Scariest wildlife encounter?

[heelmanwilm]

When i was around 10 we were taking a drive on the parkway. Traffic was stopped and the line of cars extended around a blind curve up ahead. I asked my dad if i could walk up and see what was wrong. Me and my sister cut through the woods in the curve and as we emerged on the other side walked right up on a momma black bear and her cubs. She was eating blue berries about ten feet away and we made eye contact and she started making woofing sounds. I was petrified with fear and couldnt move. People were all filming and staying in their cars and here we just walk out of the woods. Everyone starts screaming at us to run (idiots) fortunately all their screams startled the bears and they ran off. My sis literally peed her pants and had nightmares for years. I've never experienced such a rush of terror and adrenaline. We walked back to the car and we couldnt even talk. We both started blubbering and crying. My poor dad not knowing what had happened but knowing we were traumatized, grabbed his .45 and went tearing up the road on foot. Evidently someone told him and he came back looking white as a ghost. He told my mom and she proceeded to cuss him and chew his ass for the ride home. We stopped and got ice cream. Only time he ever did that for us.

Hon mention coming face to face with a barracuda in cozumel the sec we jumped in to do some snorkeling. The dumass attendant didnt tell us snorkelers that the cuda comes around for hand outs and was harmless. My wife screamed underwater and lost her mask and swallowed a bunch of water.
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[UNC71-00]

One time I was water skiing and had the motor cut so I could drift to a stop and give my brother a turn. I drifted right next to a big F'ing alligator. Fortunately the spotter saw it too and the boat powered back up quickly. Thank God I didn't drop the rope.

Distant 2nd would be the bat that flew down my chimney at about 11p as I was on about my 12th beer.

 

[WhatTheHeel?]

Wasn't so much scary as a close encounter.

Six years ago, we were hiking with some friends in Glacier National Park. One morning, my wife and I tackled two trails that shared the first several miles. Iceberg Lake and then Ptarmagin Tunnel. On the Ptarmagin Tunnel trail, roughly seven or eight miles into a 12 mile hike. we were walking through a small grove of trees and rounded a corner to find a momma grizzly bear and three cubs maybe thirty feet ahead of us on the trail. They were headed in the same direction as us so mostly had their backs to us. But then, one of the cubs (huge in his own right) turned and stood up and looked at us, sniffing the air.

Our friend later said he was trying to remember what you're supposed to do when you see a bear. My wife covered her eyes thinking it would make the bear go away. Me? I'm a shutterbug but my camcorder was more accessible at the time. From the moment we first saw the bears, I was whipping out the camera. I brought it up and turned it one in one swift motion and watched the above-mentioned events unfold on the screen. I had National Geographic material, I was thinking. What a moment. I was too excited about getting the video to be worried about personal safety. The bear stood up! How cool is that!?!?

Well, I suppose the cub figured we were harmless and he dropped back to all fours and followed the mother on up the trail and around a bend. I stopped the camera and we all looked at each other like "wow, can you believe that?" My wife said something to the effect of "well, I guess we head back now." I said no, we just wait until someone comes toward us from ahead and we'll know the bear is off the trail. After a few minutes of no one coming, we went ahead and started up the trail cautiously. This is a moderately tough trail (lot of climb) so there weren't a lot of people on it. We continued on and finally saw a couple come toward us. They had not seen the bears so apparently they had headed off the trail in pursuit of huckleberries or something.

We finished out the hike with no more bear sightings (until a black bear later that day, spotted from the car.) Back in the rental cabin, I excitedly pulled out my camcorder to show the others who were with us, but not on that hike, our big encounter. I fast-forwarded through the hike until I got to the right spot and I had nothing. Well, not nothing. I had video of the ground and us walking and talking. I was mortified. Our National Geographic moment was not preserved and we had no evidence! It wasn't until later that I realized what had happened. When I pulled out the camera and turned it on. I also immediately pushed record--only there is a delay between turning it on and when you can do so. So, I never actually started recording until after the event. When I went to stop recording, I actually started it and it recorded while I had it by my side as we walked along. I was paying so much attention to the bears that I never noticed the red "REC" indicator on the screen was not present.

I learned one lesson that day. Stick to a digital camera. At least you know for certain it took the picture! (Though possibly the shutter sound would have brought unwanted attention on us...)

 

[WhatTheHeel?]

A few years ago, about this time of year, on a dark and misty night, my dogs were outside barking in the back yard. I brought them in and then went out the front door to see what they were barking at. We live in the woods and from the direction of a creek, I heard what I'd later identify as a fox's "Vixen Scream."

It was a chilling sound, especially mixed with the dark, quiet night and misty fog that hung over everything.

Vixen Scream starts at about :34

 

[T-Square]

About five years ago a group of us went snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. As we rounded a curve, we happened upon a herd of about 20 buffalo. Our guide had us stop and let the herd clear the roadway before continuing. When we started back up, a young male move into the roadway and walked beside my snowmobile for about 20 yards, about an arm's length from me. He gave me this look that said, "Go ahead, make my day." I maintained my speed so as not to startle him, but was glad when he turned away from me. He was a magnificent looking creature.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

As a younger, more foolish lad, I was backpacking up in the Smokies. We had camped at one of the old CCC camps on Forney Creek or maybe Hazel Creek. The river split right by our campsite and then came back together making a small island. A solo hiker came by our camp and told us to warn other hikers that he had seen a couple of rattlers on the island.

Well, of course, soon after he left we HAD to go find those snakes. Walked the length of the island and saw nothing so we started back. My brother spotted a copperhead that slithered under a rock so we went after it as a consolation prize. I pulled the rock toward me to keep it between me and the snake, my brother pinned it, and we stretched it out - about 30 inches...so pretty good size.

Then I heard the buzzing right by my right foot. Looked down and I'm almost standing on the rattle and there's a five foot snake stretched out - fortunately - with his head pointing away from my foot. I don't think I touched the ground for fifty feet. After we calmed down, we went back and examined the rattler. It crawled up in some rocks so we decided to go back and see if we could find the copperhead again.





Do you remember me telling you the solo hiker said he saw a "couple of rattlers on the island"?

 

[Blue2010]

On the ICW (Intercostal Waterway) in Sneads Ferry, NC...which is basically Topsail Island for those familiar with the area. On a jet ski when it stalled out. Couldn't get it cranked but I notice a dorsal fin glide by...probably about 5-10 feet away. My option was to sit there and wait for a boat to come by and offer help, or hop into the water and inch my way to the shore pulling the jet ski... Most who have ridden one know those things aren't very heavy, so pulling it across the water isn't difficult...just time consuming.

Chose to keep meddling with the thing and would up getting it to crank back up, but this would be the scariest, I guess. Have always known there are lots of sharks in the Topsail Island area b/c of the geographical location there -- they dredged the sand on the north end of the island several years ago, making the shelf VERY shallow for quite a ways. You can probably walk out a quarter mile during low tide and still only be waist deep. That coupled with the constant fishing vessels that scour that exact spot every day made it, at least when I was down there, a feeding ground for sharks. If you even Google the most shark-infested beaches in America, Topsail Island is consistently ranked in the top 5 -10 on that list.

 

[BillyL]

Dammmn . . you guys have had a few tense moments.


When I was about 17, I had an encounter with a VW Bus load of cheerleaders . . . . . wild times.

That's all I got.

 

[Raising Heel]

In 2002, I moved from the west coast back to the eastern US. I stopped on the way to see a number of national parks including Yosemite. I arrived there late and without a reservation, which meant I had to pitch my tent in the group camp area without dedicated tent pads, fire rings, etc. No big deal.

I set up my tent next to a guy who was sleeping in a hammock, enjoying the open air of an early spring night. Of course Yosemite is well known for bear encounters so I put basically everything I could fit into the bear locker they provided. Sure enough, in the middle of the night I woke to the sound of a very large animal sniffing around the edges of my tent. It didn't completely freak me out, but it was definitely nerve-wracking. That tension was immediately broken by the guy in the tent, who started trying to shoo away the bear in a whispered voice: "Psst. Psst. Get outta here!" To this day it cracks me up that he was more concerned with waking the other campers than alerting them to the presence of the bear.

What else? I've seen killer whales while kayaking in the Pacific Northwest. They were probably a mile away, though.

Also had a snake fall from a tree into my canoe while canoeing the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Tennessee (the name of the river escapes me). Happened at the beginning of the third and final day of the trip when tempers were getting a little short. The guy manning the back of our two-man canoe assured me the snake didn't land in the boat. But as we reached our take-out spot at the end of the day and started unloading our gear, there was the snake slithering around the bottom of the boat. I almost smacked that dude upside the head with my paddle.

 

[Raising Heel]

Oh, and then there was the time I saw GSD's wife first thing in the morning before she had shaved. Whoa.

 

[coolwaterunc]

I walked into a spider web. It was sticky and stringy, and I didn't like it.

 

[prlyles]

Originally posted by WhatTheHeel?:
Wasn't so much scary as a close encounter.

Six years ago, we were hiking with some friends in Glacier National Park. One morning, my wife and I tackled two trails that shared the first several miles. Iceberg Lake and then Ptarmagin Tunnel. On the Ptarmagin Tunnel trail, roughly seven or eight miles into a 12 mile hike. we were walking through a small grove of trees and rounded a corner to find a momma grizzly bear and three cubs maybe thirty feet ahead of us on the trail. They were headed in the same direction as us so mostly had their backs to us. But then, one of the cubs (huge in his own right) turned and stood up and looked at us, sniffing the air.

Our friend later said he was trying to remember what you're supposed to do when you see a bear. My wife covered her eyes thinking it would make the bear go away. Me? I'm a shutterbug but my camcorder was more accessible at the time. From the moment we first saw the bears, I was whipping out the camera. I brought it up and turned it one in one swift motion and watched the above-mentioned events unfold on the screen. I had National Geographic material, I was thinking. What a moment. I was too excited about getting the video to be worried about personal safety. The bear stood up! How cool is that!?!?

Well, I suppose the cub figured we were harmless and he dropped back to all fours and followed the mother on up the trail and around a bend. I stopped the camera and we all looked at each other like "wow, can you believe that?" My wife said something to the effect of "well, I guess we head back now." I said no, we just wait until someone comes toward us from ahead and we'll know the bear is off the trail. After a few minutes of no one coming, we went ahead and started up the trail cautiously. This is a moderately tough trail (lot of climb) so there weren't a lot of people on it. We continued on and finally saw a couple come toward us. They had not seen the bears so apparently they had headed off the trail in pursuit of huckleberries or something.

We finished out the hike with no more bear sightings (until a black bear later that day, spotted from the car.) Back in the rental cabin, I excitedly pulled out my camcorder to show the others who were with us, but not on that hike, our big encounter. I fast-forwarded through the hike until I got to the right spot and I had nothing. Well, not nothing. I had video of the ground and us walking and talking. I was mortified. Our National Geographic moment was not preserved and we had no evidence! It wasn't until later that I realized what had happened. When I pulled out the camera and turned it on. I also immediately pushed record--only there is a delay between turning it on and when you can do so. So, I never actually started recording until after the event. When I went to stop recording, I actually started it and it recorded while I had it by my side as we walked along. I was paying so much attention to the bears that I never noticed the red "REC" indicator on the screen was not present.

I learned one lesson that day. Stick to a digital camera. At least you know for certain it took the picture! (Though possibly the shutter sound would have brought unwanted attention on us...)

My wife and I were in Glacier a couple of years ago and a lot of the trails were closed because the huckleberries were ripe and the bears were out eating.
.

 

[heelmanwilm]

Raising HeelReply4/14 3:03 PM
Re: Scariest wildlife encounter?
Oh, and then there was the time I saw GSD's wife first thing in the morning before she had shaved. Whoa.
4/14 4:03 PM | IP: Logged

😄😄😄😄😄
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[coryfly]

My buddy and I were swimming in a creek near a beaver dam once and I got smacked in the leg by one of them. We were sliding down those natural slides they make on the bank so I guess it was pissed. Pretty tame compared to the rest of you. I have twice been chased by pit bulls while on my bike (also as a kid).

 

[Baby Debo]

1988 while deployed to Cubi Point NAS, we went deep sea fishing. The water was pretty calm, but the boat kept rocking pretty hard. After 4 really good rolls, the captain and 1st mate pointed out that we were being "examined" by a 15 foot Great White. Needless to say, this black guy turned white as a handkerchief. Killed my Red Horse buzz also.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

Originally posted by coolwaterunc:
I walked into a spider web. It was sticky and stringy, and I didn't like it.

 

[Nuk'EM Heels]

Came face-to-face with a MOC playing "jump the creek" when I was 10.

 

[Billheel]

Several years ago in Rawlee at UNC vs. MooU game. Ran into half man half sheep who stalked me all the way to the stadium. Found out later he thought the Ram logo on my shirt was a picture of his DAAAAAAAAD!