• Happy National Zipper Day (pat. 1913)! 🤐

Animal Encounters

Another Algonquin encounter. Woke in the morning heard a bit of shuffly footsteps outside the tent door. Cautiously opened the fly.

Eight legs like tree trunks..up there was a baby moose head. Way up there was a momma moose head.

Made lots of noise when getting up. They left (thank goodness)

I will take plural moose over one shark, though barracudas always hung out at ten feet between the horizontal posts hanging off the dive boat where we had a mandatory three minute stop. Just looking.. and hanging out. Rest was not so much for us.
 
I’m not sure if this counts quite as a wildlife encounter, but it sure seemed so at the time. A couple Februarys ago, my wife and I went for our first trip south to Mexico. We enjoyed a lot of firsts on that trip. First swim up bar (could get used to that), first grilled goat on Viva Mexico! Night (hope to never get used to that). Our best friends, a husband and wife, were a fun pair to holiday with. He (G) pushed the limits of sensibility, while she (N) reeled him back in with cool common sense. He suggested we walk to the little town of Barra de Navidad, several miles away. The security guard however, occasional stationed out by the rocky promontory, said “No! Blah blah blah…” With my limited knowledge of Spanish, I helpfully translated this to Canadian as “No! Take off eh?” Evidently, the other side of the rocks was where an exclusive side of our resort was located. We had only paid for the El Cheapo side. No worries, Miguel knew me well at the swim up bar. “Uno cerveza, pour favor amigo.” “Ah, Canada! Buenos Dias!” “Hey Miguel, Buenos Dias, eh?” My buddy G then suggested paddling the complimentary kayaks across the bay to our chosen destination. His sensible wife N said “No. You two guys will spend all afternoon in the palapas, and need a taxi ride home. (We’d taken a local taxi to Barra de Navidad earlier in the week, and I had called ”Shotgun!” not realizing I’d have to share the front passenger seat with a masochistic chicken named Henrietta. “ees hokay, she like you.” “Yeah, I like her too, perched on a can of Bud, sitt’n on my BBQ.” I definitely was not ready for another taxi ride.) “ Forget about it!” We compromised, and decided on a relaxing paddle, with no particular destination in mind. While G was changing, I looked over the only 2 remaining boats seaworthy; one stubby little yellow one, and a sleek sexy red one. My buddy is a big guy, while I’m definitely not. The stubby little yellow one would be the sensible craft for me. Let me tell you, that red one handled like a dream! G paddled out, and quickly gave up, leaving me on my own. Hmm, I guess yellow wasn’t his colour after all? I wasn’t on my own for long though, because two dolphins were doing their roller coaster thing along the oceanfront – up, and down, up, and down. I got within about 10 yards, but couldn’t manage to get any closer. Nevertheless, it was a thrill! They wandered while I followed. Eventually they started playing in the surf out in front of the excusive area. I parked myself, with my back to the Pacific, and my face towards these beautiful creatures, soaking up the moment. After quite awhile, I noticed a guy on the beach, and thought “Oh God, you wouldn’t catch ME in a speedo like that! Imagine, flesh coloured too!” The real funny thing was, his wife wore a matching one – piece. Then I noticed the others. “Jeeze, it must be some kinda club or something. They’re ALL wearing the same gawdawful bathing suits. Looks like they’re…oh. OOH! Oh, it’s THAT kind of exclusive resort!”
I hustled my peeping tom arse back to the cheap seats, in front of the swim up bar. “Ola Miguel!”
 
Quite the stories here! Mine are pretty pedestrian, guess it just goes to show all those "bear defense" threads are really in vain.
 
No such thing as pedestrian Memequay, every moment out there is something special, but you know that already. The trips you lead are life changing.
I’d love to see 8 moose legs from my tent YC. It seems I’m often in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
I’ve never even seen a bear from outside my car; anyone?
 
acer said:
Directly I say that in my experience big and medium size rivers and lakes and their shores are comparative wildlife deserts compared to the communities found along the small tributary streams, back channels, sloughs and ponds and swamps. Besides, paddling along way out in the open is not the best way to make wildlife friends.

Getting to know a few places and even a few individual animals is what it's all about. Then curtains begin to rise....
Click to expand...

That reminds me - I am way overdue for a visit with the local beaver dam. Although I did get up-close and personal with a single adult beaver at the local reservoir recently, I have yet to catch the residents out in the open at the beaver dam on the river near my home. I did, however, have a little encounter across the river from the outlet of the back-channel where that dam is, with a mallard drake that was caught by its toes in a muskrat trap.



In Idaho, it is illegal to tamper with a legal trap set. I skirted the law and released the duck. He took off flying, and never thanked me.

Oh - the beaver at the res...I think he has graduated to a higher degree of engineering.




It's amazing what you can see when everyone else is staying off the water.
 
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So, here's my interesting animal encounter story...

Several years ago, I was deer-hunting with a good friend spotted some movement on the side of a ridge about a half-mile from the ridge we were on. Getting out the glass revealed that it was not a deer. Instead, it was a cougar. The big cat was sitting in a dirt clearing on the sunny side of the ridge. We watched him through binoculars and spotting scope for over a half-hour, as he was unaware of our presence and acting like a big house-cat....rolling in the dirt, swatting at flies, licking the back of his paw, etc. Eventually, he locked eyes on us and froze, but we must have been far enough away that he didn't perceive any threat and he went back to acting natural. We left him to himself after a while and called it a good day.

Oh - here's another...

About '94, in the River of No Return wilderness, on a November elk hunt. We were just having our morning coffee when movement on the hillside above us caught our attention. Two mule deer bucks fighting (it was middle of the rut season). I had seen bucks sparring before, but these two were way more into it. They carried their wrestling down the hillside towards us with antlers locked, circling around, throwing each other to the ground, kicking up dirt, and making one heck of a commotion.

Sorry - no scary stories to tell.
 
This is a great thread! I did however note that there is one deleted post! Call me a snoop but I'm always eaten up with curiosity to know what somebody said to get deleted!
Robin, assuming I'm not the only one with questionable tastes; this might augment the next money raising event. Maybe, if you contribute a certain amount you are allowed to inspect the trash basket of deleted posts!!

Always; more time on my hands than sense....

Rob
 
I never noticed any posts having been deleted. My first notion would be, perhaps the poster changed his/her mind. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve come home from work, or gotten up in the middle of the night, to delete one of my blabber blogs, only to find someone had responded. “Shoot! Too late.” No doubt, there are a few people who’ve wished my self -deletion urge were a tad faster.
I’m loving people’s encounter stories. Some are chilling (Marten’s wolf, Shearwater’s bear, Acer’s shark), while some are likewise “you had to be there” (YC’s moose, Hanz’s rodent, or Seeker’s hummer). For me anyways, there’s no such thing as an insignificant piece of nature out there. My daughter just e-mailed me an article about the research works she’s contributing to, involving crows. Crows! Who needs them, right? She took me on an aviary tour this summer, to meet the feathered gang. They stole my heart away.
I’ll stop my blab now.
 
oldie moldy said:
This is a great thread! I did however note that there is one deleted post! Call me a snoop but I'm always eaten up with curiosity to know what somebody said to get deleted!


Rob
Click to expand...

Hi oldie moldy, I think that was just a posting error, nothing got deleted.

But here's my "bear encounter" from LaVerendrye, Quebec.

After an early spring group get together with many of the folks from SoloTripping.com a few years back, I spent a week paddling solo. I was following a route that was a series of lakes connected by a small stream, pretty common there.

At one portage I noticed a school of fish swimming around the mouth of the stream I was about to carry around. At first I thought they might be pickerel (walleyes south of the border), but they turned out to be suckers spawning. A beaver dam prevented them from going upstream, so they just did their thing in the current below the dam I guess.

Later in the day, as I was approaching another portage, I heard a raven croak up the portage trail. That got my attention. I had just never gotten that close to a raven in a tree. Shortly after that, two Bald Eagles flew out just over my head from the trail also. One was mature, one was immature without the white head and it's feathers wear mixed white and blackish. The trees on the portage trail kept them so low that when they reached me and the open water they where still within 30-40 feet.

This all seemed wrong, a raven letting me get the sneak on her, a pair of bald eagles being so careless to let me get so close.

I parked the canoe and stood there wondering what was going on up the trail. I think I even looked at my map to see if there was an easy way around. With no option, I loaded my first pack and carried my paddle up the trail. As I entered the forest I quickly noticed the reason the birds where so preoccupied, the trail was covered with dead suckers. The stream ran close by and it was obvious a bear had caught the spawning suckers in a pool and enjoyed a feast. Many of the fish had but one bite out of them, and the amount of bear scat littering the area made me wonder if it was a group effort. The birds where enjoying the left overs till I arrived.

I had to cross this portage so I just kept walking, scanning the bush to see if I saw any movement. The good news is the bears of LaVerendrye are very wary of humans, the reserve allows hunting and I have been told by First Nation folks there that "bears eat moose calfs and moose tastes better than bears so we harass them every chance we get", for what that's worth. Also, these bears had just had a huge meal and where probably sleeping it off somewhere deep in the bush....

But I wished I had a nice Kevlar canoe and packed ultra lite so it would have been a one trip portage. On the way back across the port for the canoe, I carried my paddle just for piece of mind. I never saw a bear, but I found an immature eagle feather which I still have. My son-in-law federal game warden told me it's not legal to posses any (like Mikes story relates), but it's still in my shop.
 
To answer Brad, I have seen many bears from outside my car, and many from inside too. My closest bear encounters have been when I lived right in the middle of our little town. I'm on the outskirts right now, and my neighbour has this fantastic dog that guards the neighbourhood. Any bear or critter that gets closed is quickly chased off.

Anyway, when I lived in town, we were visited by bears nightly from about the middle of July till the middle of August. A few of the outstanding memories...

A very large bear was marauding our houses every night. He had become so brazen as to break into the back of my capped truck to steal garbage, ripped out the screen on my porch, and a variety of other behaviours that would have gotten him a lead headache if I lived a few kilometres out of town. Unfortunately, the Mayor was my neighbour, so I couldn't come out with guns blazing. One night, after having a little get-together with pals, and after i had consumed a few too many beers, I noticed our large white cat fluffing up to the size of a small sofa. He was making those funny spitting cat noises and swatting at the window.
I looked out on the step, and there was Mr. Bear, returning for his nightly harassment. This bear was around 400 pounds, and I had tangled with him several times before.

One night, I grabbed the nearest thing to me to throw at his big head, which was a can of diet coke. I launched it at full speed from 10 feet away and hit him right between the eyes. The can exploded on impact, and the bear hardly moved, just began licking his mouth as the coke ran down his face.

Another night, the only thing I could find was a bicycle pump, so I started swinging it at its head. For a big guy, he was agile, and avoided all of my swings by merely moving his head from side to side. I managed to back him up to the end of the drive way before the piston released from the pump...25 bucks down the drain.

That same summer, my son came home late one night and said the big guy was on the step again. I had had enough, so I grabbed two axes and him and i went out and put the run to it. I have never seen the agility of a bear in motion, it was something else, he ran horizontal on a fence with me in hot pursuit. He ended up holed up in the Mayor's garden shed in the next lawn. I could hear his breath going like a locomotive. At that point, I called off the execution, thinking a cornered bear might be a bit much. I did sneak over and close the door, thinking that if the bear wrecked the mayor's shed, something might get done about it.

Anyway, these were all incidents leading up to the night of the cat. In my inebriated state, I took a look at the big white fluffy nightmare, and made a rash decision. I had never really liked that cat anyway. i grabbed it, kicked open the door, and threw it right on the bear's face.

I have never witnessed a cat's furry in full tilt, but it is a thing to behold. That cat opened up a can of whoop-arse on that bear, and the bear took off like like it's arse was on fire. About forty feet into the run, the cat ejected safely and returned home, no worse for the wear. After that, whenever Mr. Bear came by, I just let the cat out, and the bear ran like away like Satan himself was after him.
 
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That ^ was a story that could only have been told by a guy form Geraldton. I thought you were going to say you grabbed the shotgun and filled him with bird shot, but throwing a cat at a bear is priceless. Not quite enough to convince me to buy a cat, but almost if I was to get to use it for that reason.

8 page thread, glad I started it. I am enjoying the stories very very much. Nice thing to do to pass the time during hard water season.
 
When one door closes, another door opens. It just so happens I’ve got 3 cats in my household. Let’s start the bidding at, say, a nice little cedar & canvas 15 footer? Don’t be shy now. Any colour will do.
 
My stars Memaquay, that's just about the best story I've ever heard! That's some serious cat. Is the problem of the bears in town that they didn't want folks shooting inside city limits? What with little kids running about those bears are a real danger, so too would be shooting I'd guess. Just talking now, but if I lived there, I'd be tempted to make one of those bear traps on a trailer. Once I had caught the bear(s) back the thing into a local lake and drown him. Dump him in front of the fish and game office!

Just as well I don't live there,

Rob
 
No, no, no Oldie. What you do, is back the trailer up to the back door of the local cat shelter. Then sell tickets.
My sides still hurt, after reading that cat VS bear experience.
 
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