(Close) Calls of the Wild
Believe it or not, bear season is still on in the mountains. In fact, this weekend is the final opportunity for hunters to tag a bruin, and my father is planning on heading out.
He’s heading to a place not far from where we live. A place where we’ve seen bears with some consistency. In fact, last fall, while he was hunting elk during archery season, he set up camp high on a ridge overlooking two basins. Sometime just before the sun went down, while he was eating a freeze-dried dinner, he heard sticks breaking to his right. Slowly and cautiously, a big black bear that my dad estimated to weigh around 400 pounds walked into camp. He looked around, sniffed a few items, and was never farther than 15 feet away from my old man. As casually as the bear came into camp, he simply moved on, and my dad didn’t see him again.
As luck would have it, that day was also the opening day of the fall bear season, and ever since that moment my dad wishes he would have placed his bow closer to where he was eating dinner. It’s all he has talked about since last fall, and if I had to make a bet, I’d put a dollar down that he’s going back up to find that old bear.
Getting close to wildlife is a heart-stopping experience—especially when it’s something like a bear, lion, or anything else that can rip me apart, limb from limb. Who else has had a close call with wildlife? —Ben
It really wasn’t a close call but it was scary enough, My cousin and I were hunting coyotes and we heard them movin all around us then out of the blue we here one come tearing out of the brush and it was heading straight for us when i finally caught sight of it it was 20 yards away and comin fast I had just enough time to get the gun up and take the shot before it ran by. That pelt is on my wall as one of those moments were things can change in an instant.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:37 amThere has been no real close calls for myself, but I’ve got to tell you I’ve heard some pretty crazy stories from some people. They may not be about animals, but they were hunting while the things happened, and now I tell them to scare my cousins while we’re all around the campfire late at night.
June 24th, 2009 at 7:32 pmThose are both good stories. Just what I was looking for. Coyotes are one of those animals where you never quite know what they’re thinking, so being that close would definately have some question marks passing through my head. . .
And TK, anytime you can pick up a few good campfire stories like that, go for it!
June 25th, 2009 at 12:21 pmI don’t think my first one showed up…
June 25th, 2009 at 3:48 pmMY story dosent seem to want to show up for me… anyone else see it???
June 25th, 2009 at 3:51 pmI don’t see it Alex. Want to email it to me and I’ll put it up for you if you’re still having trouble?
June 25th, 2009 at 3:53 pmNow we all know that low head dams are dangerous due to the hydraulic that can suck you in and drown you. Now, on the Mississippi there are these things called Roller dams, its pretty much a giant drum (think oil barrel) on an axle which the water flows over and thus causing the said “Rolling action”. If you get caught in the current of one of these, it pulls you in, and if you are on a boat, shatters the thing into hundreds of pieces, and slams you to the bottom of the river, and repeats this action many times. My dad and I were fishing near one, and a man in his john boat got trapped in the currents, so my dad and I rushed up to it in our 25 foot center console striper boat (We lived in Cali and when we moved we brought the boat, and we still use it for catfish and muskie). While my dad kept the boat out of the dam’s hydraulic, I got on the casting deck and threw a common kayaking tool to the man, a throw bag. (Its 100 feet of rope stuffed in a bag that floats, when you throw it the rope pulls out and you hit the person right in the chest if you can, and you haul him out with it.) He grabbed it on my first throw and I wrapped it around the nearest cleat on the boat. when I did this, my dad throttled back on the boat (150 horse merc saltwater) and hauled him out. If we didn’t get him out, he would have died, no question about it. he thanked us and offered us money and many other things, and we declined them all, my dad was a firefighter for 19 years, and we were just doing what anyone else should have done.
Pic of the dam this man got caught in…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_River_Lock_and_Dam_number_15_closeup.jpg
and description of type of dam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_dam
AP
June 25th, 2009 at 3:54 pmsure, Ill do it now…
June 25th, 2009 at 3:55 pmI have never really had much of anything dangerous happen to me in the field. Well, let’s see. I was fishing for bluegill with my brother on a really little dock. I hooked a fat 8 1/2 incher that actually cleared the water. I was super excited and yelling, and my feet got tangled and I fell in. The water was shallow, so I was fine, held on to my rod and cranked in the fish. Also I almost lost my best rod and reel once. I caught an 8 lb catfish and landed it by myself. I was unhooking and measuring it when my rod and reel went kerploosh! right off the dock. That was a very interesting moment of mixed emotions, here I am with the biggest fish in my life and a minimum of $60 just fell into the lake. I weighed it, released it, then probed the thankfully shallow bottom with my net. It hooked onto the reel handle, and I retrieved my rig from the lake. It still works, but the reel is pretty noisy. I think it needs some oil.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:30 amI don’t know if you’ll be able to see this, but the site is not showing the latest post, the fourth of July one. I don’t know what is happening.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:13 amNevermind it’s fixed.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:14 amone night we where taking my friend home and i saw a mama bear and her baby cub then a couple weeks later my aperson who lives about half a mile from me had a bear in there garage then just the other day i have this wooden shooting house i mean its nothing big but it got tore apart and it definately looks like a bear did it
July 6th, 2009 at 3:39 pmOne time I had just got done riding my dirtbike and I was walking home from my grandmas through the woods. So I though I heard a snake and there was a 8 foot king snake about a foot in font of me!
July 26th, 2009 at 5:24 pm