fire. No wind so a carelessly tossed cigarette butt could not be the cause. No human habitation for miles. Just one bush (small, about knee height) burning slowly. Clear sky, no lightning.

This has happened to me twice. Really weird.
 
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