People you have met while hunting

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grizzmoose

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On the way home Sunday evening, I met a pretty interesting guy who was getting ready to head into the Book Cliffs. It was a chance meeting at the right time and place. His name was Cass and he was flagging us down where the pavement meets the dirt road into the hunting area on the Bonanza side. For those of you who do not know the area, he was about 50 miles outside of Vernal and heading into some pretty rough country. This may not sound very strange to anyone, except for the fact that he was on a mountain bike. He was asking us how to get to Fruita, CO using the Baxter Pass road. He was also asking where he could find water since he only had about half a gallon left between his 4 water bottles. On his bike was a tent, sleeping bag, minimal clothing, the water, and one other bag with misc. things. Ok, still not THAT out of the ordinary. . . yet. Right when he opened his mouth, we knew he was VERY out of place. He had a significant English accent. Who would have thought we would have met an Englishman out in one of the most remote areas of Utah?!?! He was thrilled to see the deer in the back of the truck and asked us a lot about hunting etc. He wanted to take some pictures of the animal etc. Ok, still not THAT strange. Well, then we get into talking to him about where he came from, expecting him to tell us that he was just cruising from Vernal and out for a nice little weekend ride. Nope. Not the case. Turns out the dude has been on his bike for over 4 months having started in Alaska!! He definitely looked, and smelled like he had been on the road for quite some time. He is in his late 20's or so and came from England having worked as a mountain bike guide. He saved up some money and decided to go on a 'little' adventure. Now he is currently riding somewhere on a dirt road, probably getting close to Grand Junction. What other towns he will pass through is anyone's guess, but if you are somewhere between Grand Junction, CO and Panama, keep an eye out for him. Thats right, I said PANAMA. . . as in Central America Panama. Thats where he is picking up a flight back home. Great guy, great experience talking with him! We gave him all the water we had along with a few cans of Mountain Dew and wished him luck. I hope he makes it there safely.

So, what interesting folks have you guys met while spending time in the woods or on the lake? I have heard of people meeting hermits and mountain men. Id love to hear about some of your unique experiences with interesting folks.
 
Met one of my best friends on a out of state Id elk hunt. Ran into him after dark, and found out that he lived 20 miles away.
 
Some years ago we were hunting in unit 24 in NM and got caught in a BIG snow...I mean 18 inches big. Now for a boy from the SE that's more snow than I've ever seen in one place. We met a couple from Magdelena that had been horseback camping in the wilderness area and finally got across the river and got out. They were hungry and wet, so we fed them...oh yea....they had a little one less then 2 with them. Since then they've become lifelong friends and will be from now on. We give them all the deer meat when we get a muley out there, that's what they live on most of the year. Good folks they are and helped us out a great deal.
 
About 3 or 4 years ago in Colorado unit 71 dad and I were hunting elk in the 3rd season up against the Lizard Head Wilderness at about 10,000 feet. On about day 4 it had snowed pretty heavy and we were driving the main road back to camp and a guy comes running out to the main road and flags us down. We pull over and ask him whats up. He tells us he is snowed in and his rabbits are starving :O

We just kind of sat there for a moment and asked him if he needed help getting his truck unstuck. He said it wouldn't do any good because his truck is 2WD but he would like us to go to town for him and by some hay. We said it might be a day or two before we headed to town at which time he began to rant and rave and I put the truck in gear and got the heck out of there.

Later that day we ran into the county snow plow driver and let him know about the Bunny Man. He told us the guy had been there all summer and had two 10x20 tents full of rabbit cages. He said he had also told him a month earlier that he needed to get out of there soon before it snowed. Later that evening we spotted the snow plow pulling the Bunny Man's truck up the main road with a chain. The truck cab was completely full of rabbits.

Calif_Mike
 
MET ANOTHER ELK HUNTER WAY UP ON A MOUNTAIN (IN WYOMING)DURING A SNOW STORM WE BOTH GOT CAUGHT IN.....SO WE BUILT A FIRE & WAITED IT OUT. AFTER A LOT OF CONVERSATION I FOUND OUT HE IS MY NEIGHBOR IN CALIFORNIA 1150 MILES AWAY.....LIVED 2 BLOCKS OVER FROM ME....WHATS THE CHANCES.............YD.
 
YD,

I've got a guy who hunts the same place as me in CO. He lives about 15 miles from me in Calif. Never met him before.

Calif_Mike
 
We were sitting out a snow storm in the boonies just out of the Death Valley National Park and an old miner just walked into our camp.....like we were a 7-11 and he needed a carton of milk.

Scared the chit out of me, as I never saw him coming and all of a sudden he was just there. He looked like Charlie Manson and I didn't sleep well the rest of the hunt.

Swore he hadn't been to a town for a year, and I believed him. We gave him a couple of beers and he walked back to wherever his camp was.

I brushed out all his tracks and he never came back while we were out hunting, but it still made me nervous as Hello.

2 days later, when we packed up, we left everything we had that was edible.....but never saw him again. Too strange.
 
Not exactly hunting, but I was a Park Ranger in northeast Nevada. A couple of years back, a party of deer hunters was setting up in the campground. I asked where they were all from, turns out Fallon, NV. I heard one call his buddy "Coop". I said "Coop.Short for Cooper. A fellow soldier in basic training in Fort Lewis, WA in 1966 was nicknamed "Coop". The hunter replied, "Jim Cooper, that'd be him" And it was so. He's the only fellow soldier I'd served with or worked with since leaving the Army in 1968!
 
We were fishing out of Unalakleet River Lodge in Northwest Alaska one time, and met a couple who were on an adventure of the sort that this English chap is taking. Unalakleet sits right on the Bering Sea,and is about 100 miles south of Nome (As in WAY UP THERE!). Anyway, this couple shows up one day to visit the lodge manager, with whom they were friends. They'd just rowed from the source of the Yukon River, over 1,500 miles away in the southern Yukon, out to the Bering Sea and then about 100 miles or so up the Bering on their way to Nome. They stopped in to get a good meal and sleep in a bed for a night before continuing on in their journey. One of them was paddling an ocean kayak, while the other rowed an ocean scullboat. They were both nearly black they were so tanned, and they looked like they were made from heavy cable after nearly 2 1/2 months of rowing every day.

They explained that they were completing the final leg of a three year journey. One year they rowed from Anchorage to Seatttle, the next year from Anchorage to the mouth of the Yukon, and this year doing the entire length of the Yukon and then up to Nome. It sounded like one heck of an adventure.
 
I was about a 5 or 6 year old on a hunting trip with my mom and dad and some of their friends. This was about 1960 or 1961. It was in central Washington, near Wenatchee.
From a camp near us an asian guy walked into camp and asked to borrow my BB gun to shoot a mouse in the tent. As my mom and dad talked to him he said he was on a guided hunting trip and that he was the Prince of Thailand. My dad called BS after he left. When we got home, on the front page of the Seattle Times was an article about the prince of Thailand on a hunting trip in Central WA and a picture of the guy.
BTW he got a nice buck and the mouse.


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Tom
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
 
Met an Aussie bloke in Jan on I15 in northern MT near the Canadian border walking the bar ditch northbound.. It was a balmy 3 degrees out and I pulled over to see if he needed a hand or a lift. Ends up, he was walking around the world.. Seriously and literally. He had started his quest by selling everything he owned bnack hom in Austrailia.. He then flew to Argentina and began his walking from there. From southern Argentina(Patagonia), he walked clear through South America, on through all the Central American countries, into Mexico, crossed into TX, and on up to where I found him on the Canadian border in balls ass cold MT.. He was then walking on to Edmunton, AB where he was to catch a plane to Siberia and resume his walk through eastern Russia, into Mongolia and China, on into the former USSR Republics, then into eastern Europe and finally ending his walk in Portugal at the coast. He had budgeted himself 3 full years to complete the journey and I found him 7 months into his quest.. One of the coolest things I've heard of someone doing. I bought him dinner in Shelby, BS'd with him for a couple of hours and bid him good luck. Cool stuff.

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DRSS Chapuis 470NE
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In 2005 I was on a bear hunt in Maine (I'm from IN) and we started talking to a guy near our camp who also advised he was from IN. After some more conversation I found that he lived about 30 minutes from me. Last week I was in his wedding, funny how things work out.
 
I lived in Japan for five years. The last place I thought I'd ever get to practice my Japanese on a Shinto priest (garb and all) was in a New Mexico wilderness. But last May, while hiking into one of my favorite shed-hunting spots, there he was. I think he was just as surprised to encounter a gun-toting cammoed-up redneck gaijin in the middle of no where that could speak Japanese. It was really cool.

He was walking from Los Alamos to Trinity.
 
What a GREAT thread!!

I have met some GREAT friends out hunting but have nothing crazy as some of these stories.....unless you count meeting CAelknuts up on Monroe, and now consider him a FRIEND!!!

Keep the stories coming.....I LOVE THIS STUFF!!!! Very cool
 
....once several years ago I was picking up beer cans along the highway in northern montana when this dork pulls over and asks if I needed help....well I was kinda hungry so I put on my best aussie accent and fed him this BS story about walking around the globe and the guy actually bought me a very nice dinner...


great post/pic, thanks for sharing

JB
497fc2397b939f19.jpg
 
Typical response from D here on MM.. can't stand not to have the spotlight on him, so he pisses on someone's post to try and steer it back his direction..

Now get back to your self proclaimed profession of discarded used beer can collecting..

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I bought a guided bear hunt in Idaho ten years ago off ebay. Just figure for $750 for two people what could go wrong. Guy named Bill picked us up in Boise in a beat up old flatbed full of dog cages and we headed out. His accomodations were an old stinky fifth wheel with a few mules tied up. Luckily we had him stop at a store for beer and food. He was the toughest guy I ever met and we drank beer, ate lion and bear, killed a couple of bear and never showered for ten days. He told us about getting screwed by a con man on a bricklaying job that year. Guy had a scam of taking the owners money then moving it out of his account so the subs checks would bounce then running back home to SLC. He tracked him down to a condo and said the guy told him to F off. Only thing he could think to do was what he did to settle down a bad mule. He stuck his little finger up the guys nose and hooked it hard. Bleeding and screaming the guy agreed to go to the bank and get Bill his cash. Bill treated us to a shower at a lodge on the lake and we got drunk and ate mountain oysters with the owners until none of us could walk. It was a great trip other than he ran my butt off and I was too sore to walk for about three days.
 
One time I was relaxing in a hot spring in Lassen county , north of a lake when 2 guys started walking close. I decided to high tale it out of there before they saw me. What happened in the hot spring after I left, to this day God only knows.
 
Not while hunting, but in 1986 while going to school at the University of North Dakota I noticed a guy in one of my classes that carried a camo back pack. We started BSing about hunting and 23 years later after both moving to AZ Tom and I are still friends.

He's the one guy I can count on, any time, any place any where...

Every year we apply on the same tag. Watched each other through marriage, kids, divorce and beyond. Was there when his dad took sick and passed...now he's there for me for the same.

Don't get me wrong, we're not inseperable but always there through thick and thin.

He's the guy I wrote about quite a while back...the guy that drug my frozen azz out of that North Dakota slough in the dead of winter when I went under water and got hypothermic. We were ditching class and duck hunting.

We once drove his old Dodge van 50 miles in the middle of the night after the alternator crapped out, using a mag light to illuminate the road. This was all just to get to a lake in Northern Minnesota where a couple of girls we knew had gone for the weekend

A bunch of us including Tom once snuck a case of beer and a couple pints of Jack into a Hockey game and got ejected when one of the guys started yelling profanities at the cheerleaders. School security took us out and one of the d-bags punched me in the back of the head. Tom decked the guy and the two of us bolted to the parking lot straight into the local police.

Tom still has that backpack.
 
This is not in regards to when I was hunting, but I had an experience when I was in the Navy that I thought was pretty unusual. I was stationed at Moffett Field Naval Air Station in Mountain View, California. A buddy and I had hitchhiked to Santa Monica to see friends at the college. On the way back from Santa Monica, we were hitching on Highway 101 and we were given a ride by someone I went to High School with in Kentucky. What do you think the odds are that someone from your home town would recognize you on the freeway and give you a ride in California.

Wildsage
 
Great thread!!! Great stories!! Loved it! Only experience I have that "sort-of" relates. I got a tip from a guy on a high-country back-pack in bowhunting area in Colorado where I could throw on my pack, hoof it for 6-8 miles in and never see a soul. So, we did just that....hiked in the night before the hunt...ran into a professional hiker from Australia who was just out seeing the country....I thought...huh...little odd. We then went 400 yards further in and found an entire high school group of teenage wilderness survivalists!!! All twenty-five of 'em!!! I guess I got a bad tip on that one! Actually turned out to be a good hunt. I shot a muley with my bow high up in the cliffs right above the group of high-school hikers. They all sat there and watched my stalk, the shot, and the deer crashing and falling 600 feet down the rocks and cliffs right above their camp. After the chaos was done, I expected to be verbally and physically abused by the group of nature-lovers. Instead, they shook my hand and congradulated me on what they thought was the high-light of their wilderness experience!! What a pleasant suprise I had!
 
About 35 years ago a bunch of my high school friends were archery deer hunting on the Kaibab. The opeing morning, as we left camp, we noticed a long bed pickup truck with cab over camper had made camp right across the road from our camp after we had gone down for the night. Over the next 10 days we got to know this nonresident hunter, Dennis. He was in his mid 30's and from San Diego. He was a great guy and we ended up hunting together the rest of that hunt. Well sure enough we made plans to hunt again in the Kaibab the next year and for several years therafter. Eventually we did other hunts together, including a spring hand gun/archery Javelina hunt, which was a blast as he showed up with an arsenal of hand guns for us all to go and chase those pigs with. What a blast! Anyway, Dennis ended up acquiring a fatal disease, cancer, and died about 10 years ago. However he was one of the great hunting friends we made on a completley chance encounter. To me, it is the friends and shared experiences with our firends and family that make hunting such a special amd important part of my life.
 
hmm,
I ran into garth carter while bow hunting in Nevada quite a few years back.



-Cass
 
Rulon Jones(gas station in Rocksprings), Carl Malone (I said your Malone the Post Man...you hunt?) and many of you guys....if you only known!!
4a2c3c3419e430ad.jpg


rackmaster
 
In 1989 I hunted Colorado for the first time,I see a guy while up on a high ridge,we talked a min & he asked for a ride down to his truck.He got in our jeep & said"Maybe you know of me ? Im Jole Youngblood",We said Nope! he said"I play for the Giants",Do you want my autograph?we said "NO thanks"have you seen many Elk? he said no & we said goodbye.Im just not a baseball fan.......Jim
 
Last year, while elk hunting on the Monroe unit, I met two really unusual dudes. One didn't think anything of driving up after work, 1 1/2 hours each way, to BS and eat some of our camp food (which can't be as good as his lovely wife cooks) and the other one thought nothing of delivering a pizza out in the middle of the unit!

Our very own Fishlakeelkhunter and Antlerrick! Two fine fellows to share a campfire with.
 
I was on my first elk hunt in NM probably 12 or 14 years ago in the Gila. Was driving down a forest service road to a place I wanted to scout, this was the first archery hunt, raising a hell of a dust cloud when I saw a 4 wheeler coming the other way. I thought I'd better stop and let this poor guy get by me before I move on or he's going to pass out in that dust cloud. I pulled over and waited for him to come by me, he stopped and struck up a conversation. We talked for awhile and all this time I thought he looked a bit familiar, but not enough to figure out where I knew him from...well he finally introduced himself...he was Pete Shepley...owner of PSE archery, and a right nice guy too.
 
While hunting, I seem to run into folks with a bit of a shady side(mostly pot growers)

Years ago I was running dogs for hogs in the Ca. central valley on public land south of Hollister. We were driving home late in a pouring rain and stopped to help an old timer who had a flat and was stuck off the shoulder.

As we said goodby he asked what we were doing. 'Hog hunting"

He said, "That public is no good, why don't you come hunt my 4,000 acre ranch." We did for many years and became good friends.

"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences"
Robert Green Ingersoll
 

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