A Reddit user said one of the strangest and most tense moments he ever had while hunting started after what should have been a pretty straightforward bow shot on a buck. According to his comment in the thread, he shot the deer with his bow and watched it run into some thick stuff before bedding down. He could still see the buck lifting its head, so he did not rush in after it. He stayed patient, knowing he could not get another arrow into it yet and that pushing a wounded deer too soon can make everything worse. So he stayed put, watching and waiting, probably focused on the buck and little else.
Then he heard a growl.
He wrote that the sound came from his right, and when he looked over, he saw a large female bobcat standing only about 15 yards away staring directly at him. That is already close enough to feel personal, especially when you are on the ground and not expecting a predator to be that near. But the situation got even stranger immediately after that. According to him, the bobcat was not alone. She had two kittens with her, and as soon as the tension rose, the kittens bolted in opposite directions and ran up two separate trees very close to where he was sitting.
So now he had a wounded buck laid up in thick cover ahead of him, a female bobcat glaring at him from 15 yards, and two kittens up in trees nearby. From the way he told it, the mother did not rush him or bolt off right away. She just sat there and stared. He said that went on for about 15 minutes. Not a few nervous seconds. Fifteen full minutes of a bobcat holding her ground and watching him while her kittens stayed up those trees close by. He did not describe yelling at her, waving his arms, or trying to force the issue. He made it sound more like one of those awful standoffs where you know the animal is deciding what you are, what threat you pose, and whether it needs to do anything about you.
Eventually, the bobcat broke off and the encounter ended without any attack. But the picture he painted is what makes the story stick: a bowhunter sitting quietly over a wounded buck, focused on one problem, and then suddenly finding himself inside another one with a mother bobcat and kittens at close range. It was not a loud, explosive sort of danger. It was one of those woods moments where everything gets still and tense and you realize you are no longer alone in the scene you thought you were controlling.
He kept the story short, but the details did plenty of work on their own. The buck was still alive and lifting its head in thick cover. He was waiting for the right moment to move. Then a growl off to the right changed everything, and there was a female bobcat at 15 yards with two kittens scrambling up nearby trees. For the next quarter hour, instead of thinking about trailing a deer, he was sitting there in a stare-down with a protective wild cat that had every reason to be on edge.
What do you think — if you were already sitting on a wounded buck in thick cover and a female bobcat started growling 15 yards away with kittens climbing trees around you, would you hold still like he did, or try to ease out of there before it got worse?
Original Reddit post: What’s the craziest/scariest thing you’ve seen or experienced while hunting?
