You could also just wash your hands in a dilute 1:20 bleach solution.

In August 1970 my family and I had just arrived on the friendly Island of Guam for a two year stay. That first day as we were driving to our temporary quarters in the village of Tamuning, beside the highway near the turnoff to our house was a small fish market ... and outside hanging from a pipe A-frame were the biggest darn fish I had ever seen. My 11 year old son and I dropped the ladies at our new abode and we headed back to the fish market.

There were three Pacific Blue Marlin that had to be in the 5-6 hundred pound range. The fish market guy was whacking them into big chunks, 20-30 pound size I guess, wrapping them in newspaper and dumping the chunks into chest freezers. Customers were lined up buying the chunks to take home for supper I suppose. The place was a bloody mess as you can imagine.

Later I found out that the world record 1173 pound Pacific Blue Marlin had been caught the year before in the waters just off shore from where we lived.

I inquired about charter fishing at the Agana Marina and discovered that the largest boats available were in the 22-24 foot range and the ones I saw inspired no confidence in their seaworthiness. Where the off shore waters there were in the vicinity of 28,000 feet deep I chickened out of Marlin fishing. Many of those native commercial fishermen went out daily in boats less than 20 feet with one outboard motor.

Was wade fishing when i had a sea turtle swim across my lure and snaged him he fought like no other

Vacationing at South Padre when I was about 16 or so. We were staying on the bay side and my brother, friend, and I were walking out on the pier to our boat to go fishing. Toward the end of the pier, there was a wild cat that was apparantly scared as hell of us. The cat looked at us, then at the water behind it, than at us again, and then turned and dove into the water. It then proceeded to swim to shore and take off. Never seen anything like it from a cat before or since.


"I'd rather chug-a-lug a mug of Budweiser Beer than drink a crystal glass of wine" [/John Conlee]

"I'd rather have a German Division in front of me than a French Division behind me." [/Patton]

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we were about 60 miles out east of SPI near Colt/Canyon and had a pod of about 100 dolphins (I don't think they were porpoises) get right in front of our boat and ride with us for about 20 minutes.

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If you were in the Gulf of Mexico, they were not porpoise. There are no porpoise in the Gulf; just dolphin.

hth

A group of 5 of us running this morning through a field between 2818 and wellborn and not 10 feet in front of us a hog charged across the trail. A second or two later and he would've been bowling. We've seen their tracks out there before, first time we've actually seen one.

I guess while I'm on the subject, we were out running at Lick Creek last fall, when I stopped in a small meadow to take care of business. As I'm squatted down, I hear something moving in the tall grass. I look at the ground expecting to see a bunny pop out when instead I see at the top of the grass the top of two hogs. They come to with 20 feet of where I am, sniffing around, stand still for a few seconds, then walk on. If I hadn't just emptied myself, I'm sure whatever was in there would've been scared out.

Back in high school I took one of my buddies bass fishing in a local stock tank. (note...he was not an outdoorsman at all). I had fished there many times before and knew there was a small alligator that called it home. While out in our small 12ft jon boat I decided I wanted to try and catch the gator much to my buddies displeasure! I cast my artificial worm directly over the gator and sure as sh*t perfectly foul hooked him in the tail. After a long fight and being pulled all over the pond I finally get the gator close to the boat and my buddy is basically in the fetal position in the front of the boat all but crying and begging me to cut the line! I decided I wanted my hook back and grabbed the ~3ft gator by the tail and swung him in the boat. My buddy litterally almost crapped himself!

great thread guys. I don't visit this forum often but I'm glad I did. I have a few stories.

My dad was fishing (trolling) off the coast of florida and a pelican (I think) decided to snatch up whatever was being dragged through the water. We have pictures of him trying to reel in a bird 15 feet in the air.

Also, on a much less than interesting note, someone mentioned wade fishing in Lake Sommerville.. Me and some buddies discovered wade fishing in the sandy flats in the spring of my sophomore year. After everyone arrived back in school the fall of the following year, we decided we'd give it another shot. Now to get where we wade-fished, we had to park at the end of a road and walk about a mile through some state-sponosored hunting ground for handicapped kids. Most of us being city boys, we didn't know too much about the way of the snake. We both had spent plenty of time fishing, but that's about it. And apparently, the hot days of September are a special time for the snake. That first trip to and from the water was something else. Nothing like walking down a trail and through some tall grass in your shorts and old tennis shoes and happening upon a copper head. We ran into 3 the first trip and 2 the second.

After that, we were done. Not interesting and I bet people have had much worse encounters, but that's about as interesting as I've had. It's kind of fan to throw rocks at them once you've jumped back 10 feet, but that first second where you hear the hiss or see the movement will scare the pants off of you.


[This message has been edited by Will02 (edited 8/4/2006 11:28p).]

Once more kind of funny story (in my opinion).

I Was dove hunting with one of my buddies in Ballinger a few years ago. He's got a beautiful yellow lab but never really trained her to retrieve birds. We were with one of his high school friends who had spent a lot of time training his dog. My buddy shot a bird and it fell into the brush on the other side of a pond. His (pretty much untrained dog) sees the bird fall and runs into the brush after it. We had thought se was following the lead of the other guy's trained dog and were pretty much amazed. THe dog is in the brush for a few minutes and we realize that she's probably not coming back. One of the guys starts walking in that direction to see whats going on and sees my buddies dog running out of the brush with a feather stuck to her snout. Upon furhter investigation, it looks like the dog ate the bird. THere were some feathers on the ground but that's it. Not sure what happened, but at least that stupid dog got half of the job right..

Was fishing at Purtis Creek near Athens with my father-in-law. We got back into a cove but, and as it turns out, thankfully, the hydrilla was too over-grown to fish the complete cove. We were there about 5 minutes when we heard a loud rustling just off the bank about thirty yards from us. Next thing we knew, a 5-6 foot snake was flying through the air. Couldn't figure out what it was, but after waiting a few minutes to see what was going on, a mountain lion (is it a puma here?) walked out and picked up the snake. That cat was huge! It just stared at us for a little bit chomping on the snake before it left. I took a picture, but I was shaking so hard it's blurry. If I can find it, I will try to post it. True story.

Spring turkey bow hunting near Cotulla and had a gobbler work his way in, turn broadside, and I missed low and behind. I knew i missed but went to check for a hit and found a tail feather that the broadhead had cut in half. The next morning, my brother is hunting the same area (shotgun) and I hear a shot, come over to check it out, and he has a beautiful tom on the ground. As I am looking at the bird, I roll out his tail feathers, sure enough, one of them is cut in half. I had the cut off portion in my in my back pack and it was a perfect match!
Also, seen 4 raptor kills: 1 redtail take a black bellied whistling duck, and seen 3 sharp-shinned hawks kill a red wing black bird, english sparrow, and a robin.

This happened both last fall and this spring. Up here we have a lot of chipmonks. hundreds of them to an acre some places. I was sitting in my stand bowhunting and they were all out scurrying and doing whatever... it was about 10:30 am. All of a sudden I heard three wing beats and a redtail hawk swooped right by my head, less than three feet from me, grabbed a chipmonk, and soared up into a nearby tree to eat. The chipmonk was screaming... for a minute. Five minutes later, the chipmonks were out and about again, and the hawk gave a repeat performance. He just worked his way down the ridge out of sight. I saw him eat three. I guess you're well camoed when you can beat a hawk's eyes.

The same thing happened this spring when I was working a gobbler.

****. I'm getting old. I told that story on page 1.

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we had to park at the end of a road and walk about a mile through some state-sponosored hunting ground for handicapped kids.

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NOT how I thought that story was going to end. I thought at least one person was going to end up with a bullet whizzing by them.

Back when I was in school, a buddy of ours grew up in Hereford. He took about 10 of us up to hunt pheasant, one Christmas Break. We lit out of B/CS write after last final, in a caravan. We lost a couple cars in Abilene. He circled back and sent the rest of us on up to his folks house. We roll in about 5 am. Mom and Pop meet us at the door. After we all file in, Dad says, "There's a keg of beer in the garage." 5am. Nice.

We didn't get any pheasant that trip. Only saw two males (along side the road as we were driving), but we did shoot the hell outta some rabbits, both cotton-tail and jack. After clearing it with a land owner, we formed up a skirmish line and started heading across a field. A jack rabbit darts between the legs of the guy on the far right flank, headed out about 10 meters in front of the line, takes a hard left and heads, full speed, down the line. We each fire off 2-3 shots from our shot guns. The rabbit is tumbling but still going. Dang thing didn't stop till it got to the end. The guy on the far left flank picks it up by the ears and the thing is shredded.

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AggieChemist
posted 6:58a, 08/07/06



****. I'm getting old. I told that story on page 1

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I know the feeling.

Two snake sightings in the same general area, the Rand Mountains near Ridgecrest, CA. First was a Mojave green rattler, about 6-7 ft. Never thought that seafoam and mint green could be used to describe a snake, but nothing else works.

Second was when my buddy and I got rattled at. Investigated and found two sidewinders mating. They were hooked up for the 5 hours we worked in the area.

In the same area, after work one day my boss changed into shorts and sat down. 30 seconds later a sun spider crawled out of his shorts. We all knew he had some nasty junk in his drawers, but that was over the top.

In the San Francisco Bay there was an avocet/black-neck stilt cross poking around for a while. I heard of sightings 2 years in a row and saw pictures. Odd bird.

This summer I'm working in the Sequoia NF collecting tracks. We use these boxes baited with chicken to get critters to walk across soot and onto contact paper. At one site 5 of 6 track boxes were smashed, just obliterated, by bears. On one plate there was a big momma bear track and a little cub track. Guess she was showing him how get a quick snack.

One of my many stories. Was driving back from fishing in Bolivar about a month ago at 2 AM on 45, somewhere along there we see a coyote sitting on the side of the road. There was a car about a hundred yards in front of me and once that car passed the coyote bolted. Ran across all the traffic cleared the 4ft tall median and then was gone across the other side. My buddy and I looked at each other and were stunned, stopped at Whataburger for Coffee and Taquitos and still couldnt believe that.

ttt

To give the new posters an opportunity to add their observations of unusual animal behavior or events.

Does anyone else remember this saying from early day movie animal cartoons? "Animals are the cwaziest people."

One of the greatest experiences i've seen, and im sure some of you have also through your many years of hunting. In Rocksprings my dad and I were deer hunting and about 15 yeards off to our right we see about 15-20 turkeys walk in a straight line and take flight all the way to the bottom of the canyon. The turkeys at least flew 700 yards (from what i remember) and we watched every second.

Several years ago, a friend had built a 7mm STW and had dies made(this was before you could get this caliber from a gun store) and wanted to get a long shot at a deer. I had an wheat field available and you can easily get a 1000 + yard shot if you position yourself in the right place. We sat on the field's edge under a low hanging oak tree among some dead weeds for cover. We saw a deer across and could tell it was a small buck, but both had shot our bucks for the season so we were waiting for a doe. Anyway. we waitied and watched the young buck methodically work it's way around the field following the fenceline toward us as it approached us we sat very still and it approached within 10 feet and was eating and and slowly walking. Just before he made it to us, as he had taken a mouthful of wheat, you could see every muscle in his body tense up and freeze. With his head still near the ground, his eyes rolled up and looked right at us. He blew wheat everywhere and jumped straight up and began to try run away. Problem was, it had rained a day or two earlier, so he was sinking in the mud and trying to high-step his way through it while looking at us with an Oh S%$# look in his eyes. We were rolling around laughing for quite a while after that..

Once I was on vacation in South Padre and we decided to take a walk down to the jetties to see what was going on. Amazingly, all the way down the channel side and a bit on the surf side there were sea turtles surfacing everywhere. At least two or three would come up per minute all the way down the entire length. They were all of the smaller greenish variety. Another time while fishing around Holly Beach in Port Isabel we ran into some more turtles "schooling". The tide was moving in pretty good and we were in about six feet of water. I saw several smaller turtles as well as two or three that had heads the size of of basketballs. When they breathed you could hear it from 30-40 yards away sounding like air rushing out of a tank.

This still haunts me today. It was 2005 just three days after Hurricane Rita. I'm from Orange and we had just returned to survey the damage. I decided to ride out to Pleasure Island and take a look. I walked out to the levee wall beside the old restraunt. There was a mangy looking Germain Shepard/wolf walking along the levee wall. He was walking toward the gap at the Marina. He looked tired, hungry and depressed. he got to the end and seemed confused on where to go. He then just jumped into Sabine Lake.he swam for a while along the wall. I was intrigued and a little worried about his fate so I walked out on the wall and called for him. He looked back at me eye to eye and and then turned and swam directly out towards the middle of the lake. I sat and watched for about 30 minutes as this dog swim out as far as i could see into the horizon. He was surely swimming do his death. I'll never know what happened to this dog or what to think of it(in Indian days, this truly would be a sign or omen) , but it saddens me.

When I was on sheep roundup on a ranch SW of pandale, I was riding my horse across a rim of a small canyon pushing a small herd of sheep, my horse came within a few feet of a rattler, which when it rattled scared my horse even more than it scared me, which caused me to slide out the backdoor while my horse ran about 30 yds away. By now I am thoroughly pissed so I decide to kill the snake with a big mesquite stick i found. Well my first swing was a little off and I knocked his rattle off, and by this point the herd of sheep is beginning to scatter so I catch my horse and take off after them, forgetting the fact that I left a rattleless rattler alive up on the bluff. So just a word of advice, Beware of the rattleless rattler of West TX.

Back in September 1961 Hurricane Carla was approaching the Texas coast. My father-in-law had a boat at a yacht basin at Kemah. He was almost too late in getting his boat to safety and just drove it up the Houston Ship Channel. With the tide and storm surge he was able to drive it up Washington Avenue in Houston and tie off on light poles. Shrimpers already in the area said they would look after his boat if they could use it as a walkway between where their boats were tied up and the street.

After the blow he first checked on his boat and it was OK so he drove back to Kemah to see if anything was left for him to use as a moorage. There was not anything left of Kemah ... everything between the highway and the gulf was swept away (at that time about all that was there before was beer joints and bait shops and a few docks for boats.) Yachts that had been left at the marina were blown across the highway and up a small creek ... ruined.

Anyway while he was driving around trying to get his bearings where businesses had once stood he spotted a black Lab limping along looking for anything to eat. My father-in-law had part of a hamburger left so he called to the dog. When he opened the door to feed the Lab, the dog just piled right into the front seat of his car and refused to leave.

Well, there was nothing else to do but drive back to Houston with that Lab riding shotgun. And that was just the beginning of a troublesome career with Bluto, the name fil gave his new charge.

Apparently, Bluto's previous owners had driven off and left him to fend for himself during Carla. And bluto determined that never again would a car drive off and leave him.

For the next several years if a car started up in the vicinity of my fil's house, regardless who was driving the car, Bluto was going in that car. If the door was open, he went in the door climbing over anyone who might be in the way. If the door was closed, the big lummox would come in through the window.

It was a circus at anytime anyone was leaving the house to go somewhere in a car, the family would be yelling to "look out for Bluto, shut the door, close the window!" My little kids thought it was great fun but I thought he was a gigantic pain in the rear.

After about five years Bluto disappeared. We figured he had jumped into a car with someone who wanted a big black Lab.

We all understood that Bluto had experienced a traumatic event and forgave him for his ill-mannered actions. But he was true to his convictions ... no car was ever again going off and leave him to battle a hurricane.

Apropos of nothing, just thought this was a good place for this:

In hind-sight, the funniest thing I have seen was a bear with a huge peach can stuck on his head. In 2000, I was working doing the bear thing at Philmont, and one of my major duties was conducting campsite inspections. On the evening in question it was literally the first night we had campers out, and was our first inspection. Oddly enough, again in hindsight, both my partner and I had noticed the large yellow "rock" with a large peach can on it, but neither really thought much of it other than to bust the crew for it. I took one campsite, my partner took the campsite with the yellow "rock" to right up a citation.

All of a sudden I hear the following "Oh sh--, ursusguy, there's a huge a-- bear in camp". I honestly thought he was joking, because I don't immediately see the bear. I walk over to where my partner was standing and sure enough, the rock ended up being a huge blond black bear with a large peach can stuck on his head. The odd part was this bear was standing perfectly still, and we were yelling at it from about 20 feet away.
After a minute or so we get the bright idea to try knocking the can off with a rock. My former high school pitcher partner manages to do so with the first rock. Now said bear wasn't overly happy. He chased the can down the hill (towards us), and sticks his head right back in the can and again plays ostrich. So we knock the can off again.

Long story short, after lots of confusion, we eventually ran the bear off. My coworker managed to almost directly spray me with the Counter Assault (I honestly couldn't breath right for about 20 minutes). Ahhh good times, I've got to play with bears again some day.

I need to find it, but I took a picture with a sub adult bear munching on grass directly on the other side of the fence from a horse also munching on grass. They periodically looked at each other, but could seemingly could care less.

[This message has been edited by ursusguy (edited 9/3/2008 12:30a).]

A couple of years ago on our old lease between Llano and Fredericksburg we had about three years in a row where we always saw does fighting. It seemed like you couldn't go on an evening hunt without seeing two does rear up and start duking it out. I just got off the lease last year and for the last couple of years, no ones seen it again.

I was about 10 and leaving town early one winter morning for a soccer tournament, about 430-5ish, and my dad and I saw an Elk cross loop 281 in the middle of longiew, we watched in amble off into a neighborhood. wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it myself.

Earlier this year my dogs wakes me up about 4am... she likes to come to my side of the bed and put her nose in my face to wake me up... anyway when i open my eyes she bolts back into the living room, when I don't follow she does it again. I get up and follow her and she is staring out the window looking down at the empty lot next door, and there is a coyote laying in the grass, just sitting there relaxing, every few minutes a car goes by and he doesn't move. I wake my wife up and we watch it for about 20 minutes before it gets up and lopes off... we live in an apartment over looking the west end of Lake Carolyn in Las Colinas just north of Hwy 114 in DFW.

This wasn't hunting or fishing but a good one I think. I was vacationing with my parents and older sister in Yellowstone back in the late 60's. I was 12 or 13. I was in the front seat. We came upon a bear jam. The black bear was several cars ahead of us. I had rolled my window down so I could take a light meter reading so my sister could set the 35 mm cameral f stop ect. I was looking down at the light meter.

Nobody bothers to tell me that the bear was moving right on down the line of cars looking for handouts. Next thing I know is that this bear has put both of his paws on my window still and was looking in. Needless to say, I rolled that window up in record time and let out one big rebel yell. My parents said they thought I was going to catch that bears toes in the window.

To this day, I'm not sure my older sister wasn't trying to get rid of me.

last summer I went on a camping trip in Alaska. Well one night while sleeping I heard a loud noise like someone sawing wood. Walked outside the tent and noticed it was coming from the outhouse. So I grabbed my 44 walked up to the door of the outhouse swung it open and there was a porcupine chewing on the toilet seat! weirdest thing I've ever seen

Not the craziest thing, but the most recent was this past weekend. I was fishing down at San Luis Pass and had a bone Super Spook Jr. tied on and was catching some nice trout in the first gut behind the pass.

Well, some seagulls were attracted to the commotion and on one cast a seagull managed to swoop down and grab my lure before I could get it away from him. Usually a slight yank and the bird lets go. Well this time the rear treble hook managed to embed itself into the gull's beak.

I had to reel this poor ******* in and use my pliers to pop the hook out of his beak. The gull then flew away and seemed none the worse for wear.

We have enough good stories here for a book. Here are a couple more.

Buddy of mine got his BS here at A&M in Wildlife Science and was working on his Masters at West Virginia. He was tracking boar with a radio collar. One of his subjects was not moving so he knew it was dead so he tracked it down. Some hillbilly had the boar it in a chest freezer on his back porch with the collar still on. The hillbilly initially denied having killed the animal but finally agreed to give the collar back. My friend said he was glad he did not have a deliverance moment.

High School biology field trip to the Welder Wildlife Refuge between Sinton and Woodsboro. We were seining for “specimens” and all of the sudden we netted what we thought was a gator, brought the net to shore and had a 42 lb catfish. The refuge folks let us keep it if we promised to eat it (not waste it), no problem there we had a good fish fry.

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**. I'm getting old. I told that story on page 1.

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That's ok. I didn't remember it.

You could entertain me for hours with the same story.

Speaking of Welder Wildlife Refuge, my sister worked there back in the early 70's. She got me invited one night on an aligator research project. We were in a 12 foot john boat spotlighting at night and catching live gators to take back to the lab and weigh, measure, and mark. I'm 15 at this time. We were looking for ones around 4 foot long. One of them we caught turned out to be 7 foot long. It was too big to get in the boat so we paddled over to the bank and wrestled it out of the water. We put cut strips of inner tube over their mouths.

Back in the lab I am helping weight and measure them. We would also cut bit of one of the fins on the top of each tail. Every thing was fine until one of them got the tube off of their mouths. I jumped on top of the table really quick.