I believe we all know the phenomenon for which we need a new descriptive term for. Perhaps a play on native people's words may work? Or a mix of other common words.
The word I'm looking for decribes when you're sitting on stand for hours, looking at the same forest. You've looked at a said, smallish deer sized stump 100 times over the hours. But as dusk fades in, suddendly you glance at the same stump, you get that silent "deer!" flinch and you think it's a deer, even though you know it's the stump. As the light fades more, you may even glass the stump that you know is a stump because it looks so much like a deer, but you "know" it's a stump because you've looked at it 100 times with the last few hours.
Or, the big oak leafs by the rotting log with the big leafless branch sticking up over it, that also as light fades, the oak leafs becomes a deer's ears, and the knots on the log become the ring of a deer nose and an eyeball, the dead brach becomes a decent rack and you flich when you glance at it because now it looks like a deer's face and rack, that's been bedded in front of you the last 3 hours. But all the while, you've looked at that same log many, many times.
I was thinking something like "deerja-vu". LOL
Any other good thoughts for a word to simplify this hunting phenomenon?
I don't have a name for that particular occasion, but locally we have "windwalkers."
They're the deer that are so smart that they can hide right in front of you while "know" it is there because you can hear it. They make sounds so slight that you look and look and look until you finally find that one single solitary leaf moving in an imperceptible breeze 50 yards away.
deerage (deer oj)
hope.
The squirrel or rabbit that you make a pefect shot on and it shatters your arrow when you hit it. Rock rodent. deerage I like that.
"shape shifter"
There's a name for that effect that escapes me (all that money on BS degree in human behavior wasted). The same reason folks who want to see ghosts and UFOs often do. Your brain accomidates your desire and interprets what the eyes are transmitting.
Oh oh. Bad news for you . . .
QuoteSundown Syndrome
Sundown syndrome is also called as sundowning syndrome in the medical language. This medical condition occurs especially during the late afternoon, evening and night. Sundowning syndrome occurs with the people who are already suffering from dementia, alzheimer's disease, psychosis etc. Visual hallucinations and auditory hallucinations are the prime symptoms of the sundown syndrome.
Guess we could call them "Sundown Bucks"
Sundown Syndrome, got it, earned it, getting old is not for sissies.
"Whitetail Mind Meld"?
"Doe-duper"?
I saw a silver UFO out deer hunting at sundown. It came down real slow and it was huge. It turned ever so lightly as it descended, to get a better look at me or something. As it got low I noticed that it was getting smaller, it settled on the field not thirty yards out from me. It just sat there about three inches off the ground. I noticed it had a strange inscription on one side, it said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY". Is that the same thing as the "mad cow"? I have the mad cow.
Mojo,
That is a common affliction.
They are "inanimate low-light eye grabbers" when scanning the woods.
I don't know what it is called but it has stumped me many times. Wishful thinking perhaps!
Paranormanimal! As soon as I feel silly enough to make myself quit looking, it's guaranteed to be the exact place the deer will appear and be the last clear shot it offers.
Wishful Seeing
I like this thread. Reading the responses makes me feel more normal, I thought that I might be the only person that tried to make deer out of things in the woods, when deep down you know that its really a stump, leaf, blowdown sort of thing, you still check it just to make sure! :dunno:
Wishful thinking.... perceptual optimism....delusional visualization.
Pavan, how can you spin a story like that? You have no proof that the UFO was deer hunting. It might have been out looking for a place to "park", a Taco Bell, or the recycling center.
Those dang stumps, snags and shriveled oak leaves that won't fall until spring have kept me looking stupid for more hours than I care to admit.
I look stupid the rest of the time because it just comes naturally.
Killdeer :banghead:
Found it!
"Lusus Naturae" Literally means jokes of nature. Some people call it "Tricks of the light."
Like when folks see the outline of an old man's face in the rocks of a cliff, a mountain on Mars or You Know Who's face on a piece of toast. Our primate brains assign something like 60% of all our conscious capacity in interpreting facial expressions or facial recognition on/of other people; so your brain is hardcoated to treat everything it sees first as a face, then to assimilate it to something you have seen before, and finally if that fails to register it as new information.
Being a hunter you (and most of us here) are processing our surroundings for deer or bits of deer. So guess what our brain tells us. Just as amazing is when you catch something that alerts you out of the corner of your eye and it turns out to be part of a deer.
I have noticed that the guys that ride around and drink beer while they are shotgun hunting for deer see way more numbers of giant bucks than the ones that get out of their pickups to hunt and leave the beer at home. Oh yes, Killdeer, I put a blunt right through that "happy birthday' ufo and put in my pocket, but I did not have a tag for it.
ICEd it, so to speak.
(A little Migra humor. :D )
Killdeer
Buttus Hurtus From Sitting Too Longus And Not Seeing Nothingus !! :D
I like that one time in a zillion when, for the 102nd time you look at it, it is a DEER... what the hey??
was'nt there a thing called early blur
was'nt there a thing called early blur
The first day I ever went deer hunting. I had my Ben Pearson Gamester a Quickee quiver with four half sharpened and exposed Bear broadheads, a 14 year old on an adventure. Heading for where i wanted to hunt I saw a huge buck with crazy antlers an hour before sunup. i froze in my tracks, pinned down in a low spot in the grass. I could tell that it turned to look at me when I repositioned myself because my knees were getting sore, but I stayed low and motionless. Finally when it was getting lighter I thought it was time for a stalk. I gained 15 yards on it in the twilight just to see it was a giant dead cottonwood tree on a hill a half mile away. Later as the sun was coming up, it got windy and I got cold sitting in my blind made with branches a burlap curtain, so I started a fire. After a while I could not reach anymore handy sticks so I started robbing them from my blind. Burlap burns good. Then without warning a duck came off the river miscalculated his flight and took himself half out of the air when he hit tree branches over my head. It scared me half to death. That was real and it was the only game I saw that morning. Apparently I have had the mad cow for years.
Man, of all the austere knowledge and talent on this site and here nobody has pointed out the obvious!
Deer are sub-terrainian. The have tunnels all through the woods...and they just really do pop up places and then disappear again...without a sound!
No, really!!! How else can you explain there are 6" of dried popcorn leaves everywhere and every chipmunk sounds like an elephant...and then out of nowhere, there stands a deer looking straight at you?
Tunnels! I'm tellin ya now, gospel! Just like in Nam... networks of tunnels everywhere and them danged ungulates just ease on up outa the ground and "appear"... and when you raise your binocs, they just ooze back on down right where the stump was!
Trust me. I'd not blow smoke on sumpin this important...
:rolleyes: :bigsmyl:
"quis ut"
or in other words.......whatszat?
:archer:
I was so convinced I saw a polar bear in central Indiana when I was a teenager (on a campout) even my buddies ran away from it with me. The next morning we found a large white-boled Sycamore tree where tracks should have been!
We didn't notice the Sycamore tree when it was dark.
Ninja Deer...they seem to fade into the darkness of the tree-shadow while evertempting to cause you...well you know....it's there but it ain't!
You have all heard of the mystical jackalope, what would you call a cross between a woodchuck and a whitetail. Apparently Iowa has a bunch of them. I have seen some mysterious large holes around here.
Wishful thinking sounds right to me
Some of you guys are clever, lol.
Deer are only a shade darker than air so as far as I am concerned, it is always deer. They just fade out.
"Oculardeergeneration"!
Double 'H' for 'Hunter's hallucinogen'
I like it "Oculardeergeneration"!
or Maculardeergeneration might be better!
How about deermentia or schiz-doe-phrania? I'm just glad I'm not the only one who suffers from it.
I don't know what it's called, but my 41 year old son has a bad case of it.
Hap
I have seen drift logs on a shore line that looked a lot like a deer shape, and when I walked up to them found bullet holes in them.
How bout
Deer-ipheral vision
QuoteOriginally posted by Over&Under:
How bout
Deer-ipheral vision
That's awesome!
What a sweet thread! I know everyone in my crew has a bad case of this sickness and have yet to hear of a cure...lol
I know EXACTLY the feeling you describe Mojostick, and don`t have a vocabulary capable of naming it.
I DO KNOW, that the same scenario is multiplied if you go out and call coyotes at night. EVERYTHING turns into a coyote responding to your calls when you hunt at night.
There simply has to be a word for it.
QuoteOriginally posted by pavan:
Is that the same thing as the "mad cow"? I have the mad cow.
That has got to be one of the funniest statements I have ever heard. People are looking at me like I am stupid for laughing out loud at my computer!!
God Bless,
Nathan
Deerlusional behavior. :) Clint
I decided years ago that deer, especially big bucks, have the ability go become invisible at will.
When I was a very young and inexperienced teenager, I actually shot an imaginary deer with my .410 slug. That's the best reason I can think of for not letting kids hunt alone. I still get the willys just thinking about what could have happened.
I vote for olddogrib's paranormanimal.
I have a stump just like that in the woods about 75 yards out my back window. I can only see the stump in the winter when the leaves are of the trees. I will glance out the window and think DEER. Then look closer and realize it is the stump. The odd thing is, that about once a month, I will look out and 3 deer will be bedded around the stump. So I keep watching it expecting to see deer.
I think so far J_Haus' "Deermentia" is the frontrunner. :biglaugh:
Oooops
The key to the phenom is, you KNOW what you're looking at isn't a deer, or a coyote or whatever, because you've already checked it out in good light and wrote it off to being a "stump deer". But then either at first light or last light, your mind plays tricks on you because, even though you already wrote off the stump as a stump, in low light, you think "man, that's gotta be a fricken deer" and you glass it anyway, when sane judgement tells you that you already know it's a stump or whatever, because you already glassed 3 times in the last 3 hours. That's the goofy part. LOL
What do you call the deer that just appear from out of no where at the same scene you have been staring at all morning? I can see them real easy when they snort and bust with their tails flying, but I have had it more than once that just all of a sudden there is a deer right in front of me getting ready to bust. I know more of the mad cow.
:biglaugh:
My son's a linguist, I'll get him working on it!
Tree topper, I was thinking the same thing!
Metamorphic game
Its kinda like a mirage - an "animirage"