Has anyone ever had encounters with bears or other wild dangerous species while boondocking?

[Kevin H]

Some of those ticks are hard to see little buggers. At least you can easily see the bear when you get home or back to camp.

[Helipilot]

Three quick stories about bear and moose;

 

While in Alaska I had flown in a surveyor to Wiseman on the pipeline road. While sitting in the helicopter a young black bear reached through the side window, across my right leg for a peanut butter cup I had on the center console. Surprised me as I was reading a book at the time. Carefully broke off a piece of the candy and threw it on the ground, he dropped away from the window and I threw another piece a little further our and so on until I could get on the top of the Bell 206.

 

While at Cook City in 1988 on the Yellowstone fires, we had a bull moose come charging out of the trees and attacked one of the helicopters for no reason. Reduced a $2 mill. machine into a non-flyable pile of aluminum. He then threw up his antlers and trotted off in the direction of town. Sure got out attention.

 

On Kodiak Island I was taking a break after landing on the beach and was Salmon fishing in a small stream running down the mountain. Had my rifle along as well. Caught about three nice fish when I heard the familiar "woof" and turned to see a beautiful brown bear on his hind legs just upstream and he was looking directly at me and my fish. The only honorable thing to do was leave the fish for him since I was "trespassing" on his territory and slowly back away. He ambled down to where I had laid the fish on the bank and proceeded to enjoy himself.

[Helipilot]

Another Grizzly story came to mind...While at Oldman Camp on the pipeline construction we worked 24 hours a day in 12 hour shifts. The night cooks did all the pie and cake baking on that shift. A large Grizzly, attracted by the wonderful smell of fresh blueberry pies cooling on the serving line, ripped the door off the cook trailer and entered the kitchen. The cooks locked themselves in the walk-in freezer and the bear proceeded to eat all the blueberry pies in sight. All that sugar caused him to get the "runs" and he sprayed the walls, floor and tables with bear scat. He then crawled under the cook trailer to sleep on the cool tundra. The next morning we had the Rangers come in and dart him so he could be pulled out from under the trailer.

 

They asked me to load him into a net and haul him as far as I could away from camp. We got him in the net and I topped off the fuel tank and hauled him half a fuel load away up wind of the camp, about 70 miles. Three days later the same bear was back in camp and we all recognized him because his whole ass was still blue. The Rangers came back, darted him again and hauled him off in a culvert trailer with bars on each end. To my knowledge he never came back.

[Carolaow]

Helipilot--

How many days 'til you got those cooks out of that freezer?

[Helipilot]

When the day cooks cam in about 5am for their shift they discovered the mess and let the night cooks out of the freezer. Everybody turned to and got the kitchen cleaned and disinfected in short order to get the cooks happy and the food flowing again.

It is a funny story that fortunately no one was injured, not even the bear.

[bigjim]

helipilot, your stories beat the heck out of mine but are great. The one about reaching in across your leg increases the pucker factor just thinking about it. I don't think anyone should be afraid but just because you have never had an experience you know that you should never get complacent even with a lot of domesticated critters. One guy got his face ripped up good by his own dog that he raised from a pup and even slept with at times back in Dec. I have been around wildland firefighters a good bit including working a small project with the 19 from Yarnell AZ and have never really heard them talk about their interactions with wildlife while fighting fires. Next time I am going to make a point of asking. Got to be some good stories in there somewhere.

[Helipilot]

Vladimiar, the Yellow Jacket sting brings up another story while on the forest fires in Montana. We had two helicopters on that area and John Stone, the pilot of the Bell 212, had a YJ fly in the side window and land between his sunglasses and his eye. And yes, it stung him and he started swelling up and just barely made a safe landing back at camp. I was flying the Bell 205 on that job and since the 212 was billed at a higher rate I parked mine and flew with John the rest of the day while he sat co-pilot with an ice bag over his eye. Painful and almost caused a crash.

 

Bigjim, the forest fire fighting was intense. In Wyoming at the Silver Tip Ranch we were trying to keep the fire from destroying the historic ranch since Teddy Roosevelt had hunted there. The only option was to use our Bambi buckets we had slung under the aircraft to dip water and then dump on the buildings to prevent the flying embers from starting on the roof of the buildings. Had been constantly dumping for about 6 hours when I observed a female moose lead her calf into the creek we were dipping from and "hunker" down in the middle while the fire blazed right over them, leaving them alive and unhurt as far as I could tell. Lot s of wildlife were running in front of the fire line.

 

When the humidity is in the 15-20% range and the actual moisture content of the tree bark is in the same range, the trees explode and sound like dynamite going off. It also throws off embers the size of your index finger flying out a half mile in advance of the main fire. When they hit your windshield as you are flying into the fire with a load of water it looks like roman candles bursting on the windshield. After 22,000+ hours of flying I had to give ti up as exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam caused me to get type 2 diabetes when I was 62. I no longer have active type 2 due to diet and exercise but Mrs. HP said enough is enough so I hung it up, but I still miss it.

[Shadow Catcher]

Close encounter with a skunk

[Randyretired]

Close encounters with skunks are actually pretty common. Years ago while sleeping in a tent a skunk walked on my sleeping bag. Still very still got me through that one. Another time chasing irrigation water a skunk came out of a hole and walked over my shoe. Still got me through that one. Screwed up one time and put calf milk replacer powder in a shed with a cat door. Came out one evening to find 6 skunks in the shed. Replacer powder all over and the shed was a mess. Thought I had it cleaned up the next but skunks kept coming back. Finally to get rid of them I waited with a shot gun. Killed 5 skunks but the stink on my cloths was bad. My wife met me at the back porch and said I could come in and shower but all the cloths stay outside. If I still stink the porch swing is my bed. Luckily I was not sprayed directly and I got to sleep inside. Also managed to run a skunk through a swather and another time through a baler. Same protocol as above. It took my dog getting sprayed 3 times before he learned.