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Post by pinman on Sept 13, 2024 18:59:35 GMT -5
Since this is a "strange folks in the woods" story thread......we used to Dove hunt along a canal bank on the edge of the Sugar Cane that was on land my Dad managed. It was a private area with a gate and road on top but we left the gate open when we hunted. 1978-1980 timeframe. One hunt a Buick or Olds or some other geezer-mobile came down the road and an elderly couple pulled up and rolled down their windows. Asked us, who of course were standing there holding shotguns, if this road "went to Sebring"..... Now we were 15 miles from the nearest paved road and 75 miles as the Crow flies from Sebring. We tried to help them get back on track and they took off but I still cant figure out how they got on that route. (OMG knows right where Im talking about)
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Post by One Man Gang on Sept 13, 2024 19:43:39 GMT -5
I do know the farm, the canal, and a little bit about Sebring.  |
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Post by richm on Sept 14, 2024 17:13:49 GMT -5
I was at toso and in tree, shine off a guy. After say o900 got down to scout for better spot. That guy tried to get in front of me everywhere i went, saw him here and there but figured he was scouting too.
He saw me at car and flat out ran 1/2 mile or so to threaten me to never hunt there again. Wt lifter, he puffed up and flexed while threatening this young guy. I was amazed at his brevado. Wasnt even his stand spot but some guy he knew. LoL! Knucklehead.
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Post by One Man Gang on Sept 14, 2024 18:27:50 GMT -5
Fuck! I knew I shouldn't have bought that new 85"er in sale for the patio last week!
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Post by meateater on Sept 17, 2024 9:37:02 GMT -5
my weirdest story happened 9 or 10 years ago at a wma called dupius, i was still hunting way in the back by the rock pits, about 9am couple miles from the truck i was creeping along a ditch hoping to catch a hog laying in one of the many mud holes outa nowhere 50 yds away a pretty big dude screams at me what the f are you doing out here, he was barefoot ,shorts big scraggy beard , raggitty shirt and a foot long bowie knife on his side and a 7 foot walking stick that i noticed had a knife tied to the end and he,s walking straight at me, i flipped the safety off my 300 blackout and yelled back hunting hogs, he stopped at bout 10 yds and began telling me no hunting was allowed this is a protected area and he was hired by the state to watch over all the animals . this dude was rough looking and really unstable, i would back away and he would get closer so i finally told him im leaving , dont make me shoot you well that was the wrong thing to say cause instantly i got the go ahead m fer you wouldnt be the first ahole that tried. i just kept walking away keeping 20 yds or so between us but he followed me couple hundred yards the whole time talking bout his farm in virginia which he raises 400 horses on, his painting company in daytona and his contract with the state to fight off poachers. nothing in 35 years of hunting florida wmas comes close to this. i reported him but never heard anything back.
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Post by johnnybandit on Sept 17, 2024 21:30:35 GMT -5
Was it a short fat guy in a Ram? I am not sort of fat.... |
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Post by johnnybandit on Sept 17, 2024 21:33:08 GMT -5
Oh I got the mother of weird-person-in-the-woods stories I’ll share later.
I can tell the story for you..... So you went into the woods this one time.....
And you are a weird fucker....
So you were the weird guy in the woods that day..
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Post by walkerdog on Sept 18, 2024 9:11:21 GMT -5
You’re doing it again………
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Post by One Man Gang on Sept 19, 2024 9:45:43 GMT -5
my weirdest story happened 9 or 10 years ago at a wma called dupius, i was still hunting way in the back by the rock pits, about 9am couple miles from the truck i was creeping along a ditch hoping to catch a hog laying in one of the many mud holes outa nowhere 50 yds away a pretty big dude screams at me what the f are you doing out here, he was barefoot ,shorts big scraggy beard , raggitty shirt and a foot long bowie knife on his side and a 7 foot walking stick that i noticed had a knife tied to the end and he,s walking straight at me, i flipped the safety off my 300 blackout and yelled back hunting hogs, he stopped at bout 10 yds and began telling me no hunting was allowed this is a protected area and he was hired by the state to watch over all the animals . this dude was rough looking and really unstable, i would back away and he would get closer so i finally told him im leaving , dont make me shoot you well that was the wrong thing to say cause instantly i got the go ahead m fer you wouldnt be the first ahole that tried. i just kept walking away keeping 20 yds or so between us but he followed me couple hundred yards the whole time talking bout his farm in virginia which he raises 400 horses on, his painting company in daytona and his contract with the state to fight off poachers. nothing in 35 years of hunting florida wmas comes close to this. i reported him but never heard anything back. I saw that guy, but, from the rock pit side of the fence. He scattered a flock of turkeys I was working that were hanging out on the FL trail right after fly down. At the time, I thought he was just another typical hippie hiker out for a wildlife disturbing stroll. |
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Post by meateater on Sept 20, 2024 12:43:49 GMT -5
2 girls with 2 pit bulls yesterday way back in still hunt area of jw corbett, throwing sticks into the canal letting dogs fetch them, one wearing a very skimpy bikini the other jeans and a flannel shirt with sleeves cut off and work boots. i stopped and asked if everything was okay, the one who wears the strap on i presume says to me why does something look wrong so i said no just that your letting your dogs swim in a canal full of gators but do whatever you want i hate pit bulls anyway, as i drove off i heard the other chick scream at the wanna be man i f ing told you then started screaming at the dogs to get in the truck, sat in stand from 5.15 till 7.45 . didnt see shit.
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Post by whitebacon on Sept 20, 2024 13:05:20 GMT -5
2 girls with 2 pit bulls yesterday way back in still hunt area of jw corbett, throwing sticks into the canal letting dogs fetch them, one wearing a very skimpy bikini the other jeans and a flannel shirt with sleeves cut off and work boots. i stopped and asked if everything was okay, the one who wears the strap on i presume says to me why does something look wrong so i said no just that your letting your dogs swim in a canal full of gators but do whatever you want i hate pit bulls anyway, as i drove off i heard the other chick scream at the wanna be man i f ing told you then started screaming at the dogs to get in the truck, sat in stand from 5.15 till 7.45 . didnt see shit. Wait....what? This happened ? |
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Post by johnnybandit on Sept 21, 2024 20:21:01 GMT -5
About 12 years my family used to keep a lease of about 1,500 acres near Olustee. The northern border of our lease was I-10, the southern end was Hwy 90. We didn't share it with anyone else, it was purely family. We had a decent camp on sight with good amenities. We left a lot of expensive equipment in camp year-round, including multiple ATVs and a woods truck. We also left tractors in for much of the year. Outdoor TV and satellite in the cook house. Ect. Back in those days I wasn't a senior attorney. Vacation time was hard to come by and I had to really strain to get time off to hunt. That bow season I was able to take off several days to bow hunt during the week and have the lease to myself. That was the year I started doing a lot of off-the-wall experimenting with lures, decoys, and scent-control methods. That was also about the time I was able to start mapping deer movements against the barometer and a bit later patterning mature buck visits to pawings against the moon positions. So those years were formative to me to how I transitioned to how I used to hunt to how I hunt now. I remember them well. But that one week in bow season I remember more focusing on decoy use and watching a lot of doe and immature buck interactions with a couple of decoys I was experimenting with. One morning I was particularly tired and after watching some interactions with my decoy after daylight, I decided to retire early and go sleep mid-morning. So I walked back to camp (I was only hunting a few hundred yards from the camp), stripped down to my underwear, and went to sleep. I still had my camo face paint on (I used to prefer facepaint to a mask because most masks back then fogged up my glasses bad and were just one more thing to worry about). I crashed for a couple of hours. ***Here's where it's gonna get weird. Late morning or noonish I got up from my nap. I had remembered that I had brought my ant farm with me. I had seen a lot of crazy ant colonies around the woods off from camp and I wanted to dig up a queen and raise some crazy ants in the ant farm (crazy ants are the yellow ants that make a single hole and surround it by a yellow or orange sand mound). So I quite naturally found a silver spoon from either the cook house or my camper and marched out down the road from camp until I found some crazy ant colonies. I'm naked except for my underwear. My face is still painted, and my hair is sticking up from my nap. I proceed to get on my hands and knees and start digging up an ant colony intensely with the spoon, stopping every so often to examine the dirt pile I'm making to look for the queen. I go on for about an hour digging up various colonies, moving down every so many yards to the nexy colony. There's now a line of holes in the road. After I've worked down the road a ways, I'm on my hands and knees digging away and someone calls out to me. "H-E-L-L-O!" a strange woman yells from down the road. "Can you help me?" So let's stop right here. At this. point in the story, it appears I'm the weird one that someone is about to meet in the woods. I'm a 30 something year old man, with a green face, hair sticking up, in my underwear, digging small holes in the ground with a silver spoon and intently examining the dirt. But no, you'd be mistaken. The weird one is the woman who is completely comfortable walking up on me as if I'm the most approachable human being in the world. Today I would say she clearly had meth-head vibes. Back then meth wasn't the big drug everyone was using, so I could best say she had a way about her that reminded me of a criminal defendant. She was way too comfortable and friendly as she rapidly approached me. All smiles. Not at all giving any indication that she was put off by my appearances or actions. It immediately put me on edge. No normal woman would walk up on me like this I figured. I figured she had a man with her waiting to jump me. But, she also had a very pretty, well groomed, German Shepard. I decided that some who seemed to take such good care of their dog must be ok. I can't remember if I introduced myself, but I remember offering to help her and I walked her back to camp. She had walked up to camp in a roundabout way. Her vehicle had ran out of gas on I-10. Had she known those woods, she could have walked straight to camp via the main road that ran between the gate and I-10. There was a cell tower on I-10 and she was near that cell tower. But as it was she had walked much of the perimeter roads of the property and randomly walked up on me. I offered for her to use my cell phone when we got back to camp. I got dressed in my camper, and also quietly pulled my handgun and got it within concealed reach. She used my phone to call her boyfriend. When she talked to him, she started describing all the stuff we had in camp. The 4 wheelers, tractor, ect. It was clear they were talking about knocking the place over. When she was done with the call, I offered to take her to the closest gas station to wait for her boyfriend. She said no, she was going to wait in camp for him. I told her no, that wasn't an option, her options were either go to the gas station or back where she came from. At one point in her wandering before finding me, she was only 300 yards or so from the gas station and she just didn't realize it. Whether she walked there at my direction or I drove her there, she could not stay in camp. She thanked me for my help and walked back the way she came. She meandered back to her vehicle and in a few hours, she was gone. Throughout the day I slipped up to her vehicle where I could see it to make sure she got off both ok for her sake but also to make sure she wasn't still lurking the property. I pulled several cameras from the woods and positioned them around the camp. I thought for sure the camp would get ripped off over the next 2 weeks. It never happened. I think they couldn't find their way back. Had I took her to the gas station, the route back in would have been more obvious and simple. Some time later the cell tower got burglarized, but I have no particular reason to suspect it was her. This is an epic story..... You write a good story... I like that you do not leave out details.... I get the visual of you in your drawers, face paint and messed up nap hair down on the ground looking for ants...That sounds like something I might do.... |
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Post by saltybum on Oct 12, 2024 16:37:55 GMT -5
Well I should be out in the the woods along the St. Johns east of Orlando but Milton really shut it down here. Mgt areas closed everywhere. SO that said I've really enjoyed reading all the stories. We certainly don't need theme parks for intertainment.
Thanks guys
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Post by tonyroma on Oct 12, 2024 17:15:59 GMT -5
Was it a short fat guy in a Ram? OMG just spit my beer out🤣😂🤣 |
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Post by osceola on Nov 1, 2024 18:52:52 GMT -5
I know that on least two occasions I in fact was the Strange Folk.
As a dinner and campfire guest at an adjacent hunt camp. I open a Heineken beer...offer bottles to others. Just wide eyes and curt "No Thanks". I overhear two talking..."that stuff is communist!"
Back at my camp on another date,we had a stranger as guest.Somewhat mysterious,but basically just another commrade in the woods visiting. A guest of the Club President. Well spoken,great person. I recalled his interest and comments, questions.
Apparently a scope out. This guest ended up making a significant contribution to the conservation organization I was involved in,as an upper level board member.( And the hunt club lands are now,happily,within the preserved Conservation Corridor... the Corridor Concept was often discussed around that camp fire back then. Back then-the concept had no Title)
Later,I am a guest hunter at a private dove hunt. The owner well connected to FWC etc. I am approached by another guest hunter, an often past troublesome board memeber of the conservation organization I was involved in.( I recall he ran for Alachua County Commission prior...). He walks up to me......I have my Ruger Red Label over my shoulder (Ruger OU Red Label Kinda Strange to some...)...he exclaims...."I didn't know you hunted!". I noticed his outfit,shoes. Brand new. Perhaps recently purchased,but I pointed out to him that my boots were more worn than his,and further, there was a lot he did not know. Strange Encounter there at a happy dove field. He walked away.
I recall an instance when I was well inside Osceola National Forest,Pinhook Swamp, tail end of Small Game Season,getting Warm.....a long trek.Sun overhead. A sandy roadway pond at the end of the roadway trail. I strip naked and bask in the water. I am thinking..."What If somebody was to come across this scene?" Ha!...no doubt they would have really really met a Stranger (Strange Folk) immersed in warm dark water swarming with Tadpoles, a fanny pack and an impressive ("Classic" Not Strange) handgun in a really nice holster hanging on a branch overhead.
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