-- Scared in the wilderness - what are/is your stories/story?

[Simply Red]

Good Evening,

I just started what appears to be a really good movie called 'Hold the Dark' - It prompted me to ask CP - what situations, observations or any other 'tions - have you experienced away from civilization in which had you scared for you life?

Animals, weather, devil worshipers? Primarily what I'm looking for is wild animal encounters.

I know we have quite a few in the Pacific NW that post on here. (bears maybe?)

Just wondering if anyone has any interesting stories regarding this...?

I'd love to hear them...

Thanks

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by Frazod

Hopefully Livesteam will see this and post his big foot camping story.

As for me, most scary nature thing was getting caught in a violent thunderstorm while on a float trip down the Current River, which turned the normally calm and clear river into a raging torrent. I was 11 or 12, and in a canoe with my cousin who is a couple of years younger. We had been farting around and lagged behind the rest of the group, so we were on our own when it hit. At one point we hit a tree that had fallen in the water and the canoe sank. My cousin nearly drowned. That was pretty intense.

No animal stories. If I'm out in the woods, I'm armed.

Holy shit. We had the same thing happen on the same river. I drug a buddy out of the river.

4 people were life flighted out of there that day

[Nzoner]

Was seeing a girl in high school who one night had me park in a wooded area on her family's farm so we could get down to business in the back seat.
About five minutes into it the back door of my car was yanked open and........


It was her brother who started yelling at her to get her ass home and for me to be on my way.


Not exactly what you're looking for but scared the shit out of us.

[tmax63]

Hunting buddy shot an elk next to some dark timber and the elk run in there after being hit. 3 of us started the job of tracking and retrieving. About 50 yards in the tracks were crossed by mountain lion tracks and again at about 75 and 100 yards. Decided not to compete with the lion as to who would find the elk first. Only time we haven't retrieved an animal in 20+ years of hunting. On the way back to the open ground we saw where the lion had crossed OUR tracks after we had went through. Never saw him but we had our necks on a swivel until we got out of the timber.

[stumppy]

I was floating the Buffalo River one time and it got damn scary. 3 days into a 5 day float, right around midnight, I opened the cooler and HOLY ****! 6 beers left, 3 people floating, 2 days to go.
That is scary. Fortunately we were able to buy a case from some people at one of the put ins.

[Easy 6]

One day while I was in the Army up in Fairbanks AK, me and a few guys from my platoon were tasked with ambushing an infantry unit on patrol, it was an exercise meant to teach them how to properly react to it and maneuver to take out the aggressors

They spread 5 of us out about a mile or so apart along a prescribed path out in the boonies, one group of 3 and two solo ambushers

I was a solo ambusher, we were all equipped with MILES gear (basically a laser tag system) it fires a laser every time you fire a blank round in your M16, the purpose was to try and inflict casualties that the unit would have to deal with while responding

So a squad was scheduled to come by about once an hour for us to ambush, well I had just finished with the first squad to come by, and about 5 minutes later I hear the crunching sound of a massive animal walking around in this giant field of cane brush off to one side of me, this shit is like seven - eight feet tall and very thick, couldnt see into it more than a few feet

My heart starts racing immediately, I just KNEW it was a bear and I was scared shitless because NO ONE was around to help... so this goes on for several minutes, its just crunching around and I'm hoping it either stays in the cane field, or if it does come out of the field it does so down the way to my left or right

I'm huddled up against a tree, as quiet and still as a scared rabbit

I start thinking about how to defend myself if I have to, and those of you who've served are probably aware that a blank will fire one the cleaning rods from the rifle cleaning kit in the butt of an M16, hard enough to jam several inches of it into a tree

Sure as hell not what you WANT when facing a bear, but its the only thing I could cook up, so I drop one of the rods down the barrel... and wait...

Well this thing DID end up crashing out the field, 10 yards directly in front of me

At first I was at least a LITTLE relieved, it wasnt a bear... but a gigantic bull moose complete with huge rack, this thing was at least 8 foot at the shoulder... HUGE

Now you have to understand, moose trample several people a year up there to death, and this thing could've destroyed me... I knew for sure the cleaning rod would only piss it off if I'd had to fire it

It stopped just outside the brush and stared at me crouched down next to this tree for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only 30 seconds... then it gratefully walked off down the edge of that brush field

Thats as scared as I've ever been in my life, tied with the time a guy put a loaded gun to my head

[Otter]

I’ve got a couple...

Was kayaking with 3 others back in PA on some class IV waters and managed to get ahead of the group. They stopped for one reason another before an upcoming rough patch and I couldn’t hear them yelling for me to wait up.

Went into the rapids on my own and did fine but then encountered about a 10’ drop which I didn’t see approaching. Went in upside down and couldn’t roll over due to the whirlpool effect and the kayak was spinning so fast I couldn’t land the paddle on anything solid to get a push.

I went to bail out but it turns out last time we stopped to hydrate and quick eat I tucked my grab hook under the skirt. We usually check that for each other but this time it went unoticed.

Fade to black…

Woke up to Dave giving me CPR. He’s an ex-82nd Airborne Army medic. Apparently my lips were blue, face was grey and was clinically dead when he found me. I can’t vouch for that however.

After finishing coughing up the water and calming down we kayaked out and I went to bed early.

Went up to Alaska with Bwana a couple years ago to do some halibut fishing. After three full days of being stuck together 24-7 I figured I’ll go on my own for the day and and I’ll give Bwana, his brother, and cousin Tony a day without having to put up with my ugly mug and have some family time.

I rented a Jeep and jumped on Route 1 North to destination unknown. I wound up stopping at couple streams and rivers to break out the fly rod with very little luck. The last one I went to was (ironically) named “Moose Creek”.

Oh, a side note: Alaska has the worst mosquitoes I’ve ever experienced hands down. They are absolutely rabid and come in swarms of 10s of thousands at time.

While swinging the fly rod and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes about 50 yards away from the Jeep I hear a grunt behind me. Turns out it was a full grown moose cow less than 10 yards away and this is the time of year when they’re nursing their young.

Bwana gave me his .454 to carry but I left it in the truck because I didn’t want to get it wet. I just raised my arms for some unknown reason like it was a cop telling me to back up and slowly backed up without turning my back to it in waist high water on me that went up to that monsters knees at best. The whole time it starred at me like ‘GTF off my river’. How or why that moose didn’t curb stomp me only God knows.

The worst I’ve ever witnessed was my good friend Jeff go off a really, really high jump in the Moab Desert and land very, very badly. It turns out that the landing broke about just every bone in his body except his left arm which was oddly enough perfectly fine despite every other appendage being broken in several places.

Trying to pick him up and get him laid down in the back of the pickup was easily the most horrific experience I’ve ever had in my life. Imagine picking up a 200lb screaming in agony Hefty bag filled with motor oil and rocks with arms and legs 4+ feet in the air, then dragging it onto the bed, and THEN driving it out on roads to where an ambulance can reach you on roads that require 4 wheel drive. Bleh!

There's quiet a few more but that's my top 3!

[Simply Red]

wow guys.

[seclark]

back in the 80's. floating and camping current river. had a couple dirt bikes with us at a camp site. brother was riding his bike bare footed around the brush and he got a weed stuck between his two smallest toes and broke the smallest one. straight out sideways

spent the rest of the day easing his pain with old crow whiskey and went to bed early while the rest of us sat around the fire drinking beer. all of a sudden, we heard a "pop"...the pistol he had stashed under his pillow had gone off. apparently, his hand wandered under it and pulled the trigger. he came to, got up and staggered out of the camper, pale as a ****in sheet. no idea what had happened.

****er's lucky to be alive.
sec

[chinaski]

We have a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains in the most isolated mountain community in Southern California. It's at about 7,000 feet. I personally haven't seen anything outside of Coyote's and Mule Deer, but Bear and Mountain Lion are abundant. I don't live there full time, but neighbors and friends see Mountain Lion and Bear frequently. Bear like to get into trash, bird feeders etc. I've seen the aftermath, they really tear shit up.

Camping at 7k in the Las Padres National Forest in April (early 1990's), completely clueless and unprepared. Primitive Campground with about 5 or 6 spots. Complete Wilderness. It was freezing and we didn't have the proper gear. Needless to say that was a rough night. In the morning the VW Bus we drove was dead. Being on top of a Mountain, luckily, it was easy to roll it down the hill and pop the clutch. I know how to camp now, but that was actually a dangerous situation.

[frozenchief]

I have a few. Lived in Alaska for almost 20 years.

Doing a float trip down the Goodnews River and a couple of buddies. Camping on an island one night and we hear something walking in the water. We get out of the tent and it’s a big brown bear about 15 feet away. We were shining flashlights on it* and it was wondering what we were doing. After several tense moments, I fired my pistol in the air and it ran away.

Another time, I was to start a trial on 9/11/01. There had been a bear coming through our yard for a few days. I got home about 9:30 that night because I’d been prepping for trial. And the bear was in the yard. We lived on a lake and there was a small ridge that went down to the lake. There were stairs down to the “beach” where we had a dock and kept our boat. The boat was an old beater Lund that leaked so I kept it on the shore. Made sure it wouldn’t sink.

Anyway, the bear sees the headlights of the car and heads down to the beach. I get out of my car and I can hear him down by the boat, probably because I’d caught fish that weekend and the smell was in the boat. My girls were young (5 and 3) and I didn’t want the bear hanging around anymore so I grabbed a rifle and a flashlight and headed down the stairs holding the flashlight and the front stock in my left hand, right hand holding business end of the rifle. That was when I was the most ... amped up. I’m sweeping that flashlight around and see the bear. In my boat. I get to the bottom of the stairs and that bear is quite close, looking at me and grunting. I yelled at the bear and it’s just looking at me. So I fired my rifle at the bear and it ran away.

I’ve had other encounters with bears at the dump or while fishing or hiking. Couple of weeks ago was fishing and we saw about a dozen bears during the trip but they were pretty chill. Those were the two scariest ones. Otherwise, living in SW Alaska, you have lots of bear stories. This is going to be a lengthy post. Adding more bear stories would just make it much longer.

I have encountered tons of moose. Moose are a problem if: 1) it’s a cow with a young calf, usually Late April and May, so don’t get close, or 2) a rutting bull. They are unpredictable but that’s usually late September and October. Otherwise, moose are generally pretty chill. Had a friend pet one that was bedded down in thr snow while we were riding snow machines.

Scariest time of my life, though, had nothing to do with bears or moose. Well, moose were involved indirectly. A friend of mine was a teacher in our town (Aleknagik, just north of Dillingham where I worked). He shot a moose in the December season but he couldn’t get it all packed the day he shot it. Temperature was cold so spoilage wasn’t an issue. Bears would be hibernating. There was a Christmas program at school the day after he shot the moose and my daughter was in it so he asked if I could bring my snow machine sled (his sled was smaller) and we could get the rest of the moose. I said sure.

So after the event, we put on our cold weather gear and go for this moose. It’s dark. We have headlights though, and we know the way, but we don’t have a GPS. Temperature is in the single digits and dropping but we’ve got plenty of layers. Besides, it’s a quick trip up, grab the moose and come back.

The first part of the trail is through woods. Easy to see where you’re going. The woods end and you come out of the trail onto open tundra. We drove another 30 minutes or so to the area where Jared shot the moose. It starts to snow. We spend some time using headlights and flashlights till we find the culvert where the rest of the moose was. We pull up next to it and get it into my sled, strap it down and get ready to go. We’ve been so focused on this we didn’t really notice that the snow had really picked up.

We start back, following our tracks because now it’s really dark but snowing like a son of a bitch. Practically white out as we drive. The wind has also really picked up. We are going slower because I’ve got a sled full of moose and we are following tracks back. And as we go back, the tracks start disappearing. For longer and longer periods of time.

That was the most scared I’ve ever been. I had gear to take for being out overnight but I hadn’t brought it, nor had Jared. We were just going to go grab this moose. I realized that if I can’t follow the tracks back, I won’t know where the path is in the trees. Once in the trees, the path is easy to follow but the tundra is wide open and there are no reference points in the whiteout swirling snow. I realized even if I got to the trees, if I couldn’t see the path, I wouldn’t know whether to go right or left. It’s maybe 8:30 and daylight is about 10:30. Assuming the snow quits, that’s 14+ hours before they even start a rescue. We are probably 10-15 miles north of town. I didn’t have fire starting gear, blankets, sleeping bag, tarp or food. And my snow machine tracks are disappearing. I was seriously thinking of what we were going to do if we had to spend the night out there.

We made it to the trees and found the path back. We got to Jared’s house and walked in. Both of us stood there for a second and one of us, I can’t remember who, said, “We were so stupid.” I figure another 30 minutes and those tracks would have been gone, leading to a night in below zero blizzard conditions. I never went out again without gear for a possible overnight stay. I took the country very seriously.

I’ve had other scary moments: saw a friend going across the tundra on a snow machine. He rode over a creek that was thawing underneath. Snow cracked and he went into the creek. We got him out but it took a few hours to dig his snow machine out.

Had ice crack under me and back 2tires of 4 wheeler went in the lake. Had to be real careful crawling off the 4 wheeler and not break more ice. Fortunately was with other people and we weren’t far off the shore. Going down river with a buddy in his boat. He hit a huge rock in the shallow river. We didn’t think anything of it until we got onto the lake to come bike and realized the boat was rapidly filling with water.

Had a canoe flip over behind my house in late December. We lived right where Lake Aleknagik went into the Wood River and the water got shallow and narrow so even in winter, the current kept a spot of open water. 2 people died that night. One drowned and they never found his body. Another clung onto the canoe till it came to shore a few hundred yards away. He started crawling toward the street light by our house but he was wet and it was about -15 below. They found him frozen the next day. Another friend and I had to go rescue the third guy. He’d swum to the edge of the ice. He didn’t take off his gloves so when he tried to climb out, the wet gloves froze instantly to the ice. We figure that kept him from going under the ice and drowning. We spent several hours trying to get him warm once we got him into the house. That was exciting.

All in all, if you get out of your house, particularly if you get off the road system, Alaska will give you all kinds of scary/exciting experiences. It’s gorgeous country. You’ll see things you won’t see anywhere else. But treat the land, the conditions and the animals with respect because this land shows no mercy. It will kill you if you don’t treat it with respect.

*even though a late August, it was raining so it was dark-ish, dark enough we had flashlights.

[frozenchief]

Originally Posted by Easy 6

One day while I was in the Army up in Fairbanks AK, me and a few guys from my platoon were tasked with ambushing an infantry unit on patrol, it was an exercise meant to teach them how to properly react to it and maneuver to take out the aggressors

They spread 5 of us out about a mile or so apart along a prescribed path out in the boonies, one group of 3 and two solo ambushers

I was a solo ambusher, we were all equipped with MILES gear (basically a laser tag system) it fires a laser every time you fire a blank round in your M16, the purpose was to try and inflict casualties that the unit would have to deal with while responding

So a squad was scheduled to come by about once an hour for us to ambush, well I had just finished with the first squad to come by, and about 5 minutes later I hear the crunching sound of a massive animal walking around in this giant field of cane brush off to one side of me, this shit is like seven - eight feet tall and very thick, couldnt see into it more than a few feet

My heart starts racing immediately, I just KNEW it was a bear and I was scared shitless because NO ONE was around to help... so this goes on for several minutes, its just crunching around and I'm hoping it either stays in the cane field, or if it does come out of the field it does so down the way to my left or right

I'm huddled up against a tree, as quiet and still as a scared rabbit

I start thinking about how to defend myself if I have to, and those of you who've served are probably aware that a blank will fire one the cleaning rods from the rifle cleaning kit in the butt of an M16, hard enough to jam several inches of it into a tree

Sure as hell not what you WANT when facing a bear, but its the only thing I could cook up, so I drop one of the rods down the barrel... and wait...

Well this thing DID end up crashing out the field, 10 yards directly in front of me

At first I was at least a LITTLE relieved, it wasnt a bear... but a gigantic bull moose complete with huge rack, this thing was at least 8 foot at the shoulder... HUGE

Now you have to understand, moose trample several people a year up there to death, and this thing could've destroyed me... I knew for sure the cleaning rod would only piss it off if I'd had to fire it

It stopped just outside the brush and stared at me crouched down next to this tree for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only 30 seconds... then it gratefully walked off down the edge of that brush field

Thats as scared as I've ever been in my life, tied with the time a guy put a loaded gun to my head

Knowing moose and living in AK, that’s fairly humorous. I absolutely get why you’d be scared but looking back, you have to see the humor.

Now you have to tell about the guy with the gun.

[Otter]

Originally Posted by frozenchief

Another time, I was to start a trial on 9/11/01.

I hope I'm not being nit picky here but do you mean "trail" instead "trial". I would usually assume it's a misspelling but given the date...

[frozenchief]

Originally Posted by Otter

I hope I'm not being nit picky here but do you mean "trail" instead "trial". I would usually assume it's a misspelling but given the date...

No. I had a trial set to start 9/11. Because of that, I stayed late on 9/10 and saw the bear.

Interestingly, throughout Rural Alaska, jurors are flown in for jury duty. AK is 4hours behind East Coast so the planes hit about 5 something AK time. The no fly order came a bit after that and so we couldn’t get jurors that week. So the trial got moved.

Jurors are flown in because you have a right to a representative sampling of the jury pool area. Villages in Alaska are demographically different from hub cities like Bethel and Nome and there are very few roads in that part of the state so they fly the jurors in.

[arrwheader]

Originally Posted by Hammock Parties

I got lost in the woods of NW Arkansas driving to KC from Louisiana one weekend.

It was really dark, the roads were super twisty and I was operating on about 3 hours sleep.

I thought I was going to careen off the roads, hit a tree, have to start walking and get eaten by a bear.

I've never been more happy to see a sign for I-71 than I ever have coming out of those woods.

Similar situation for me as well. I didn’t want to pull over and sleep on one of the side roads in that area because I felt like I would be murdered by a truck driver.

[Easy 6]

Originally Posted by frozenchief

Knowing moose and living in AK, that’s fairly humorous. I absolutely get why you’d be scared but looking back, you have to see the humor.

Now you have to tell about the guy with the gun.

The on post housing the ex and I lived in had about a 4 foot high front porch, we used to stand on it and feed them fruits and veggies... they'd come down into post to eat because the snow wasnt as deep as it was in the woods

They were all over the place up there, but standing on a porch next to quick help is a lot different than being alone with one in the back 40

The gun story is much easier to tell

Back in high school, me and a buddy went to pick up his girlfriend, she lived kinda out in the country but there were several houses around

She was gonna sneak out of her bedroom window, so we parked a couple houses down... it was pretty late, like 11 or 12

Apparently one of the neighbors spotted us parking and turning our lights off, well he snuck up on us with me in the passenger seat, window down

All of the sudden I've got black snubnose parked right upside my head and this guy saying 'what in the **** are you guys doing out here?!'

I couldnt even bring myself to speak, but my buddy quickly told him what was up and he told us to get the **** outta Dodge... and so we did, quite rapidly