Curiosity regarding wilderness encounters

Only two incidents in that category in many years of camping/backpacking -- one in California and one in Ohio.

In California, I and three ofther fourteen-year-olds were confronted by three young men with machetes. They took all our food and left. We counted ourselves lucky.

In Ohio, five young men decided to pelt our camp with hardball-sized rocks from a bluff above us. Turns out they were frightened by loud, sharp noises. The first experience had convinced me to always have the means to create multiple loud, sharp noises.

Other than that, I have met the usual range of folks -- some friendly and some less so, but no predators. 'Course, there were areas in California that the wise backpacker did not enter.
 
I would be more worried about running into hostile 2 leggers in any city in 5 minutes then a lifetime in the woods, though someone did make a good point about dope growers, those guys are probably best avoided.
 
Back in the early 1980's a buddy of mine and I were out fishing, we pulled the boat ashore to make lunch (crown land). We had been there 5 or 10 minutes when a guy steps out of the bush with a shotgun and a balaclava and tells us we have until the count of 10 to get the f*&$# of the beach. Never did go back for the stuff we left there.
It probably was a plantation back there but I was never curious enough to find out.
Other then that most people I have encountered have at least been friendly
 
i live in the southeast and tend to stomp around the tri state area mountains tennessee/georgia/n carolina . ive had some encounters but nothing that ever escalated , hell i know and get along with some of the trouble makers . meth is king in this region and i do keep that in mind when out in the woods . dont trifle with people that might be growin cookin or brewin.ms13 tends to favor the nrth georgia mountains as well so you do have to be careful around here . i dont speak spanish well but i do speak fluent redneck and 45 acp!
 
I had a very strange encounter yesterday, and I'm still not sure what to make of it. I went for a short hike, and started off on some local trails. After about two miles, I turned off of the trails and just started heading through the woods just exploring a bit. At one point, I made a very large loop and started heading back to the trail. As I was walking, I heard a noise coming from about 20 yards away that sounded like a large animal crashing through the woods. Bears are common where I live, so I grabbed my bear spray and stood silently still trying to identify the source of the noise. A second later I noticed another person walking along the exact path where I had just been walking before I performed my loop, and I noticed he was carrying a large rifle. He wasn't wearing any gear that would identify him as a hunter, and hunting was illegal in the area we were in, so I had no idea what he was doing. I was a bit nervous because there is no reason why anyone should even be in the area I was in, let alone with a rifle. I wasn't sure if he was just a lost hunter or something similarly harmless, but I decided I'd rather not find out, so I crouched down and hid. The guy continued walking on, and I remained motionless and silent until he was out of sight.

I still have no idea why he was there with a rifle, but it made me pretty uneasy. It seemed very peculiar to me that he would be following the same path I followed considering it was completely covered in thorny underbrush that made me wish I had chosen another path. I wondered if maybe he had been tracking me, but now that I think about that, it seems like if he had the skill to track me through the bush like that he wouldn't sound like a pickup truck barreling through underbrush like he did when I first heard him.

EDIT: Another interesting thing I forgot to mention is that I also found an area where it was apparent someone had been living for some time. It looked as if it had been abandonded for quite some time, however. Here is a picture I took of something the occupant had built. In addition to these shelves, there was a clothesline, fire pit, some tarps, and a few pots and pans.

 
Occasionally we walk the trails at one of the local parks. First Landing State Park is one of the better ones. Nearly everyone we encounter on the trails is white, upper middle class, health conscious and friendly. Sometimes they have unleashed dogs running up ahead of them, but they've always been well behaved and had tags on their collars. Never had an uncomfortable situation there. One time we were walking along a secluded side trail, and I noticed some young dishevelled fellow concealing himself about 20 feet off the trail in the hedges. He just seemed to be lying there, resting, but it was a very odd place to rest, and something just seemed off about it . . . like he was waiting for the "right" person to come along. About 20 minutes later, we passed back that way again and he was still there -- we ignored him, and he didn't move or make a sound. About 5 minutes later, we heard an explosion back in that direction -- not a gunshot or firecracker, more like someone had just detonated a stick of dynamite. We didn't go back to check it out.

The next time we went back to those trails, we found a homemade crack pipe (made out of multiple layers of foil) hidden between the slats on one of the benches. If it was a weed pipe it wouldn't have bothered me, but the thought of running into some crackheads out on one of the trails made me concerned.

Less than a month later, a lady was walking her dog along those same trails when some crazy nekkid guy jumped out of the bushes and tried to rape her. Fortunately, two other women whom she'd recently passed heard the screams and saw the leashed dog running towards them, so they went over to see WTF. Nekkid guy jumped up off the woman on the ground, and grabbed the teenaged daughter of the other woman, attempting to pull off her blouse. Someone called 911 on a cellphone, and while he attempted to grab the phome someone else started beating him with a tree branch, which barely fazed him . . . but he suddenly stopped his attack to begin singing a song and clapping his hands (?). He was still singing when the police showed up -- whom he attacked with a tree branch before running off into the woods. They caught him, and said that he was "mentally ill" and had been using drugs.
 
I have had a few experiences with 2-legged threats. One occurred in PA while out camping. We had parked by the road and camped about 150 yards into the woods. During the night, a PU drove up and started screaming that we had 5 minutes to live and drove off. They came back every minute saying that we had so many minutes to live. Pretty scary in the dark of the woods....

The problem for them was that we had a couple of shotguns along. After the first threat, we left our tent and took up position so that we had our own tent in a crossfire. If they had approached the tent, it would have definitely ended up as a bad-hair days for those guys.

They never came back.

Living now on the edge of Shenandoah Natl Park, we hear about occasional assaults in the park or on the AT. One of these ended up in the rape and throat-cutting of two young women who were on a camping trip.

Another incident happened at Grand Canyon where I witnessed a motorcycle tough assault a park ranger during the night hours.
 
Two encounters- Both in the early 80's. My wife and I has just finished a hike in the Tetons and stopped in Coulter Bay to shower and do laundry. Some weird guy in an old van was staring at us as I filled up our truck, my wife said that he really gave her the creeps.It was dark when we started heading north for Glacier National Park.about a half hour later this guy passed us then slowed down to about thirty miles an hour. He didn't do anything other than stare when we passed him, but he did the same maneuver 15 minutes later, when we would speed up he would too.This went on for a few hours all the way through Wyoming and into Montana, we finally got far enough ahead and pulled the truck behind a ranger station and lost him. We don't know what he had in mind but it sure scared us.

Second encounter- My wife and I were hiking along Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula when we climbed a large sand hill and ended up walking into a poacher's camp. These guys looked like they came right out of the movie Deliverance. We did an immediate about face and ended up jogging along the beach.

-Yooperman
 
I've run into illegal aliens on a few occassions. Mexican poachers held a gun on myself and a few friends when we were scouting Muledeer for the archery open, in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Markleeville. Dope growers abound in the greener parts of the Sierras and they are known to grow in the hills around where we live. Again, mostly Mexicans working and guarding the areas.

Having some sort of protection and keeping a sharp eye/ear on the surroundings is the only way to be now-a-days.
 
When I was 15 years old me and my older brothers and some friends were camping and fishing on the banks of the Catawba river in Belmont NC.
It was just getting dark when we heard a horrible animal sound not too far away.
It went on for about five minutes and then we heard nothing but the sound of the usual frogs and insects.
My brothers laughed it off and made light of it saying that it sounded like two cats getting it on.

Well, they were partially right...
The next day, about 200 yards from our campsite, we found a dead cat that had been nailed to a tree.

I've avoided that part of the river to this day.
 
I have had two serious encounters with 2 leggers on in PA and one in Brazil.

The time in PA I was solo backpacking and had stopped at a stream to fill my canteens. As I squatted down on a flat rock I caught movement up through the laurel and saw two guys (20 somethings, I was 17) sneaking down the trail towards me. I made eye contact with the first and he saw me, made a quick comment to his buddy and they bolted for me.

I had slipped the hammer thong off my holstered Ruger Single Six when I first saw them. It was on my right side tied down to my leg. As they came out on the bank of the stream I stood to face them ready to drop the canteen and draw. They RADAR LOCKED on the gun stopping short at the bank. One of them had his hand on the hilt of his Rambo knife. He let go, then the two of them started to blow it off as a joke. "Huh, huh, we really had you going... huh, huh."

At the time I was shooting a brick (500) of .22 lr a week with that gun and holster. I had the .22 magnum cylinder in the gun. It turned out well.

In Brazil I was attending a confrence in Forteleza upon the northern coast. The confrence was a rehash of several books I had already read so we blew it off one day and went to the beach. About 3 km down the beach there was a river inlet and a huge coconut grove. Marcelo and I went exploring and wanted to harvest a few green coconuts. I had bought a cheap 14 inch machete and sharpened it with my leatherman. I made a crude sheath for it out of cardboard, mainly to keep it from cutting up my pack.

Out in the grove we spotted two guys coming up fast and angry, just wearing shorts, no weapons visible. I didn't want to look agressive so I put the cardboard cover on and held the machete under my left armpit pinched against my body. It was plainly visible as a 14 inch machete but it wasn't poised to strike, just draw in an instant.

They came into the clearing talking trash, drunk, wanting money for our invasion of their territory and immediately toned it down when they saw the blade. I stepped away from Marcelo about 15 feet to seperate them. One came over to me and the other to him and I maneuvered so I could see Marcelo but my agressor had his back to him. The guy was drunk enough that I don't think he picked up on that move. He wasn't too drunk to understand what a 14 inch machete would do to him if he got physical with me. Two more men and a woman joined them. We ended up talking our way out of it all (a great story in itself but too long for this post) and made a hasty retreat back to the beach. Before we left one of our original attackers even climbed up a tree and got us two coconuts.

The moral of the story, for me at least is that it pays to speak softly and carry a big stick, or a gun, or a blade worthy of the name.

Mac
 
Codger, where did this encounter take place? (And when?)

Codger_64 said:
I guess the strangest encounter for me was the time I met a wild Apache Indian, or at least that is how he described himself. When I told him that there were no more wild Apaches, he offered to scalp me to prove it. Naturally I declined. Then he handed me a sheet of paper to read. Sure enough, Ray, as he was named in the paper, had been officially declared to be a wild Apache by a Federal Judge in 1942. Actually, a very pissed off Federal Judge. The paper Ray showed me was from his sentencing to five years and a day. He explained to me that things took a turn for the worse when he told the judge to do something to himself that was impossible to do. But Ray was right, in amongst words like "Defiant, Incorigable, Rude, Crude", the Judge had declared Ray to be a Wild Indian, beyond any redemption and hope of civilizing. We sat up that night drinking his pruno, and Ray finally told me the whole story. It seems that he held a very strong belief that a group of people dressed in U.S. Army uniforms had hunted down and killed his grandparents. To Ray, this was reason enough to refuse to wear the U.S. Army uniform. He and quite a few others were granted draft deferral hearings. The others followed the ways of the grandfathers, and for the most part were either set free, or given light sentences for refusing the draft. But Ray never regretted his decission, for he was the only one with a Federal paper declaring him wild, which he considered an honor and homage to his grandparents.

Codger
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I've had my run-ins, but mostly at boat launches, lakes, and places that are easily accessible by the majority at large. the vast majority of people going out to experience the outdoors are decent, respectful, live and let live folks. That being said...if you're combat fishing along the river banks with two hundred people, you can bet a few of them are going to be drunk, messed up on drugs, and nastier 'n hell in general. (hence the reason I rarely participate in that style of fishing)

The further out on the trails and in the woods you can usually get, the more the dirtbags tend to fade away. Internal combustion is NOT always your friend...

There's a park right outside of Anchorage where a couples car broke down. He went for help, came back for her and she had disappeared without a trace.

With the inlet just across the road, it's not hard to figure out what where she disappeared to, but that particular story has always chilled my wife and I both to the bone for some reason.

If I ever truly expected trouble I wouldn't bother leaving the house at all, but...I think a person is foolish if they go into the woods and aren't prepared to defend themselves.

The wife and I are both always armed in the outdoors, even on simple, short established walking trails.

I've run into dozens of bear and moose with never a problem. People on the other hand.....they scare the hell out of me.
 
Return of the J.D. said:
Codger, where did this encounter take place? (And when?)
Click to expand...

This was in a National Park in Northwest Arkansas in the winter of 1980-82. I was on one of my two week solo canoe trips. The draft referred to was for WWII. Ray was quite old and traveled the country living from the trunk of his '65 Mustang, spare tire bolted through the roof. He was on a tour of the National Park system when I met him, and living in a tent he constructed from heavy black polyethelyne. His only companion, quite faithful (and spoke only Apache and Dogese) was Nadjia, his Labrador retriever. I got a postcard from Ray years later, and he was somewhere in Arizona. I haven't heard from him since. Perhaps he met Tom Brown and shared his pruno with him.

Codger
 
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