Not on the trapline but in the woods. Back about 10 years ago I was assisting GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) agents secure a crimes scene where a missing woman was buried. We had found her shallow grave the day before in an overgrown fire break. She had been missing for more than 10 years and it was suspected that she had been murdered but with no body..no arrest had ever been made. GBI and local SO had received info where she may be buried and a LE team was formed and we began the search. I found the first bone laying in the overgrown break....the radius or the ulnar (human arm bone.) I was crawling on my hands and knees down the break when I found the arm bone. Other LE said it was a deer leg bone...nope! Scene was secured thru the night and crime scene techs began digging one spade full at a time out of a shallow depression near where I found the bone. Most of the skeleton was quickly exposed. She had a house robe on when she died. I remained on scene throughout the day.....a clear blue, windless pretty day. In mid afternoon as I was watching the tech carefully uncover her head area and blond hair...a strong wind picked up and blew for several seconds...actually bendng the pines over slightly. There had been and was no other wind that day. About 8 of us officers just stood looking at each other for a minute. To this day I feel that was her spirit...free at last.....knowing justice was coming. And it did...her husband was her killer and he was charged and convicted.

Back in the early 80s my friend and I were bird hunting on the logging roads of Northern Maine. We entered the woods through Ashland Maine and just headed west. We went through some pretty overgrown roads looking for birds when we came across a rundown camp in the middle of nowhere. When driving by a women came out and waved to us and told us to come in for something to drink and some muffins

We sat and talked with her for a while when someone started throwing rocks at the cabin from the outside. At this time she told us that we need to leave now. She literally threw us out of the camp.
We took off and continued hunting. We latter stopped at a truck on the side of the road. A trapper came out who we talked to for a while. We told him what had happened and he said that the women had moved out there a while ago with her husband who was a Vietnam vet.

He said that during the war the vet’s face had been permanently damaged and he had did not want others to see him so he lived with his wife in this camp. The trapper said it was probably the vet who was throwing the rocks at the cabin telling the wife to have us leave. Never went back.

Fact ? Fiction? I am only writing on what we had seen and were told and I do not BS.

Did experience one scary moment on the trapline...other than when I got caught in a Belisle 280.....

...back about 1982 or so I had just caught the second coyote of my trapping career at a field edge near a swamp. I placed him in the truck and proceeded to wade off into the flooded knee deep creek bottom to check several coon traps I had set on the same property. My mind was on coyotes and how mean they looked and acted compared to the many grey foxes I readily caught. I reached my first mullet head nailed on a tree coon set when all of a sudden I heard tremendous splashing out in the swamp and whatever it was was now rapidly approaching my location. I was thinking deer and just as my eyes found the splashing two huge Siberian Huskies appeared about 50 yards and were running right at me. I screamed like a little girl and they both stopped and turned and ran back into the flooded timber. My clear mind said that was dogs but my scaredy cat mind said I was being attacked by the coyotr's family. I walked out of that swamp with a strange metallic taste in my mouth.....never saw the Huskies again or their tracks around that field.

Yep. Muskrat, it was similar to that. It moved slower but smooth. Literally moved under the turkeys I had roosted the day before. Didn’t even spook em off their roost. If it were hunters in headlights those birds woulda busted, no question. And it was below the ridgeline, in a bottoms. Couldn’t have been traffic or D/D lights.
I know some things are little odd to talk about but the reason I started the thread in the first place is because we as trappers have a trained eye for things that are out of place. We see patterns and also see when they are disrupted. We know sign. We know what things are supposed to look like. Basically professional observers. So I figured it would be neat to hear what guys/gals who are out in the rural areas are seeing that’s “out of place”. And again, thanks to everyone so far, I’ve enjoyed reading every contributing post. Have not been disappointed that’s for sure!

My dad and I took his camper to our deer lease in South Texas in the early 1980's prepare for the coming deer season. It was October and we wanted to do a few days of scouting. We had a favorite spot to set up camp each year under some large trees. I was standing under a tree guiding him back and looked up to make sure there were no limb in the way. As I looked up I noticed a face looking down at me. I had to do one of those double take looks to be sure of what I was seeing. After stopping my dad to come look up into the tree to confirm what I was seeing he just looked at me and said "Monkey"? It didn't seem to be very concerned about us so we finished unloading the camper and started to prepare something to eat. This got the monkeys attention and he came down to the lower limbs of the tree to watch us. He was a large monkey of about thirty pounds and seemed to be use to people. We decided that he was someone's escaped pet and thought we would catch him and return him to his owner. We had a bag of apples in the camper and went in to get one. He never took his eyes off of me as I cut a slice of apple and toss it to the base of the tree. He came down and picked it up as he seemed to be upset with me for getting dirt on it. He very carefully wiped the dirt off of it with his hands and ate it. At this point it was obvious that he didn't like the dirt on his food and came over and sat on the corner of the picnic table. I continued to give him slices of apple but he would let us closer than four feet to him. I made a rock cubby and put a noose around the opening and slices of apples in the back. He sat there looking at it for a minute and then walked over to the side of the cubby and reach down with one hand and gently picked up the noose with two fingers as he reached in with the other hand to get the apple. He dropped the noose and gave me look like OK smart guy what is your next trick! We quickly ran out of apples and he wanted more. He got tired of waiting and walked over to the camper door and sat down looking at it. He must have been watching me very closely each time I would go in for more apples. He put his fingers under the bottom edge of the door and yanked the door open like it was something he had done hundred times before. Jumping in the open door he quickly found the empty apple bag and started looking for something else to eat. He found a bag of potatoes and pulled it open. Putting one in his mouth and one in each hand he jumped back out of the camper and walked over and sat on a large corner post of some cattle pens to finish his meal. Shortly after that the land owner came by and we told him about our new friend and point him out. As soon as the land owner seen him he ran for his truck to get his rifle. Seeing the rifle the monkey ran into the thick brush and and we never seen him again. The story was that some of these monkeys had escaped from a TB research lab. They were all infected and the rancher were shooting them on sight. It was a good thing we didn't catch him or I should say he didn't catch us.
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The following is never a way that I would ever dispose of a skinned animal carcass now but it was 40 years ago and we were young and dumb. My point here is what went through this homeowner's head the next day...

A guy I knew in high school was trapping the local river. By then it was sort of squishy if the river was still open to trapping being at the edge of town or not. Anyway, this guy caught a 30-40 pound beaver and had skinned it and had the carcass to get rid of somewhere. We were driving around and for some reason decided to head into an upper-income neighborhood-- this was before security cameras were common. I had delivered out-of-town big city newspapers in that neighborhood several years before so I knew some of the stories of these people. We ended up in front of the local newspaper's editor/publisher's house. It had a nice slate stone front porch. The skinned out beav carcass was gently placed on the porch and we left. It was sort of cold that night so the beav body probably froze down a bit on the slate. I wonder what went through those people's minds when they found that the next day? Probably thought they had been visited by a Satanic cult. I never heard another word about it, this guy had a whole paper to say something about it. He probably thought that might continue the situation. I wonder if that story has been passed down the time in that family's circle...?

You probably should have been checked out for a stroke or a heart attack or something.

This somewhat of a hunting story but..... My son and I were up at the cabin one weekend bowhunting and scouting. My son who may have 15 or 16 at the time had a really good bow stand that year wanted to be out on stand even though impending rain was on it's way. So I drove him up the road to where he walked into his stand and told him to text me if he needed anything. I was going to go out and do a little scouting. The rain started coming down hard and I drove up to go pick him up. He got in the truck and we headed to town for gas. About a 1/2 mile up the road we came over a crest and there was someone walking down the road abut a 1/4 mile in front of us. Like my kid read my mind we both looked in the backseat to clear some room so we could give this person a ride. When I turned and looked seconds later the person was gone. When we got to the spot that the person was walking we slowed and scanned the woods and saw nothing at all. There was any possible way that in that short distance someone get get out of site from us. After looking for a minute or so my son looked out the window on the road and said "dad there aren't even any tracks int he road. I backed up a little and we scanne the side of the road for anything human. Nothing. My son opened the door and stepped down and looked to see that a perfectly formed track could be seen in the on the side of the muddy dirt road. Never did figure out where that person could have gone to or why there were no tracks but we both saw the same thing.

One time I set a trap,,,and the next day,there was NOTHING in it !!!!!! Strange but true.

Back in the early 80s I was running predator traps at night, mid December snowing hard pitch black night. I'd caught a nice red fox, dispatched it and I'm on my knees remaking the set and something rubbed against my leg.. Thinking it was the fox I grabbed it in squeezed real hard and screamed like a girl. It was a cat, and yes the cat got some needed flying lessons... LOL

Back in the mid 80's My wife's great great uncle stopped by and gave me a big buck mink he caught in his chicken pen. He knew I was trapping and he didn't want to mess with it. He also told me there was muskrats in his lake that was a 1/4 mi back in the field and also a church was having coon problems about another 1 mi over. So I went and talked to the deacon and he said they wasn't having church of the winter and coons were working on the roof again. So I set me up a oval shaped line hitting 4 ponds and small lake and a couple of spring fed trickles. Probably about a 3+ mile walk. First night I caught 3 coons and was a load for my pack basket. I didn't want to skin them as I cooked all my coons for my dogs and us on occasion. Well the second night my wife said she would come and help me bear the load. We ran it in the night on account not to bother the deer hunters, Well we got to the church about mid night and walked right thru the middle of the old cemetery, my wife wasn't that fond of doing that, I picked up a coon at the church and another at a pond and a muskrat and a possum at the last pond. This was rough country really no terrain for even a 3 wheeler. Well I had a wheat light we walked by and when we would get to an open spot I would turn it off and walk in the moon light. I had the two coons in my basket, she was carrying a rat in one hand and the possum in the other. We was on a deer trail and the old man was too slow for her so she passed me and as we was getting near the woods the shadows was darkening in on the path. She is probably 50' ahead of me and all of a sudden she lets out a scream that raised the hair on my neck. She comes charging back at me as I get the light on. T H E R E S S O M E T H I N G up there. I fiddle getting my trusty 22 H&R untied in my holster. She stays back and I go up there and about die laughing. There was a huge old grey cow standing there with the expression, you gotta problem? She was 3/4 mi from where she should be. I went and told the neighbor the next day where his cow was. He had a big laugh, he had known my wife since she was a toddler. Also told me where more rats and coons were and to drive thru their pasture which put me closer to my other sets. My wife carries her own light even to this day!

Ohio boy I have been tested since, no mental probelms that a stroke would cause and the stress test for a heart attack was good and haven’t had any other kinds of episodes since. That’s the weird part doc couldn’t find anything and said without anything happen again he has no clue.

Great post!

Not a trapping story but one that has puzzled me since it t happened

When I came back from living in China the wife kids and me bought a 120 acre farm just north of the snake river state forest one night I had insomnia and couldn’t sleep so was up late reading, I had let the dogs out into the fenced area in the front of the house and I am not sure how long they were out there maybe an hour or so, but suddenly there was a loud bang on the door followed by another and another along with barking from the dogs.

Well I did what any one else was on here would do I grabbed my gun and a flashlight and went to see what was going on, when i opened the door I was almost bowled over by all 3 dogs trying to get into the house at the same time, 2 of them immediately hid one behind the sofa and the other under a chair, while Charlie my coon hound took up position behind me looking out the door and growling not his ready to fight growl but more frightened and uncertain.


Charlie and me had encountered a lot of scary things in our time together and this was the only time I ever seen where he was not not ready to go in and fight even the time we ran into a pack of wolves he was frightened but was between me and them scared but I think if I had asked him to he would have gone out and attacked them but here he was not just scared but terrified

Well I flashed the light around the yard but there was nothing there, and then I looked up, there in the southern sky was what I can only describe as a glowing ball about 2 hand spans above the tree line and looking about the size of a tennis ball held out arms length away

I just stood there on the porch staring trying to figure out what the the thing was, first though was it was a chopper because it was not moving but there was no sound none at all, and then it was gone, like someone shut off a light

Another strange thing is that there were no night noises and anyone who has spent time in the country in spring knows there is always something making noise but it it was totally silent not even a bug making noise

The next day Charlie was mostly back to normal though he was on high alert acting nervous and the other 2 dog my daughter had to coach out from where they had been hiding alll night and by the end of the day every thing was back to normal

To this day I sometimes think about it and wonder what that light was, it wasn’t a plane or chopper, it might have been light reflecting off something but what and what about the dogs and why were all the night sounds quite

Maybe someone here can explain it I sure can’t

Somethings I have kind of come to conclusions on are that it was nothing I can really explain, but whatever it was I believe was between 1 1/2 and 2 miles away don’t ask me why I think that’s how far it was it’s just an impression
I have it could have Ben further or even closer it’s hard to tell when you don’t have anything to measure against

If someone has a logical explanation I would like to hear it

Saw the Hornet Spook Light a couple times during my teen years.

Mike

Nightlife just last year the wife and I were driving home on the back roads and witnessed a light just like you described. No movement at all but when it disappeared, it just turned off like a flashlight. Much brighter light than on any aircraft I've seen.

That's a good one, nightlife! The puzzling question for me is not the light, but why the dogs would react like that to a light in the sky. Perhaps it was the unusual silence? A good mystery for sure.

And Bob_Iowa's experience of landing 10 feet away from the bank is puzzling as well. Perhaps you took a bounce you never realized? But presumably there would be some evidence of that.

Anyway, these are all great stories!

I reckon everyone is thinking what no one wants to say.

Mike

Virgina is for LOVERS after all...