Sixth sense/Gut feeling?

[Palmer]

Have you ever waited at an intersection for a green light and felt like the person in the car next to you is staring at you?  So you turn to look and they are staring at you but quickly look away.

What I'm getting at is have you ever walked down a trail and suddenly felt you are being watched so you slowly get into a stalking pattern only to be snorted at and have a big WT waving its tail at you?

I've had numerous experiences where a combination of skill and a strong feeling have led me to game in the freezer.  How about anyone else or do you think it is just luck?

Here's just one story.  An owl perched up in a tree right next to me and stared at me a while and flew off.  I saw it as a good sign (or supertition).  I grunted and heard a twig snap so I grunted some more and called in a dandy WT.  I shot him and he went right down.

[swanny]

I've had the feeling of someone staring at me but never an animal...

Want to put your senses to work and find me a buck on Friday? 

[walt]

Many times.  The freakiest was fly-fishing in Montana.  We were way back up a drainage and I wandered away from the group and I started getting a really uneasy feeling.  Everything seemed to go quiet, the hair on my neck stood up.  I've been hunting and fishing the back country in WA, ID, and MT over 15 years and never really gotten scared but right then I was.  I high tailed it to find my friends.  The next day we spotted a griz on a kill in a meadow about 100 yards from where I was. 

[jonnyz94]

How can i tell if i have a sixth sense or if sometimes i'm just acting like a scared little girl
Never put much thought into those uneasy feeling, would just tell my self to quit acting like a p***y
Mabey next time i'll look around a little better when i feel the boogie monster right behind me!

[1bowhunter1]

That same feelinf happen to me 4 days ago on mt property in battle ground....dont know what it was and I dont get the hebie-gebies like that.  I really felt it and It was time for me to move!!~   I really feel it was a big cat or maybe a bear.  I did'nt see anything pretty heavy cover but I know I heard somthing and I really felt it!!  Scared the you know what out of me.   It is the feeling of being stocked!  Just like a deer would feel like...I bet

[7mmfan]

Three years ago in the Bethel unit I was coming out after dark and got that feeling but kept walking. When I got to the truck I grabbed the spotlight out of the bed and shined it down the trail I'd just come out of and there was a big cat standing right in it about 40 yards from me staring me down twitchin his tail. Later in the hunt my brother had a run in with the same cat on the same trail, it was on a log above the trail and snarled and growled at him but then took off. I've had the feeling other times but have never seem the culprit.

[MeatDown]

What I believe and feel… is that we as modern man “sleep” our way through our daily walk, autopilot. I can’t tell you how many times I can’t tell you what the weather or traffic was like when driving the same route home from someplace (not just tired), but go into autopilot mode, modern zombie.

But, I will tell you that I don’t feel like p***y or scared little girl. But, I know that at after several days in the woods (living more as an animal/predator) I become way more in tune with just the feelings and flow of the forest. If we slow our daily life and flow with nature then we will be more aware and in tune with those things around us.

I do believe, whether it is sixth sense, natural instinct or woods flow, that if you open yourself up to the things around you and flow you WILL have those feelings or sensations and could be rewarded or saved.

The elk that I shot this year was because something didn’t feel right, or odd, so I became more aware and was rewarded.

My dad was saved from a cougar attack several years ago at our property, when he was bushwacking through a swap and “for some reason” I felt I needed to “turn around or look backward” and when he did there was a LARGE cat about 30 yards behind him and he waved it off….

Anyway… I always always always pay attention to those feelings.

Shawn

[Palmer]

That sixth sense kicked in strong this year and was rewarding.  I had three tags this year and filled them with bucks.

I picked out a tree and made a scent trail to it but left the scent wick at the bottom of the tree (big mistake).  I had a good feeling about this tree.  That evening at 4:50 with 5 minutes left I heard sniffing below my tree climber.  The deer sniffing below me sounded like a horse sniffing the ground he was so close.  I couldn't see anything in front of me and didn't want to move too much so I grunted.   Then all I got was silence as he must have walked off.  I hunted the same spot the next day and reminded myself that you can't duplicate these things and the deer knows where I am and is going to avoid me.

So I went to another spot I felt really good about above a scrape.  That morning I harvested a buck as he walked toward the scrape.

In another area I felt really good about a clear cut and a certain tree.  I climbed the tree and harvested a 5 point within an hour.

Then the weekend came and there was hunting pressure everywhere in both Washington and Idaho.  We went to Idaho and it was a zoo.  One couple of hunters drove there truck through a clearcut and shot at deer but missed.  The deer were wily.

However, Sunday evening after scouting and seeing some promising rubs I decided to hunt an area without allot of cover.  It didn't look like the best place to hunt but the feeling kicked in even though it didn't look good.  Big bucks don't normally walk out in the open.  I set up a scent trail got up a tree and waited.  I caught sight of a large deer 150 yards away walkin a line of 10 foot trees on the edge of the clearing but it was moving fast and I chose not to shoot.  The next morning he made a bee line for the scent I had put out and cut across the meadow in front of me - a fatal error.  He turned out to be a handsome 250# 4 pt. with nice symmetrical antlers.  A real nice way to finish the season.

I'm stickin' with the gut feelin mixed with knowledge and experience.  Whenever, I use my knowledge but don't get the gut feeling I usually come up short about 80% of the time.

[Palmer]

Does anyone else hunt this way?  I understand the being hunted part.  I felt it up at Sonset lake when a cougar growled at us.   I realized we had been stalked for a quarter mile.

[NRA4LIFE]

Funny you mentioned an owl in an earlier post.  about 10 years ago in Missouri, I got into a deer stand real early one morning.  Something just did not feel right.  As daylight started to emerge, I turned my head very slowly to my right and here stood a HUGE Great Horned Owl not 15 feet from my head and he's staring at me.  Very cool.

The second was about 15 years ago, hunting in the Ishawa river bottom in NW Wyoming.  My brother had killed a big muley buck that we had to butcher and pack out.  The next morning when we returned to that spot, a grizzly had eatem most of what we had left.  My hair stood up on my neck as I felt we were now being watched.  We made a rapid egress out of that river bottom.

[Palmer]

Did anyone feel like they were being stalked this year?  I like hearing these stories.

[Rick]

This talk about being watched reminds me of something that happened to my dad.

Back when you didn't have to wear orange during rifle season,my dad was sneaking down a trail deep in a canyon.

He stopped to take a leak and as hes pulling his junk out,he hears someone say "hey!"

A guy decked out in full camo was sitting next to a stump right where my dads getting ready to pee.

When my dad heard the guy he about crapped his britches. My dad never saw him until he almost pissed on the guy. 

[Rowdy]

This talk about being watched reminds me of something that happened to my dad.

Back when you didn't have to wear orange during rifle season,my dad was sneaking down a trail deep in a canyon.

He stopped to take a leak and as hes pulling his junk out,he hears someone say "hey!"

A guy decked out in full camo was sitting next to a stump right where my dads getting ready to pee.

When my dad heard the guy he about crapped his britches. My dad never saw him until he almost pissed on the guy. 

Thats hilarious!!  That guy had some damn good camo.  Too funny.

[jeepasaurusrex]

LOL, thats funny. I had a similar incident when I was in the Army. I was decked out in my guille suit, full camo, etc. I was the OPFOR sniper.  I was set up on a clearing they were supposed to be setting up a panel to mark the LZ for a medical evac chopper. I start seeing guys sneaking up on the LZ when I hear someone coming up beside me. A guy plops down not more than 2' away from me. He is busy scanning the clearing when I slowly reach out with my right hand, making a "gun" with my hand, and I press it to his temple. I whisper "bang" The guy literally almost crapped his pants!  He just took his Kevlar off, pulled out his injury card and waited for help. 


My 6th sense incident was with a cougar also.

Was walking down a ridge over by Curlew, in about 4" of snow. I reached the end of the ridge and decided to walk back the way I had come. I reached the point where the game trail went below a slight out cropping and noticed tracks in my foot prints.

  doesn't describe the feeling.  My head was on a swivel the whole way back to camp. 

[Kain]

I have had that feeling a few times, never saw anything to prove it was real.  This year while calling for coyote something sneaked up behind me and huffed at me, I definitely had the "mortal danger" warning going off in my head but never saw what did it.
 http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,12972.0.html
 
I remember when I was younger hunting with my dad I thought I was more wild than tame.  I would feel like was part of the forest.  I swear I could sense and even smell game.  I still remember feeling that way clearly and I really miss it.  It seemed so real but then you grow up and start to tell yourself you were just a kid with an overactive imagination.  But I always wonder if Im actually suppressing something real. 

I should also tell you I thought I was a ninja.