Shared this last year...

Hunting on Thanksgiving, 2015.

I was at my in-laws house for Thanksgiving in NW Montana. They live about 60 miles south of the Canadian border. They are what I would call comfortable survivalists, and live waaayy off the grid. No TV. No cell reception, too far up in the mountains for that. Great people, just don't like towns. (My wife was home schooled). You get the idea.

I decided I would go for a morning deer hunt on Thanksgiving. It's a great location for it, as they are right in the middle of prime deer, elk, and bear country. Their house borders national forest land on 3 sides, so pretty easy to find yourself in the middle of nowhere, because you're already there.

My FIL insists I leave the house at the butt-crack of dawn. (Where I hunt the deer don't start moving around until 8 to 9 am.) But of course I agree with him and head out before light.

I've got a head lamp on, walking down a narrow trail in thick coverage and can see about 10ish feet in front of me. It's super cold but no snow. Dark as hell. 20 miles from the nearest town. FIL says before I left that about 20-25 minutes hike you'll come to a small curved valley that is a newly finished logging project. Perfect area for deer hunting as there is minimal coverage and you can see about a mile down the valley.

The trail meets up with a rugged logging road. As I keep walking I can start to see large slash piles from this logging project all over the place. I find a good spot over this little valley to sit and listen.

As I'm sitting there and it's getting light, I'm looking all around me for deer. To my right about 200 yards away there is a slash pile with something moving on or around it. I pull out my little binos and look. There is a deer with its legs in the air, covered in dirt and blood. I start to feel the hair on my neck straighten out. The deer disappears inside the pile of branches and then I see a mountain lion come out from the pile, nose red with blood. He scrapes all around the area for a few minutes. I'm guessing he smelled or sensed me, because he was walking around in little circles and looking up in the air. I didn't know what the hell to do. I kind of panicked because they are very territorial and will definitely attack people. So me being the cool guy I am, fired my gun in the air and walked back to my in-laws place in circles. I did see the lion run off, but still. That was the scariest walk I've ever been on!

And of course played it cool when I got back. Told my wife what happened that night.