Hunting Pranks

[fasteddie]

Have you ever done any hunting pranks ?

I was invited to a camp with a few guys many years ago . One of our friends was a Biker and always acted Macho . One of the regulars was showing us around the woods . We came across some deer scat . Bill had a box of Goobers candy (chocolate covered raisins) in his coat . He slipped a couple in his hand and reached down Looking like he had picked up some of the deer scat . He popped the Goobers in his mouth and said , it was a doe and she dropped these about 30 minutes ago . Our macho Biker buddy got the dry heaves and we all cracked up . He never lived it down .

 

[wolc123]

Once, on a moose hunt in Northern Quebec, there was a middle aged guy and his elderly father, in the cabin next to ours.  The cabin was next to a lake and the surrounding ground was mostly all sand.  
 

Every morning, the old guy would walk around looking for tracks.  One evening, I made some tracks across the beach, using the butt pad on the end of the stock of my rifle.  
 

The neighbors were all excited the next day, after seeing that a big moose had walked across the beach right between their cabin and ours.  Had they looked real close at those imprints, they might have noticed the Ruger logo.  

[Doc]

Back in the mid 80's, 4 of us guys from work went up to Shiningtree, Ontario, Canada on moose hunt.......way back in. Old dirt road for miles, into a lake all the way to the end of that lake. A 150 yard portage into another lake and all the way to the end of that lake. It was damned remote. We set up a camp on the shoreline of the lake. 

But before we wet, I packed a special extra piece of equipment. We had a dog that enjoyed playing tug-of-war with any piece of cloth, and while doing this she would make these gosh-awful growling and snarling noise that sounded like some deranged rabid animal. I had a small portable tape recorder, and I taped a long session of all these loud growling and snarling noises, leaving a 15 minute empty section of the tape at the beginning.

So the first night after our tent-camp had been set up we all sat around the campfire talking about the usual BS that hunters talk about around the fire, and I said I have to take a leak and went off into the total black darkness. I pulled the tape recorder/player out of my bedroll without anyone paying attention and took it with me. I turned it on and came back to the campfire. That 15 minutes of empty tape gave time for everyone to forget I had even left. Then all of a sudden, in the middle of the deepest, darkest Canadian wilderness came this horrible loud maniacal growling and snarling out of the darkness. Panic set into the camp as everybody grabbed knives and hatchets and anything they could to defend themselves. It was an archery hunt, so there were no guns. Finally, we decided to go out and see what vicious thing it was that was threatening the camp. So I put on the big brave John Wayne style act and led the crew through the darkness using just flashlights to light the way. When it turned out to be a tape recorder, I am not sure what kept those guys from throwing me in the lake.   

[wolc123]

We didn’t see any moose, on our Northern Quebec hunt many moons ago, but the Province hunting licenses which we had purchased, allowed certain “other species” to be taken, and black bear were listed.  

Each night, we’d take turns watching over the camp dump in the late afternoon and early evening.  The other hunters would stay in the cabins drinking beer and playing cards.  The neighbor (seasoned “expert”) had told us how he would only shoot a bear that was taller, on its all fours,  than the second rung on the 55 gallon bait barrels.
 

When my turn came, I settled into a little patch of bushes up there at the dump with my 30/06.  As the sun began to set and the light began to fade , I heard some branches breaking.  Something was approaching as I looked out beyond the garbage and the bait barrels.  
 

I saw a dark form moving towards one of barrels.  As it got closer, I could see that its back was higher than the top of the upright barrel.  This had to be one heck of a black bear, maybe even a griz.   
 

I settled my crosshairs on the “middle of the middle”, and squeezed the trigger.  Turns out, it wasn’t a bait barrel, that the creature towered over, but rather a Folgers coffee can.  The prostrate porcupine (also listed as a legal to shoot “other species” on our licenses) laid next to it.

They had all heard my shot back at the cabins and were standing out on the porch waiting anxiously when I returned.  Walking towards them on a trail in the dark, I had the porky on the end of a drag rope.  I heard them say “he must have shot a cub”.  
 

Before the self appointed forum safety police come down hard on me for not “knowing my target and beyond”, I was well aware of it and also that it was legal for me to kill a porky up there.  The above rendition was how I had explained myself to my half drunk card-playing buddies, when they thought I had killed a cub.  


 

 

First picture is a much younger me (second from left) and my hunting buddies, second is the “seasoned” expert Dale and his father, who I had “fooled” with the Ruger moose tracks in the sand between our cabins.  
 

I can still hear that old fella’s voice saying “one came right thru between our cabins last light”

He was real excited and sounded just like the guy on the sound track at the beginning of the Alabama “mountain music” song.   

Edited Saturday at 11:43 AM by wolc123