5

Bigfoot Shooting

Roger Patterson / Robert Gimlin

Generally speaking, there aren't a lot of things in life more pathetic than actively, earnestly hunting for Bigfoot. Just think of how someone in the Third World -- who has to walk five miles to find contaminated water to drink and is at risk of being shot by some kind of insane warlord every day -- would react if you told them the biggest problem in your life is trying to find definitive evidence in your local forest that a man-ape creature lives there, and has been hiding its shit from mankind for generations. That's the kind of bullshit that gets grown men slapped in the mouth.

supakiat88/iStock/Getty Images
He's eaten just as much meat in the past year as Bigfoot has.

4

Squirrel Shot To The Head

Thinkstock Images/Stockbyte/Getty Images

So you're out in the wilds of Maine, deftly avoiding wild maple and people who suntan, when what should you see? Maine's largest land predator: the squirrel. It sits in its tree, maybe eating a nut, maybe sharpening its talons on the bleached-white skull of its last victim. Whatever the hell squirrels do. You raise your Mosin-Nagant Type 53 bolt-action rifle, take aim at his little squirrel heart -- black as it surely is -- and you fire. And the squirrel, as cool as ranch dressing, turns his little head and stares back down the scope at you. You missed. And he knows it. He knows you're weak. He knows your scent. He knows your face.

John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"You'll make a fine side dish for my delicious Bullwinkle Head stew."

Now, before the squirrel goes and kills your family, there's just one speed bump in the road, and that's what happened to your bullet. And if you're Bryan Hickey, the answer is that your bullet made its way into the head of a nearby fisherman. That's an oops.

We can take all day to question the logistics of how one man tried to shoot a squirrel in the woods and ended up plugging some poor dude ice-fishing out on a lake right in the melon, but just trust that it happened, and that it was an accident. The victim in this case, 54-year-old Scott Fraley, took it like a champ -- by which I mean he didn't die or anything -- and actually walked himself off the ice with a bullet lodged in his head. So that's a bit of a happy ending for you.

Craig Crosby
Just one more thing to point at when the grandkids complain about their homework being hard.

3

Treed By Bears

Tom Brakefield/Stockbyte/Getty Images

There are a variety of ways to go hunting these days, from using traps to rifles to bows, to even paying large sums of money to travel to Africa and shoot an animal that's already dying anyway, because you're kind of psychotic and want the experience of killing at least one of everything. But for the more "pure" hunter -- someone who just wants to go and take what they need from nature -- it's a pretty simple affair. And maybe that's what one hunter in Dryden, Ontario thought when he set out one day with his bow and a plan to stake out a spot in a tree perch and await his prey. The problem for this particular hunter was that he wasn't the only beast in the woods that day, and he wasn't the only one who thought that particular tree would make a great place to relax. In fact, seven black bears had the same damn idea. Seven of them.

Purestock/Purestock/Getty Images
One dwarf dinner for each.

Imagine being stuck in some tree branches with a bow and arrows, and a bear comes loping along. And you think "Nah, that's a bit bigger than what I had in mind," so you ignore it as it wanders to the very tree you're in, maybe scratches its ass, and has a sit. Then a friend comes to join him. Then two more. Then another guy. And another. And one last bear. And they all flop under your tree.

Schlegelfotos/iStock/Getty Images
We're already 1/100th of the way there to nailing the gritty reboot of the Berenstain Bears no one asked for.

2

Dead Elk Vengeance

twildlife/iStock/Getty Images

Do you know what, statistically speaking, is the deadliest animal in North America? It's deer. And it's not a result of their fearsome penchant for flitting their lily-white tails just so, or prancing through the periwinkle. Oh no. Deer kill you by being the worst drivers on the road, insofar as they don't drive, they just leap like meat pinatas onto the hood of your car at 70 mph and turn both of you into highway stew.

jcrader/iStock/Getty Images
Why Santa trusts eight of these assholes to not do the same thing to his sleigh, I will never understand.

Fact is, deer and their ruminant buddies are up to no good, and the cost of this nogoodnikery is very likely your life if you run afoul of the beasts. Run away now, kids. Run from Bambi, lest you suffer the same fate as a 51-year-old hunter from Utah, who thought it'd be a fine idea to go elk hunting without wearing full body armor. After taking down a 700-pound elk, the corpse of his prize had no other choice but to gore the ever-loving shit out of that man's head with one of its antlers.

jam4travel/iStock/Getty Images
The ASPCA calls it "the feel-good hit of the summer."

1

Burning Ghost Hunters

legna69/iStock/Getty Images

Since we already shamed some Bigfoot hunters, why not the other kind of low-rent fiction hunter that so pervades reality TV these days -- ghost hunters. Bigfoot hunters at least have the tact to stay in the forest, away from the rest of civilized society, while ghost hunters opt instead to spout their nonsense in any house built before 1990, because they feel a dark presence inside or it's built on a genuine Indian burial ground and/or casino.

In this case, we're dealing with some amateur ghost hunters in New Orleans. Which is funny, because it implies there are professional ghost hunters out there, which is like claiming to be a professional Elven Ranger or a full-time Death Knight.

Don Turnbull
He moonlights as an undertaker's assistant, drumming up business for when people aren't dying fast enough.

These particular hunters made their way into an abandoned mansion of some historical significance to find the ghost that resided there, because literally every mansion in New Orleans is haunted. You can look that up; I don't even think it's a joke. Whilst in the mansion, the team of paranormal nitwits decided that the best way to find a ghost would be to get on its nerves, so they started by yelling and banging walls. When that didn't work, they set a fire. When that didn't work, they couldn't do anything else, because the fire burned the whole damn place to the ground, ghost and all.

Ray Solis
Do you want Ghost Riders? Because this is how you get Ghost Riders.

This is probably the ghost-hunting version of dynamite fishing, and there was no word on whether or not they caught the little Slimer after all that arson, so it seems like the entire operation was a bust. Personally, I recommend hunting ghosts the old-fashioned way -- by eating power pellets and chasing them around a square maze -- but that's just me.

Hunting Bigfoot might be tough (mostly because she doesn't exist) (yes SHE), but we have a feeling that if she did exist, you'd hunt her with these weapons without a problem in The 7 Most Stupidly Overpowered Hunting Weapons. Don't feel too bad for the animals though. They can be pretty crafty when hunting too, as seen in The 5 Most Impressively Convoluted Traps Set By Animals.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see why if you're hunting that it's best not to run into Shigeru Miyamoto in Curse Of The Duck Hunt Dog, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook because we're one like away from winning a free sandwich! (And we've been known to share.)