Scariest thing that happened to you in the woods

I heard a banjo in the distance once.

Clocked the fastest 40 I've ever had that evening.

You hear a banjo in the woods you run. If you hear a kazoo, you investigate.

LINK
10 pages of stories

I don’t really have any interesting ones. But once at a retreat center in HS while we had free time, I decided to go in the woods and take a hike alone. Found several empty nooses hanging in the middle of the woods. shite was creepy.

I was sleeping under an open tarp in the Pisgah National Forest, and as the sun is rising, I hear something rummaging around. I lift my head and see that a large black bear was in the middle of our site. I was frozen in place. I noticed the other guys were awake and wide-eyed as well. It sniffed around for a very long minute and then wandered off.

Everyone was saying how cool it was afterward, but in the moment we were clearly all scared.

Saw the pope shite there once

So the answer is, "yes"

I’ve spent a lot of time in th woods and haven’t had anything really creepy happen, but I did have a few cottonmouth incidents last year that most would consider scary. I caught over 30 cottonmouths last year (and 103 sightings) - it’s what I do for fun - but I always say if I get bit it will be on the leg, not while I’m handling them. Had 4 incidents last year where I almost stepped on cottonmouths, including the biggest one I’ve caught. When I say almost stepped on, I mean within less than a foot. I’m great at spotting them, but I have a bad habit of keeping my eyes focused on the spots where you’d typically see them near the water and I don’t look right in front of me when I’m walking. I do wear calf-high boots though, so only the largest one was big enough to maybe hit me above the boots. That one was a pain in the arse to catch, but I couldn’t let it get away since it was the year’s biggest. That one did scare me a bit when it took off at my feet. This was him:



Scariest though was also last year - I was walking along the edge of the creek at the back of my property looking for cottonmouths to catch, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something drop from a branch and land down near my feet. It was a cottonmouth that was laying on a branch at head level about an arm-length away. That one scared the crap out of me because I’ve never seen one that high up so I wasn’t expecting it. Now my head’s on a swivel when I’m out there searching for them. Definitely don’t want a bite to the face. In this photo, my snake hook is placed where the cottonmouth was relative to where I was walking:

quote:

---

Decided to poke a sow I trapped with a stick once. Ol bitch chomped on that thing and ripped it out my hand in a flash.

---

Oh my......

quote:

---

The spider article got me thinking about how much it sucks to walk face first into a big web in the woods because you know that sonofabitch is on you somewhere.

---

2 answers.

I trail run and in the summer there is a crap ton of spiderwebs. So that’s a literal answer. Being at the front of the pack sucks and half the time we run with a stick in our hands to avoid it.

Second is the time I came across two naked dudes banging in the woods with my kid while hiking.

That was fun.

ETA: one time another dude and I were running (not having the aforementioned banging) and we went up a hill and he stopped at the top and I ran into him and bumped him about 2 feet from a coral snake. Pretty but dangerous little effers.

quote:

---

Never been *really* scared, but hearing hogs grunting nearby in the dark will challenge your confidence.

---

They truly sound demonic.