Encountering critters with teeth/claws!?

I have heard more bears than seen.

When we were camping in the Sequoia's two years ago there was one that kept coming into camp and scaring my nieces and nephews, I was both drunk and pissed off so, of course, at 3am I got out of my tent with nothing but boxers on and chased down a holler and out the other side, with a shovel. Never heard it again.

Smart, no. True, yes.
 
Zombie Zeke said:
I have heard more bears than seen.

When we were camping in the Sequoia's two years ago there was one that kept coming into camp and scaring my nieces and nephews, I was both drunk and pissed off so, of course, at 3am I got out of my tent with nothing but boxers on and chased down a holler and out the other side, with a shovel. Never heard it again.

Smart, no. True, yes.
Click to expand...

Thats a good one. :thumbup: Drunk and pissed..... I believe I have a club jacket with that very logo on the back. ;)
 
Early last season I shot down a couple wood ducks in the swamp behind the house right before sunset. One fell out in the open and the other went down amongst a thicket of small willows. It was right at dusk, I couldn't see the bird, but knew exactly where he had folded up into. I pulled the boat up into the mud and little trees as far as I could. It was almost dusk, I picked up my flashlight and and a walking stick I keep in the boat and started to step off the boat into the mud. I checked the ground beside the boat and it was way too boggy. I stepped up to the front and saw a log between the boat and fairly dry ground. When I went to step on it, I took the stick and shoved down on the log to make sure it would hold me. As soon as I poked it, the mud and water exploded and the boat went a rocking. I fell back into the boat. It was an alligator. It seemed like it took it two days to get away, tangled in the little willows and mud. I don't know which one of us it scared worse. I do know he got to keep the duck. The bad thing is I had taken pictures of several gators right in the same area just a month or two before this. Here is one of them not fifty yards from where I pulled up.


IMG_4360.jpg


It was a little cool, a gator or snake was the last thing on my mind. I usually always do a good surveying around the boat before getting out, and there has been several times there has been a snake or gator laid up close by and I just go in somewhere different. Situational awareness is your friend.

I also have a close encounter I filmed while a buddy and I were fishing in the bay. Not for the faint of heart!!!


Click for video:


:eek:
 
i so glad i live in australia.

just the crocs and snakes i need to worry about. you can keep your bears.
 
I hate snakes.. After a kayaking raft I was the first one to arrive back at our camping site on a sunny afternoon. I was heading for a rope which we put between two trees to hang my neoprene gear to dry it and my eyes were just focussed on that rope when I heard a noise right in front of me.. I almost stepped on a 1.2m viper! Quite a large one for that area! And it seemed angry that I woke it up while taking a sunbath.. Anyhow, it escaped to the trunk of one of these trees where someone else has put some other neoprene gear on the floor and the viper went right under it to hide.
Well I thought we cant leave it there as when the owner of that gear comes to pick it up he might get bitten.. So I took my kayak paddle and flipped away the gear and there she was.. rolled up and threathening to bite. I had no intention to kill the snake which would have been easy with the paddle and its metal part at the blade but I thought I also can't leave this snake here because I didn't want anyone to get hurt and we had children in our group. So I tried to shoosh it away with the paddle but that guy didn't want to leave, which surprised me. So I though, eventhough I hate snakes, I have seen many 'crocodile hunter' series to know how to catch one. And I also held once a snake of a friend and once in a zoo.. So I thought, how difficult can it be... I just use the blade of the paddle to push her head down, then grab her at the neck and bring her somewhere away of the camp to release her.. So far the plan. But when I approached her again with the paddle to push down her head she had other plans and bit into the paddle and then raced away from me and my mighty paddle.. straight towards two friends who just reached the camp. They managed to jump aside and we never saw that snake again..
I still felt like a hero though.. especially because I managed to somewhat overcome my fear of snakes and acted (eventhough foolishly) instead of just staring frozen at it.. (maybe the staring frozen at it would have been the better option after all..)
 
One more for this cathegory.. not really a critter but surely has two large teeth.. Elephants!
Was on an offroad bike tour in Namibia last year and mainly sleeping in a tent. One night we noticed that there were elephants close by.. not one or two.. but at least 20 of them. They just passed right behind us and our camp fire not more than 50 meters away and we didn't hear a thing (just figured out the way they took the next morning because of their tracks). We only heard them that night when they were going for a large, bushy tree which they ripped apart with their trunks about 100 meter away from our camp. We looked at them with our flashlights and they didn't bother and just did their thing. We then also realised that we were pretty much surrounded by those guys. I first thought that it cannot be so dangerous, but we had a couple of local guys from a closeby village with us at that time and they were really scared! They grow up and live around these elephants and were scared?! So I asked them why and they told me that these elephants are very moody! Just two months back one guy of their village got killed by one of these elephants as he accidentally bumped into one at night on the way home to the village! So they stayed with us at the fire for a while until the elephants were gone.
I learned that these are some of the few remaining Namib desert elephants which are heavily protected. As they are not being hunted they don't fear humans.. not even in a car. The opposite.. they hate noise and if you piss them off with the noise of a car or even worse.. sitting on your offroad motorbike with race pipe.. they might chase you and attack you and flip over your car.. not because you come between them and their little ones.. no, just for annoying them..
The next day we found that herd again, luckily not in our camp.. And we made sure to keep a very safe distance of at least 500 meters while watching them ripping more trees apart.. Btw, it's not that they didn't spot us then. They clearly showed us that they know we are there. And they were also coming along our way.. slowly but steadily. So we dediced we have seen enough elephants and stopped annoying them..
 
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