Harriest predicament you've ever found yourself in while in the woods?

[utvolsfan77]

Yes, that's it. One of the worst tales I've ever heard.

That didn't have anything to do with hunting though. That poor family was carjacked at a rest stop on I-81 here in Greene County. I was still away in the Army when that happened, but my current wife's uncle was the county sheriff at the time. He knows much more detail of WHAT REALLY HAPPENED than what appeared in any newspapers or TV news reports.

 

[BSK]

At that time, I had one of the first commercially available climbing tree stands on the market, an early Baker kit that you had to add your own plywood base to. I also had the hand climber that was sold separately from the foot platform, and it could double as a makeshift seat.

I can already hear the older guys in this group laughing because they already KNOW where this is going and what happened to me that day!

I still have the scars on my hands where I grabbed for my hand-climber as my Baker treestand fell out from underneath me. The only part of the hand-climber I got was the wingnuts! Ripped the palms of both of my hands wide open. After hitting the ground and realizing I had no broken bones, looked at my hands in horror. All I could think of to do was shove my hands into tight cotton gloves to slow the bleeding. By the time I got home, had to have the gloves cut off my hands, as the drying blood had glued them to my hands.

 

[dsa5455]

On public land probably 25 years ago during bow season. Had a guy want to fight me. I was scouting for an afternoon spot to hunt. This was roughly between 11-12 that day. Saw a guy climbing down his tree near the ground. He motioned to me and he started talking (not whispering) about regular deer hunting stuff. I don't recall seeing a vehicle or anyone else. Seems the guys brother was still hunting and was royally pissed. He caught up with me as I was getting in my vehicle. I have no idea why the brother I spoke to didn't say anything. The older brother and I had a few words, mostly me trying to calm things down. I learned some lessons that day about in the woods etiquette.

 

[utvolsfan77]

I still have the scars on my hands where I grabbed for my hand-climber as my Baker treestand fell out from underneath me. The only part of the hand-climber I got was the wingnuts! Ripped the palms of both of my hands wide open. After hitting the ground and realizing I had no broken bones, looked at my hands in horror. All I could think of to do was shove my hands into tight cotton gloves to slow the bleeding. By the time I got home, had to have the gloves cut off my hands, as the drying blood had glued them to my hands.

Hey BSK, think we ought to start a new forum and call it Baker Treestand Survivors?

 

[Kirk]

Hey BSK, think we ought to start a new forum and call it Baker Treestand Survivors?

My Dad bought a Baker Tree stand and wanted to try it out. He decided to try it out on the telephone pole in front of the house. I think he made it up maybe two or three feet before it betrayed him. He had splinters in both arms and even his chin.

 

[BSK]

Hey BSK, think we ought to start a new forum and call it Baker Treestand Survivors?

I think we'll need a full support group, there's so many of us!

 

[utvolsfan77]

I think we'll need a full support group, there's so many of us!

When I was real young, my granddad always said that something good came out of everything. If everyone else's experiences with Baker tree stands was similar to mine, the "good" was that we learned what NOT TO DO. Subsequent tree stand manufacturers essentially used all of us old farts as field testers and guinea pigs, and the lessons we learned through trial and error often found their way into the "safety" section of manufacturers' operating instructions on their next models. Dang, we risked our necks for years during early tree stand development and never got paid a penny for it, not even a discount on a new stand. Then again, I guess that's why so many brands that were so common 40-45 years ago no longer exist today.

 

[Kirk]

The Amacker Deer Thief stand would scare the crap out of a man too.

 

[Lost Lake]

The Amacker Deer Thief stand would scare the crap out of a man too.

As would the Warren and Slip......I mean, Sweat.

 

[TheLBLman]

Don't think I ever slipped in my old Amacker, but lost hide and ripped clothing from the Bakers.

 

[BSK]

Wow, I'm amazed at the number of serious injury stories. Just goes to show how dangerous hunting can be, although most of these are freak accidents. Yet do anything enough times and deadly things can happen.

Ignoring the times I've been shot at, and sadly there been more than a few, one that really sticks in my mind was an event that occurred the first times I ever went hunting. My mother grew up hunting, but my father never. They were small-town kids from Wisconsin, who because of my dad's time in the Navy, ended up living in California. That's where I grew up, in the endless suburbs at the periphery of the San Francisco Bay Area. My brothers and I all had BB guns and knew some very basic gun safety, but I had never actually seen a real firearm of any kind until we moved to KY when I was 14. Going to the local schools, all the friends I made hunted and fished. They had grown up with guns all their lives and never considered someone who hadn't. They invited me on a dove hunt, and I was thrilled to be asked. One of them lent me a shotgun and off we went. It was a great hunt and I killed my first dove, despite the fact I had never before attempted a wing shot. At the end of the hunt, my best friend and I were walking through the cut cornfield headed back to his car. I was carrying the shotgun by the pistol grip, barrel pointed towards the ground. Unbeknownst to myself, I had my finger on the trigger. As we're walking along talking, eventually the weight of the gun pushed down on my finger until the gun went off. The shotgun kicked straight up and hit me in the armpit, nearly knocking me over. When I regained my senses, I looked down and saw a 6-inch wide, 10-inch deep hole in the ground about an inch from the side of my left foot. I looked up at my friend and he was white as a sheet. Neither of us sad anything for a while until he just said, very flatly, "Never do that again." I just shook my head up and down, "yes," and said nothing. I was so embarrassed by my stupidity that it took me years to tell that story. But from that moment forward, I took gun safety very, very seriously.

 

[BSK]

Probably my second year of deer hunting, I must have been 17 or 18, I had been introduced to the permanent tree stand. You now, some 2x4s nailed up across a fork in a tree. So finding a spot I wanted to hunt, I drug some 2x4s, a saw, a hammer, and a fist full of 16-penny nails back to the spot. While up in the tree (and I was probably only 10 feet up) trying to nail the floor joist cross pieces across the fork of the tree, I lost my balance and fell. I remember trying to toss everything I had in my hands away so I wouldn't land on them, but a handful of nails goes everywhere. I landed flat on my stomach and chest, but surprisingly, no major injuries. At least I thought that until I got to my feet, looked down, and realized I had a 16-penny nail sticking straight out of my chest. Fear/terror have a way of just making you lock up. I honestly couldn't think of what to do. It wasn't bleeding much, BUT I'VE GOT A 16-PENNY NAIL STICKING OUT OF MY CHEST! I remembered that to prevent catastrophic blood loss, you're never supposed to pull out anything you've been impaled by. But I just kept staring at that nail. Eventually I had the wherewithal to pick up another nail and compare the length against the one in my chest to see how deep it was. Realizing it was only in about a half inch, I gave it a yank. It came out clean with very little bleeding. Apparently, it had gotten jammed into the cartilage of my sternum and hadn't penetrated anything important. No harm done, but wow, those kinds of close calls really give you the creeps, even thinking about them years later.

 

[DMD]

Someone should turn this into a book of short stories and get rich. Great thread.

 

[JCDEERMAN]

Geez. @BSK, you could write a book on the precarious scenarios you've been in. I remember those old stories about your 4-wheeler being hit by a train, that poisonous snake biting your boot repeatedly, that tree that about fell on you (more recent). HA never knew about the nail sticking out of your chest or the gunshot that about made you turn to prosthetics

 

[BuckWild]

Back in the mid 1980's, elk hunting in Idaho along the LoLo Trail. Spotted a bull and 3 cows about 800 yards as the crow flies but about 2 miles by terrain. My hunting partner and I decided to bail off and do a stalk. After 2.5 hours of hiking, we were within 100 yards of where we spotted them and it started to lightly snow. We slowly hiked up hill to the spot and when we reached the top, there was another valley and no elk. Now it had really picked up and the snow was coming on down. Having no idea on how much snow was expected, we decided to cut and run back to the LoLo Trail. Unfortunately for us, within an hour it was near whiteout conditions and we could no longer find our tracks and the snow was almost knee deep. Walking through knee deep snow is very exhausting especially when you have no idea where you are going. We were lost in the snow and no one knew where we were. I just kept telling Pete we can't sit down to rest. Sit down to rest and you'll fall asleep and never wake up. We had a compass, so we knew which way to go, it was just so dam hard to pick our feet up. Eventually the snow subsided and we got moving again and 6 hours later we struggled up a ridge and there was the Trail. We split up to go find the truck and somehow we had come out about a 1/4 mile south of the truck. Pete found it and cranked it up and started laying on the horn to get my attention. I was so exhausted I could barely function to drive and Pete passed out 5 minutes after I started driving. We finally made it back to our camp about midnight.

What had started out to be a half day scout/hunt almost became our last day on the planet.
After that day, if I saw one snowflake fall, I headed back to camp or the truck.

 

[TnKen]

I went to take down my turkey blind the last day of season, and heard a snake move out of it when I pulled the first stake. I went ahead and just pushed it over and the picture is what I found on my chair. If I would have hunted that morning and picked up the chair in the blind it could have been bad. I assume the one that left was the same as the one that stayed

 

[UCStandSitter]

I went to take down my turkey blind the last day of season, and heard a snake move out of it when I pulled the first stake. I went ahead and just pushed it over and the picture is what I found on my chair. If I would have hunted that morning and picked up the chair in the blind it could have been bad. I assume the one that left was the same as the one that stayed

Dang murder noodles. Kill it with fire!

 

[JCDEERMAN]

I went to take down my turkey blind the last day of season, and heard a snake move out of it when I pulled the first stake. I went ahead and just pushed it over and the picture is what I found on my chair. If I would have hunted that morning and picked up the chair in the blind it could have been bad. I assume the one that left was the same as the one that stayed

Geez I hate them! That is my biggest fear in turkey season, as I usually don't use a light. I was in a blind one time and as it started getting light, I could see what looked like huge spiders crawling everywhere. I'm not scared of spiders, but they were EVERYWHERE. It got a little lighter and saw that they were those big grasshoppers

 

[BSK]

That's a scary story BuckWild!

 

[BSK]

Geez. @BSK, you could write a book on the precarious scenarios you've been in. I remember those old stories about your 4-wheeler being hit by a train, that poisonous snake biting your boot repeatedly, that tree that about fell on you (more recent). HA never knew about the nail sticking out of your chest or the gunshot that about made you turn to prosthetics

Looking back on your life, you realize you had some really close calls between life and death, or at least severe injury. The closest calls of all are the ones that when you think about them, you get a little shiver that runs down your spine. For me, the train incident and the recent falling tree incident are the two I still have nightmares about (literally).

A close third would be an incident that occurred hunting that I'm sure I've mentioned before. It was just a few years ago on one of those days where the wind is absolutely howling and being in a stand is a bit frightening. Before a morning hunt, I was debating which of two stands to hunt, not far apart as the crow flies but on opposite parallel ridges. I finally decided to hunt one of them in the morning and the other on the afternoon hunt. During the morning hunt, with the wind roaring, a heard the distinctive "pop" of a tree breaking off and then almost felt the boom as the tree crashed to the ground on the parallel ridge. I remember thinking, "Wow that had to have been really close to the other stand I had been considering. I bet if I had been hunting that stand it would have been quite a scare!" That afternoon I went to hunt the other stand and found out just how close that tree had been to the stand. It was the top of the tree the stand was in, and the whole upper have of the huge oak had come straight down, butt first, and dead-centered the stand, crushing it and driving it into the ground. On that day, life and death came down to a 50-50 toss of a coin.

Those three incidents still give me the cold chills when I think about them.