Strange but true ....

[HUnter_zero 58]

As lamping season and the 'witching' month is fast approaching, I was just wondering if anyone had seen or witnessed strange goings on when out lamping?

 

The most memorable for me was along a lonely access lane one warm Septembers night. I had just been given permission to control rabbits on a local cricket club. The lane must be around half a mile long with no driving access due to a locked gate. I made my way down the lane, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something moving, must have been seven or ten foot tall and the shape of a man. You know, just out of the corner of your eye moment, nothing really clear, just movement.

My first thought was 'bummer' someones mooching and I'm not going to get any bunnies. I stood still for a while, there it was again, tall, man shape, right in the middle of the path, just not quite right, I could or thought I could see right though it. Now the hairs on the neck started to stand up, my poor old heart started to beat and if I am to be honest I didn't know if I should run, stand my ground or just slap the lamp on. I did the latter, and bloody hell did I wish I hadn't! Right standing in the middle of the lane was an apparition, no solid body, just a seven foot tall bloody ghost, no mistaking it, it was grey and like a swirling mist. I just froze, what felt like hours passed and this ghostly apparition just stood there, just swirling. In reality I must have been watching for just a few minutes before I plucked up the courage to actually do something, I wasn't actually sure what to do so I walked forwards, nope it stood it's ground. Bloody hell, now what. To tell the truth something just didn't look right, something in the back of my mind was telling me to "get on with it", I did and it stood there. The distance was closing and it stood there. A second look, a third look and blow me down, that's no ghost, it was a bloody column of gnats,big column mind you and in my defence the gnats were bigger than average for gnats I mean. I have to be honest my heat was racing, my blood pressure was up and I had had more than my fair share of lamping that night.

 

John

[tanktfb 2]

lol lamping on your own can get a bit freeky specially when your miles from civilisation i have had a few ninja cows sneak up and frighten the living shit out of me haha

[vitalspark 4]

lol lamping on your own can get a bit freeky specially when your miles from civilisation i have had a few ninja cows sneak up and frighten the living shit out of me haha

I had a 2 mile walk in the rain back from a farm in the Borders. With only starlight to see by I worked my way between some puddles in the road when bu**er me the 'puddles' stood up - three black bullocks. Solids were nearly passed

[zx10mike 137]

i was shooting in a field very close to a zoo i could here the moaning of lions and screams of monkeys.i set out a rabbit distress call and led still and low. after a while a owl must have been but a few feet above my head having a look when it realised what i was it panicked and flapped its wings to get away.sudden noise that close will give any man the hiebee geebies.i was impressed with myself for not running round the field firing shots in all directions.b*****d owl.

[bunnyspotter 40]

Do most of my lamping on my own, and believe me i know the colour of fear (BROWN) !!! Theres been a few occasions where the old imagination has made shapes and shadows into ???? ....... Theres one time that sticks in my mind, before you read on lads- im not a believer of much at all ! I dont preech and i dont worship ! But i saw what i saw , looking up at the stars one night whilst fumbling with fox calls and bullets in my pocket.... I noticed one star that was shining much brighter than the rest... The clouds were moving so occasionally the stars would dissapear and re-appear but this one didnt ! The star looked like it had a dimmer switch and was becomeing brighter, then it began to move ... this went on for about 2 mins and it dissapeared as if it was turned off...

Believe what u will

[HUnter_zero 58]

Taking about stars, this is the god honest truth......

 

I was lamping with a friend, it must have been in the winter months as back then my friend worked for " White arrow" and didn't like staying out late because he started work at 5am. We were lamping the side of a rather steep welsh hill and had come to the end of the field where we normally stopped for a chat at a stile. We were chatting as you do, when all of a sudden I spotted a ball of fire falling to earth, just over an industrial estate. The estate was some three or four miles away and as we were on a hill we had a good view of the surrounding towns. God's honest truth, it was like a comet. I thought it was a meteorite or something like that and was expecting a loud bang. There wasn't a sound, so we both said that it was bound to be reported in the local papers, nothing, nothing at all. To this day, I still have no idea what we had witnessed.

 

John

[tegater 789]

It was about 1980, and I was sat in the middle of a rhodedendron bush in the middle of a wood called White Sytch in Shropshire. We had, had a spate of nights were we had been picking up 2" .410 cartridges around the roosts, and I was with a fellow gamekeeper called John.

 

We were on poacher watch, it was after midnight and at a cross roads, in the wood, were it would be reasonable for poachers to pass across, and the ambush was ready (or, so we thought! Pick axe handle at the ready, and two way radio linked to Barry another keeper, near by.)

All of a sudden, a stout figure with a couple of Jacks came past, but was walking with a purpose. I believe to this day it was Bert Gripton who lived down the road a few miles, and although he was always mouching about, he wouldnt burn his bridges. We let him past. I dont know why, to this day, but we did.

About an hour later, whilst giving up a little with boredom, 2 vixens started screaming, only feet from the bush we were in. I nearly S**t myself because they were that close and seemed so loud, and seconds later the figure seen earlier with the 2 jacks, went racing past.

 

To this day, I dont know what happened, but it was the weirdest night, I have had out!

[charlie caller 3,654]

Taking about stars, this is the god honest truth......

 

I was lamping with a friend, it must have been in the winter months as back then my friend worked for " White arrow" and didn't like staying out late because he started work at 5am. We were lamping the side of a rather steep welsh hill and had come to the end of the field where we normally stopped for a chat at a stile. We were chatting as you do, when all of a sudden I spotted a ball of fire falling to earth, just over an industrial estate. The estate was some three or four miles away and as we were on a hill we had a good view of the surrounding towns. God's honest truth, it was like a comet. I thought it was a meteorite or something like that and was expecting a loud bang. There wasn't a sound, so we both said that it was bound to be reported in the local papers, nothing, nothing at all. To this day, I still have no idea what we had witnessed.

 

John

Travelling back from a wildfowling trip to the wash about 5 years ago down the a17,we are chatting away my mate driving when all of a sudden a bright green comet shaped fireball goes over the road in front of the car,and landed probably half a mile away on the fen, looked like something out of war of the bloody worlds,apart from words like goodnes gracious did you see that old fellow,I dont think either of us spoke for about 20 mins.never heard any reports about it but I would be most supprised if noeone else saw it was bloody massive.

[swamp thang 16]

In this part of Africa all the big game was hunted to extinction generations ago, and the deer are so heavily hunted that about the only chance to see one is by spotlight, which is legal, as is just about everything else in the hunting and trapping realm, unfortunately for the animals. Anyways I circling back home after another unsuccessful night of spotlighting a few years back, when my path took me past a small jungle clearing that had been slashed and burnt by subsistence farmers during the previous day. Most of the embers had died out, but there were a few glowing remenants of the fire scattered about the clearing.

 

Generally I turn off my spotlight and cover its lens to prevent reflections whenever I notice any other people out at night, since there is a remote but nonetheless possible chance that such individuals could be ritual murderers on the prowl, or highway bandits resting up between forays along a remote stretch of highway located a half-mile away. Passing that small plot of glowing embers, however, I felt no such concerns, and so left my headlight switched on.

 

As I walked by the clearing, I scanned it with my headlight, and, at that very instant, there was a godawful, ground-shaking thump that echoed through the night from that clearing, accompanied by a huge shower of sparks that violently erupted skywards in a fiery column. Immediately assuming something awful was afoot, I turned off my light and fled along the partially moonlit path towards home, not stopping to catch my breath for the first couple of hundred yards of that desperate sprint. Drenched with sweat from the unexpected evening of vigorous exercise, I puzzled over just what it was I had seen, and resolved to go back during the day to look the place over to find out what the heck had happened there.

 

With a couple of shotgun-toting friends for company, I headed back out to that burnt forest clearing the following afternoon, and there the mystery was solved to my profound relief. A dead, dry tree had been felled by the slash-and-burn farmer who had cleared the land, with the trunk-end left perched atop the 4-foot tall stump from which it had been cut. The fire set by the farmer to burn up all the cut brush had been slowly smoldering in that cut tree trunk all day and into the night, and it had been at the precise instant that I turned to look at it, during my walk home the previous night, that the weight of the charred tree trunk finally ripped through the charcoaled stump on which it was resting, and slammed heavily to earth, producing that shower of sparks that damn near had me discarding a perfectly good pair of underwear, when I got home that night.

 

Thanks to increasing crime rates and decreasing deer numbers, my spotlighting adventures are over for good in this neck of the woods, but I still chuckle when I recall the "night of the fiery column."

[tegater 789]

Maybe this post should be called spookey but true!

[ferretmad 2]

my grandad was out shooting when he was young with a freind and there was a realy big light above then and the looked at it for ages then it made a wooshing sound and dissapeared they went home and the next day his mate would never speak about it ever again. and he says he think he was abducted

Edited September 7, 2011 by ferretmad

[kieran222 0]

I was out one night lamping on my own when I came to a gate and flicked on the light. Four badgers ran out from under a sheep feeder. Two of them ran away but the other two ran straight at me. I jumped up on the gate and they bounced off the gate just below my feet and ran off. I nearly s**t myself.

[Lab 10,979]

Maybe this post should be called spookey but true!

Or maybe "The drugs dont work".............

[HUnter_zero 58]

Or maybe "The drugs dont work".............

 

Something strange or silly must have happened to you whilst out shooting? No drugs needed, our sport tends to send us to strange isolated places at all manner of unsociable times of the day and night.

 

One recolection that happened to me as a boy.

 

The ghost Pigeon of F reserve. F is one of the actual initials of this place, but for legal reasons I'll not print the full name.

I must of been all of twelve, may be as old as thirteen. A mate and I had a favorite haunt to shoot pigeons. The area was littered with old air raid shelters and used to be an industrial area presumably making bomb parts during WW2 (or so I was always told). In one particular spot the pigeons used to roost for the night, and we were talking a lot of birds. Well kids being kids and back then there was no malice, just the thrill of the hunt, we hammered the pigeons, on the way home we would dropped off half the bag to the butchers shop and keep quarter of the bag for ourselves. That way we had a bit of pocket money and felt like big game hunters with our poor mum's having to cook up our unholy gotten gains. I say unholy, but I can recall the vicar of the time having a brace or two. All this commotion some how came to the attention of the warden, I would love to say a battle of wits took place but if I am honest were a little thick but some how managed to avoid each other. Due to the 'heat' we had decided to take our sport else where for a short time, until one particular Saturday morning when we visited our normal haunt. Looking back we were likely running out of pellets and in need of some funds. As the sky lightened I can still remember shooting at these pigeons, 'thwack" nothing, and again "thwack", it had gotten way to light and we made our way home still puzzling over our inability to bag our prey. Later that day we had plans to test our new ship! We had blagged an old canoe of an old chap up the road and we wanted to test it off dry land. So called passed our 'spot' and nothing, no birds, no feathers, nothing. Again we will puzzled but had more pressing concerns as boys do.

The following weekend, the same thing happened, we took our positions, shot and the birds just sat there, we even throw logs in the branches, birds sat there, ghost birds! we honestly thought that there was some spooky goings on and found another location.

It was by chance that I later found out what had been going on, a good few years later. I had just started courting my now wife, and there was an open day at this particular reserve. We visited all the attractions, abseiling, burgers and eventually the "wardens hunt". In the corner of the hut, hanging up were five wooden pigeons, each peppered with pellets. I asked the warden what the decoys were for and he explained that a long gone warden used to put the up the trees at the top because of poachers, he would take them down and repaint the birds to monitor the level of illegal poaching on the reserve. Turned out he had been meaning to put the birds in the bin, as they didn't bother anymore due to night patrols. Well I managed to buy one of the decoys for a donation, and I can tell you that we were not the only ones to enjoy the pigeons. The pigeon was full of .177 pellets and we only shot with .22. I still have the decoy in the attic and just thinking of it brings back very happy boyhood memories.

 

John

Edited September 8, 2011 by HUnter_zero

[johndm 0]

A couple of times spring to mind, and don`t feel so daft now after reading some of the other experiences.

One time I was sat in highseat between Hereford and Leominster, and it was just so so quiet, too quiet,no birds no rabbits not even a fox nothing what so ever, have to say I like peace and quiet and like my own company, but this was just not right, I sat it out for about an hour, and then an owl landed on my hat, I don`t know about s*****ing myself, I admit I NEARLY PASSED OUT.

I am pretty sure the reason it was quiet, I had seen a cat there (yes a big cat) a few days before and a mate of mine who is a stalker and yes he is normal, as normal as me, saw it too the day before I did.(Isaw European Lynx, 100% sure as I have got a Siberian Lynx skin in my collection)

Another time, is when I was out after Boar one night (used to do more boar management than deer) and was a bit overcast night, and the cloud was moving throught the sky, clear skie then cloudy, nice night for the boar, and just being out.

Well, I noticed 4 lights shining down from the sky, slightly flickering, didn`t think nothing of it for a while, about an hour later, noticed they were still there still hovering,,, oooerrrrr, theres another 4 lights, shining down tot he ground , as the cloud cleared, there was another 4 then another 4 lights, each set of 4 lights quite close together, flickering and the 4 sets of lights, in a sqaure shape, if this makes sense, by this time I decided best to go hame, it was about 3am, so I walked quicker than normal back to the Range Rover chucked everything in and I was gone, as I was driving down the valley, I noticed these 4 sets of 4 lights again, flickering,but not shining down to "earth"but shining upwards from the potatoe chitting sheds, the fans were running to keep sheds at constant temp, and the lights were shining up through the fans :icon_redface: .

I wasn`t embarrassed realy, as I didn`t tell anyone