A Reddit user said the strangest thing he ever saw while hunting happened when he was 15 and out for his last year of youth rifle season. According to his comment in the thread, he was by himself and got out really early, about an hour before blue light. This was before smartphones were what they are now, so he said he was mostly just sitting there alone in the dark watching the stars and waiting for enough light to start hunting.
While he was sitting there, he noticed a light out along the tree line. At first it did not seem that strange. He said it looked like a plane far off in the distance, just cruising along, so he only glanced at it every few minutes and did not think too much about it. It stayed in the background for a while like that, just another point of light in the dark.
Then the movement changed.
He wrote that after a while, when he looked back at it again, it was moving more like a helicopter. The light was making quicker, tighter movements, and it no longer seemed all that far away. That was the point where he stopped casually checking on it and started really watching. He said he looked at it through his rifle scope, with the bolt open so there was no chance of firing, and all he could see was a plain white light. No shape around it. No body of an aircraft. No identifying features. Just a white light hanging there and moving in a way that did not make sense to him.
That was when another detail hit him. He could not hear anything.
He said helicopters were not unusual in that area and they flew by weekly, but you could always hear them from a ways out. This thing was moving close enough to catch his attention and behaving more like a helicopter than a plane, but there was no sound at all. He said once that clicked, he just sat there totally fixed on it, not breaking eye contact. The sky was only barely starting to change color, and he figured if he waited a little longer there would be enough light to tell what it really was.
Instead, it vanished.
He wrote that right when the light was getting just a little bit better, the object shot straight up into the sky faster than anything he had ever seen and disappeared. Not drifted away. Not turned and flew off. It went straight up and was gone. He said every hair on his body stood up, his eyes watered, and the only thing running through his head was, “what the fuck did I just see?” He added later that this was around 2009, so it was not some modern quiet drone in his mind, and he said the way it shot out of sight did not look anything like that anyway.
He said he has never seen it again, but he still keeps his eyes open for something like it any time he is out at night. That was the whole story he shared in the thread: a 15-year-old hunter sitting alone before daylight, watching what first looked like a distant plane, then a helicopter-like white light with no sound, then seeing it shoot straight up into the sky and disappear before the woods were fully lit.
What do you think — if you were alone in the dark with a rifle across your lap and watched a silent white light shoot straight up out of sight, would you stay in that spot until daylight or head back to the truck right then?
Original Reddit post: What are some of your hunting horror stories?
