“There were a bunch of Mason jars filled with what looked like piss.”

"A little distance away, I saw an owl flying towards me. Then it got closer and closer, and it started to give me the impression that it was going to roost in the tree with me. Then its talons opened up, along with its wings spread widely, as it started to come in and apparently land on my rifle barrel that was jutting out. I flinched, and the owl started to back-pedal with its wings, hovering above me while shouting at me with excited ‘hoos’. It spent the next half-hour flying around in circles by me, checking me out every instant it could.

It was pretty frightening in the moment, but one of my fondest memories/encounters from being in the woods across 40+ years.”

"What scared me more than anything, though, was one day when I was going in to check a trail cam at a bear hunting site in the dark. On my way in, I could hear that I had spooked a bear and heard it take off through the woods. As I stopped and stood alone in the dark, silently trying hard to listen to see where it was running off to, a fucking toad the size of my fist jumped onto my boot.

I was so concentrated on listening, and then to feel something touch me in the darkness was the worst jump scare of my life. I damn near shit myself.”

"But when we looked down into the ditch near the camper, there was a pair of overalls that looked like they were covered in dried blood. We boogied the hell out of there. We called the cops, and apparently, they checked it out and found no evidence of foul play. But good gosh darn! That was freaky!”

"I was walking to a wood with a 300-foot drop, really a hole in the ground, hunting turkey when a cougar screamed at me for a good two minutes, directly in front of where I was walking.

I just turned around and left. Never saw her. Grateful she let me go with a warning.”

"Probably a giant rock that came flying towards my uncle and me. It was a big, heavy rock that was bigger than our heads. I doubt the average person could have chucked it that high and far. It also wasn’t rolling off a mountainside or anything, as we were in a flat area. This happened in the Pacific Northwest.”

"I’d just got permission to hunt on a large pine tract just outside an urban area in South Carolina. I went to scout it out before deer season started. There was a little hardwood drain in the centre of the property that I was interested in, so I was making my way towards it when I burst through some thick shrubs and into a small cleared area.

I guess an unhoused person had built a little shack from scrap wood and had rigged up a small fence from sticks. There were a bunch of Mason jars filled with what looked like piss, and some Blair Witch-looking stick figures sitting on the fence and hanging from trees. Someone had been there somewhat recently because there was still smoke coming from an old rim-turned-fire pit.

I beat my way back to the truck and told the landowner I was no longer interested.”

"Several big deer came out into the clear-cut right at dark. The clear-cut had a lot of light on it, but the thick creek bottom was pitch-black. I was positioning my gun to get a good look at the deer when something started a deep, voluminous growl behind me. 

The sheer volume of the growl was something I’d never heard in the woods. If you’ve been at a zoo and been near a lion when it roars, it was that type of volume. It built and built into a screech. I then heard it climb down a tree and walk down the creek. Had to be a mountain lion.”

"It turned out a bear had run down a fox and had its meal right behind me. This was my second time hunting and my first solo sit. Once the sun came up, I ran for the car. The adrenaline crash did give me a nice five-hour nap, though.”

"For some reason, we decided to see if there was a person inside it. There wasn’t, but there were a bunch of cages with domestic rabbits, doves, a chicken, a chinchilla, etc. We very quickly decided to leave.

It was so weird, and to this day, I don’t know why they were there.”

"The farmer came over and asked us to follow him to his barn. We walked into the dimly lit barn and there was a big brown horse, down on all fours and its Head was snapped backwards. I remember thinking how strange it was that all its bones were jutting out at strange angles under its skin. 

The farmer told us an angry grizzly roams the area and we should get the hell out of there right away. The barn had large logs as the support beams and posts and the farmer pointed out how the grizzly left a massive slash mark in one of the posts. We left the barn and almost ran to the truck. When I recounted that story a few years back, my dad said, 'Holy shit, you still remember that?' How could I forget a horse with its head snapped backwards and bones jutting up?"

Additional thumbnail credits: Paramount Pictures