re: Craziest Thing You've ever Seen on the water while fishing or in the outdoors

Last year, I had a deer run past me at 10 feet, and stop about 15 yards up slope from me. The deer never even noticed me, just kept looking back into the swamp. Next thing I know, a coyote comes out of nowhere running straight at me! It stopped and veered off back towards the swamp about 15 or 20 feet away from me.

All I could figure was that coyote got that deer's scent and was chasing him.

ETA: during my internship, we were working around the Chandeleur Islands. The weather got really bad, and the boat captain finally talked my boss into hauling arse back to the mainland. On the way back, we saw 2 or 3 waterspouts. None of them where in our path, and all were a safe distance away, but not a fun feeling when you are in a 21' bayboat way out there.

I've seen some crazy, hilarious and downright frightening things in the woods.

The creepiest though was when I was about 15.

My best friend at the time and I used to fish what we called "3 track bridges" in central Oklahoma. There were three consecutive bridges down the train tracks about two miles east of town and the fishing was pretty good at two of them.

The first bridge is over an overflow area from a very shallow 25 acre flood plane that was designated as a wildlife preserve by Oklahoma Game and Fish. The second bridge is over a creek slough, and the third is over the creek itself.

Every two or three years, it would rain enough that the game preserve watershed, which was around 20 surface acres of water, would rise and actually flow out over the earthen embankments under the first bridge. When this happened, it would wash fish out of the wildlife preserve... big fish. Big fish that had never once seen a fishing lure and you could catch them nearly every cast.

Might sound like complete bullshite but I swear this is true. My buddy and I would have tu take turns carrying our stringers of fish back to town when the first bridge would flood under it. 2 to 3 pound crappie were average. 4 to 8 pound bass were average. It was absolutely insane.

So one morning just after a monster rain, my buddy and I were walking the tracks to that spot with our rods and tackle boxes to see if it had flooded. As we got there it was that twilight time in the AM where everything is still dark, but you can start seeing trees pretty decently against the sky. It was early spring so the trees weren't completely leafy yet and still appeared pretty barren of leaves.

We began to notice that were things perched in the trees. It was too dark to tell but as the morning light increased it became obvious that it was owls. A lot of owls. Barred owls, barn owls and horned owls. Sometimes 20-30 owls in a single tree, and we could see literally hundreds of owls just from our vantage point. Not one of them ever made a sound. Just sat there in complete silence, staring at us. Every one of them that we could see, looking right at us.

We're both Native American and we got the hell out of there with a quickness. We came back later in the day and they were all gone. The following morning and every morning thereafter, they were gone. Never heard of such a thing. Only saw it once.

Have talked to game wardens and they've never heard of such a thing. Talked to the county Fish and Game Biologists and they both said that owls do not congregate like that or behave socially like that at all, period. Also spoke to several Tribal elders from different local tribes who all said we were right to leave, but had no explanation.

None of the people we told had ever even heard of this happening before, nor had any clue why it would have happened. That was 25 years ago and it still gives me the chills and makes me wonder.

Also buzzards will do that too. They might have been eating on the dead fish that washed out and got stranded.

SW Miss near Brookhaven I saw two Lear jets just above tree tops flying together and it looked like they were dog fighting.

quote:

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. When a roost of turkeys suddenly takes off right above you, you'd swear a plane was falling from the sky

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Covey of quail can get you going too. . .

Back when I was a kid my surefire squirrel method was to slip out when dark, sit back up against a tree all covered up in my dad's old army jacket, and take a nap till daylight. This one morning, as I first moved from waking, a covey quail had encircled me. Only thing more surprised than they, was me, as they headed out 360 degrees with damn near heart stopping surprise.... like me.

I’ve seen a turkey roosting tree and in the evening would see 100 or so it seems flying into this huge oak. I had never seen that before that day. People left them alone to have the tree to themselves.

I found a piece of the Columbia space shuttle near Leesville on my lease. It took me a couple of seconds to comprehend what it was. The local sheriffs office picked it up from me. In hindsight I should have kept it. It was about the size of a trash can lid. Part of the fuel tank or something with burnt edges all around. All stainless.

Today at Fred’s landing on the Amite, I saw multiple boats and state agencies pulling all kinds of debris from the river/river banks and bringing it back to the dock.

Old boat hulls, giant trees, tires, rusted metal barrels, etc.

It shocked the hell out of me because as trashy as that section of the river gets, I’ve never seen an effort like I saw today to clean it.

to all involved.

I was beyond hyped.

Saw a dude pull a 10+ bass out of a blue barrel in front of his campsite on a Friday in Housen.

Watched my line stay in the air while my rod shocked me just before a huge strike.

Saw a copperhead swimming about a mile offshore at Toledo Bend.

Fished vermillion bay anytime during the fall or spring.

Bow hunting Buckhorn WMA about 5 years ago , in a gillie suit sitting against a tree on the ground
....had a full grown cougar walk past at 20 yards ..... it was about 80 -90 lbs great experience but I got the shakes after it passed by. Beautiful animal