Luckiest Hunting Moment

What's the luckiest thing that has ever happened to you in the field?

Mine is finding my truck keys after 3 hours in the field.

I'm sure some of the ol' timers on here have had quite the stories. Lets hear them!

Lost a pair of Swarovski binoculars while walking and rattling. Found them one year later, right by the tree where I had left them.

1. Drove home and had just enough cash to get enough gas to drive back to my deer blind to get my wallet and make it back
to a filling station to fill up.
2. Found my cell phone by seeing the little blinking light when I drove through the gate.
3. Shot a great buck while headed for the truck to grab some TP.
4. Had my family with me when I a piece of porcelain broke and cut the artery in my wrist. They got me to the highway
where an ambulance could take me to the nearest hospital. Lucky they were there
5. My buddies were with me when i was pushing cows off the hunting pasture and fell and broke my shoulder. The took me to
the hospital. Missed bow season because of it. lucky they were there too

Lost my phone in a rice field while setting a goose spread. Buddy walked all the way to the edge to take a leak for some reason, instead of close and just happened to see the corner of it sticking out of the water when he was standing there.

I shot a deer and buddy realized his phone was missing an hour or so later after taking care of it. It was a large ranch so no clue where it could be. He luckily had a connected ipad and we used the find my iphone all. It was in the middle of the road several hundred yards from where we got my deer. Guess he set it on the truck when wondering where I was and drove off and it fell. We probably ran over it a time or two as well.

That same deer was my luckiest. Hunting conditions were horrible all morning, super thick fog. No feeders or anything but in a blind at least and freezing. Temp was low 30s and forecast was 40s. Walked around a few times and found some young deer. Get back in blind and got out again to overlook another pasture. Playing Candy Crush at this point and my phone rings and it is my buddy to pick me up. I can barely see him in the fog at my blind.l so I start walking back and then they drive off. I get ahold of him a minute later but he is picking up a other buddy who got a deer earlier. I get back in blind and it is 10:20 now. At 10:30 fog lifts and I see a doe dart across the pasture about 230 yards away. Behind her was a buck. And behind him was another buck. A minute later another buck. And then a couple minutes later a 4th buck and he is wide, mature and tired. I shot him at 220 yards and he went about 300 more before I found him. Shot both legs somehow. This was in Dec so rut is never always over in north Texas.

Lost my phone while walking back to the cabin. Traced my steps back through the thick tall grass field and found it

WOW. If only the TP situation were to happen to me! Seems like our phones have been causing some stress to lol.

Yeah. My dad lost his phone while walking in the creeks at my place. We went home and my brother went out the next day and found it and had to mail it to him.

Hearing my Dad tell me about the very first turkey he called in and shot - he was 72 at the time.

Having a hang-on tree stand break on me and falling the 5' until the safety harness/rope went taut. I was 35' up the tree.

After the sun had set in the final six or seven minutes of light on the last day of an eight day hunt. It was just like the cheesy magazine articles, only way, way better.

Dove hunting opening evening this year. I noticed that my cell phone wasn't in the pocket that I had it in. Very new I-Phone 8 Plus ($900) Dang lucky that we had service in the field. Had a guy call my number. It took a few minutes, but eventually I heard my phone ringing. Made sense that it was where I winged a bird and had to run it down.

JR

Back in the days of beepers the company had just handed out new ones and we were told not to loose or break them. Well I dropped mine in the woods while hunting so I had it on silent. Thank goodness for that red blinking light, found it on my walk in trail.

Hunting national forest north of Houston. Had a pack on my back climbing tree stand and my favorite rifle a Browning BAR 30-06. Wanted to get away from roads and crowds so hiked in a couple miles through some really thick cover and brush. No luck so I hiked back to the truck in the afternoon. When I got to the truck and unloaded every thing to my horror my rifle was no longer on my back. Fortunately I had used my Garmin with tracking to enter and return to the truck. It took me about three hours of following the track back and forth through some really thick cover several times but I was lucky enough to find my rifle. It had gotten stuck on some branches and pulled the rivets on the sling. With the bulky load I never felt it happen. I consider the recovery a lota luck!!!!!!!1

Last year my fiance was hunting by her self, she was smoking a cigarette while checking Facebook when she heard something hit the feeder 21 yards away . She looked up to see her target buck standing there. Dropped her phone and smoke to draw back her bow and shoot him.

I was in Mexico this past January hunting Coues Whitetail. Glassed up one buck that made me curse (silently) like a proverbial sailor. He was an absolute stud. Grabbed my guide to have him take a look. Gave the guide my Sig range finder and got a range. The deer disappeared and popped up several moments later a good distance away. Moved to get a better shot angle, got a range, and the deer moved over the hill. We ran after that buck and found him. Guide went to range him and no range finder. Unsure of the distance (300+ yards) so I passed on the shot.

We started looking for the range finder and could not find it. Slowly traced our steps back to where we first began. Scoured that area and nothing. After about half an hour, I said "F* it" since the guide has a Leica range finder. At this moment I notice a cow that was not there when this excitement started. I told the guide "hang on" and went to where the cow was. Sure as hell the cow found my Sig range finder. After this that buck is called Sig and we never found him again. I did get a couple of nice bucks on that trip but nothing of Sig's caliber.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Do not waste time; just shoot the damn buck especially when he makes you curse (in a good way).

shot a big long nose gar, it stripped all the line off my bowfishing spool, after fighting it in current for a few minutes it managed to cut the line on a barbed wire fence. about a half hour later i see a white arrow sticking straight up coming up stream. a walk over to a guy crappie fishing in waders and ask him if he could grab it, he did and pulls the fish to shore. he finally saw what was on the end of the arrow and kind of freaked out. landed the fish and all was good. five years later i walk by some guys bowfishing and hear a guy telling this same story, introduced myself and we have been best of friends for the past 8 years and i was in his wedding. im lucky to have landed that big gar but even luckier to have met my great friend.

When I was in high school I was hunting in an old elevated blind with a buddy’s sister. The blind got to rocking and tipped over. Luckily neither one of us was injured.

Sooooooooo you used a DOE tag huh?

back when I was younger, got really bored sitting in the stand. Happened to have my .22 with me so started shooting at rabbits, I was in an elevated blind. 5 minutes after a round of shooting, a nice little 8 pt. walks out of nowhere!

Driving home at night from an unsuccessful deer hunt deer hunt with my son. I notice my parking brake is on and reach down to pull it off and accidentally pull my hood latch which pops the hood as we are going 65 mph. I pull over - we are in the middle of nowhere - no lights no houses - and my son jumps out of the truck to close the hood. He jumps back in and we are down the road for twenty minutes and then he says, "I can't find my cell phone". We realize it was on his lap when he jumped out. Fortunately, I had stopped for gas before driving home and had reset the odometer to check gas mileage. We were 17 miles down the road from the gas station before I realized my parking brake was on. After closing the hood and driving for 20 minutes we were 35 miles total down the road. We turned around and went 18.5 miles back and turned around. My son says there's no way we'll find the phone. I told him we would call it with our lights off, look and if we don't see it, pull up 50 yards and try again. In the second hundred yard stretch of our search, we called did not see it, turned my lights back on and pulled up 50 yards and we saw its orange camo case - lucky day.

Took my GF hunting with me one afternoon and well lets just say I got luckey...

Shot at a good buck one time and couldn't find any blood. Searched for a while and gave up. Walking back to the stand I found him piled up. Glad I chose to walk back a different direction.

why did the blind start rocking LOL

Finding my phone on the deer lease three different times after losing it. Last weekend lost it again, prayed the whole time walking around looking for it in the dark. No one at the lease with me so could not call it but would not matter anyway because I had it on vibrate. Prayers once again answered, phone found.

Before phones what did people lose? Their thumbs?

Leave it at camp and stick to napping haha

This is also my fondest hunting memory! My luckiest moment was awesome and the beginning of my hunting education and understanding of how to hunt a productive area.

So I started hunting 7 or 8 years ago and I began in the Sam Houston Natl Forest trying to learn how to hunt feral pigs. So after a year or 2 of just wandering around to different areas without a clue i was deep in the woods one day and saw this trail that just went down in to what at the time I was thinking a creepy part of the woods for about 3/4 of a mile and at the end of this trail was an area with fresh pig wallows and everything looked like they were there just minutes ago. So I figure what the heck lets take a seat for a few hours and see what comes my way. I find a perfect shooting lane about 110 yards away looking down on this spot where I wont be spotted. This is 1oclock in the afternoon. Unbelievably within 15 minutes 3 nice pigs come running in and stop perfectly for me. Now how lucky is that on public land in the middle of the day! Now that I am an experienced hunter of the SAM I would tell you that scenario is impossible in the SHNF. I've never seen one again during the day since that time. Anyways That was the day I got hooked on hunting because I have never had my heart beat so hard almost came pout of my chest and I've never been so excited in my entire life. After 2 years of roaming these woods barely even seeing a squirrel I have 3 nice pigs in front of me. Well I guess I missed from my heartbeat, inexperience, iron sights on my M1A... Not sure. I thought I hit it right in the shoulder but I never found blood and this place was super thick and hard to walk through so I never found it.

It didnt matter that was lucky as hell for public land for that to happen so quick in the middle of the day. I stayed there the rest of the year and never got another shot off but I saw several pigs and deer and learned a lot and now that is my honey hole and I have taken several pigs and deer in that area. My favorite area in the SHNF for sure!

Oh yeah a few weeks later sitting in that same spot I hear "whooop". Craziest thing I have ever heard in the forest.

Any time that I have hunted with my daughters or my wife.
The big bucks just walk out and stand broadside for a perfect shot.
Then they say “deer hunting is easy.”
Makes me want to scream.

Very funny. When you are by yourself and 3.5 hours from home, accidents happen.

I was rattling one morning,wearing a gullie suit,had a ten point buck jump over me and stand about five foot from me for a moment or two! It was wild every hair on hid body was standing straight out!

I think I posted this last year but here it is again.
One of the guys on our place let his 7 year old son shoot a nice 8 during the 2016/2017 season. He said the deer just took off after the shot with no sign of being hit. He looked for around 4-5 hours in some of the thickest brush on that place and couldn’t find the big 8.

Fast forward to June 2017 and I’m out driving the Mule around looking for a new spot for a blind and find this nice dead head sticking out of the grass. Sure enough, it was little mans buck he had shot the previous year. There’s a couple of hundred yards of very dense brush between where he laid and where their hunting area is located. His dad made it about half way through that brush when looking, before he lost any sign of that deer.

Anyways, I called his dad and had him come meet me (with his boy) and I gave it to him. I thought it was pretty lucky that I found him for that kiddo, which his dad had a full shoulder mount made for him after the fact.
Now let’s see if I can get these pics to work.

Back in my younger days in CO I had been elk hunting hard for the season with no luck. On a whim I decided to try a different spot only to find 2 other hunters there. Decided that was that and packed to drive home. While driving right at last light I came around a bend and saw a nice bull on a ridge about 150 yards away. Stopped the truck, uncased my 7mm Mag, grabbed my orange and walked off the road to make a legal shot. Dropped the bull with one round. Field dressed and quartered him while holding a small mag light in my mouth after the sun set on the final day of the season.



The photo is him in the back of the truck the next day. Not the biggest bull I have taken, but probably the luckiest since I had to be in the right place at the right time. he was less than 3 steps from going over the ridge and he stood still long enough to stop the truck, get the gear and make the shot.

exactly! lost keys to my car by a pond while hunting ducks, and found them there couple of hour after, lucky...

Got to the lease late one Friday afternoon. before I shutthe truck door I saw a doe going across the field, the main target buck that I had many night pictures of but no day time pics was behind her. Very short hunt.

Pulled up to my place in Mississippi and there was a nice 8pt at the gate that ran off. There had been 2 8pts running together in the early season Went in the woods and 200 yards later shot the other of the two bucks which was the largest.

Hunted one morning and saw nothing not surprising since it was a full moon. Went in front of the house to check on a stand not used since the year before and parked the 4wlr, walked by a food plot then across the opening and into the woods 2 bucks standing there, was kinda bummed thatI got the smaller one which was still a 5 yer old 8pt, The larger one a very nice 9pt my Dad got him a month later and it was the biggest buck he ever killed.

But the luckest, was on public land hunting in Mississippi when in college, a bullet hit the tree about a foot above my head.

I was in a bar one night and this gorgeous gal had a little to much to drink and did not want to drive intoxicated so I then