Wildest animal you've been confronted with?

[Sandy G]

Ha, that sounds weird enough to be true. I'm like that too, animals like me a lot more than they do most people. Even so-called mean dogs. I figure if you're nutty enough, they probably don't see you as a food OR a threat. :scratch2:

Yeah...Back when I had my beloved Junior, the Dobermann, I got where I'd walk up to "Certified, Guaranteed Killers" Dobies & would invariably end up scratching & lovin' up on 'em. Even had one "paw" at me, 'cause he wanted more...Junior's been gone since '93, I STILL miss him...

 

[jonman]

A bear, a buffalo, a coyote and two exwives.

 

[Uncle Bambi]

....Then suddenly just a couple feet from me I hear all this loud rustling, then all of a sudden a couple of shorts, and a couple stomps.. and I could feel the ground shaking...

. .THANKFULLY I had my shotgun loaded, but it was only bird shot.. #8... so I knew I was screwed. That would just bounce off his skull..

Something similar happened to me once, except I was hunting quail and the stomping and snorting was a wild boar.

Unlike your deer, this pig did come right at me and at about 5 yards I let loose with #9 birdshot between his eyes. At close range, it was almost like a slug.... didn't kill him, but knocked him down long enough for me to close the distance and put the next one in his ear.

It took us two hours to drag that carcass out of the canyon we were in, but we had some mighty fine BBQ that evening.

 

[OvenMaster]

I live in a built-up area of a small (40k) city. In my 1/4 acre yard, we've had possum, red foxes, turkey vultures, whole families of skunks and rabbits. Two years ago, there was a black bear cub in a tree about 300feet away... cops had everyone locked down in their houses as they got him down.

Just last week, I flipped on the light under the patio while I looked out the back door. Not three feet away was a monstrous raccoon, I swear three feet long. I froze in place. He just looked at me, sniffed around, then bumbled away. Thankfully.

 

[rnorton]

Yeah...Back when I had my beloved Junior, the Dobermann, I got where I'd walk up to "Certified, Guaranteed Killers" Dobies & would invariably end up scratching & lovin' up on 'em. Even had one "paw" at me, 'cause he wanted more...Junior's been gone since '93, I STILL miss him...

I had a red Dobie for about 12 years. Named him Dewie Byte. What a marshmallow of a dog. His idea of attacking was to lean against your leg until you lost your balance. He used to rescue baby birds that fell (or were pushed) from their nests and carried them around in his mouth until he could find me to help put them back.

All of the 'attack' dogs at that school were Dobies, too.

 

[opt80]

Ex-wife

 

[quneur]

Something similar happened to me once, except I was hunting quail and the stomping and snorting was a wild boar.

Unlike your deer, this pig did come right at me and at about 5 yards I let loose with #9 birdshot between his eyes. At close range, it was almost like a slug.... didn't kill him, but knocked him down long enough for me to close the distance and put the next one in his ear.

It took us two hours to drag that carcass out of the canyon we were in, but we had some mighty fine BBQ that evening.

14yrs old and young pup's first hunt hunting pheasants in Parker Ranch on the Big Island. All I had was a 20ga with #6 shot. Stepped up to a little gully and a red boar stood grubbing not 30' from me. It had to be atleast 4' at the shoulder. On the side of the boar was a bush which my dog was going crazy sniffing but fortunately didn't see the boar and the boar wasn't aware of us. I snorted, the boar looked up and we stared at each other then the boar snorted and took off.

Other time the dog pointed a bush then looked at me confused. So, I told my 11yr old friend to go to the other side and we surrounded the bush. Threw a large rock and out flushed a decent sized boar (3' at the shoulder).

 

[tchuck]

...

One of my grizzly bear encounters happened in pitch black while my buddy and I were in a tent. Bears were fighting and literally crashing into our tent. At times their growls came from maybe a foot away. We could hear their spit gargle and nostrils blow snot.

...

That's crazy.

 

[thomo57]

I've had numerous encounters with snakes when I was young.
We used to hunt them and skin them.
Mainly Tigers, Eastern Browns, Copperheads and Red belly blacks.

They get very aggresive during mating season, if you see one keep an eye out for the other one.


I had a close encounter with a ferocious Koala bear.
It almost stopped chewing gum leaves and leapt onto me. Very close call


Years ago in Queensland I decided to go and shoot a couple of kangaroos for dog meat.

I was walking along the timber line and could see where pigs had rooted up all the ground.
Next second I heard a fierce snorting and carry on just up above me.

Next thing this huge wild boar come running out of the scrub about 15 meters away snorting and sniffing the air and heading directly towards me.

I had just walked behind a very small lantana bush and stopped knowing they don't have the best eye sight.

I poked the .303 calibre rifle through the bush and let him have one.
I hit him just above the right eye and it just pole axed him.

When I disected him I pulled the slug from his rib cage.

The dogs were eating pork for a couple of months:thmbsp:

 

[jimfet]

I was young. She was drunk.

 

[eedork]

I hike a lot in Maine and New Hampshire and haven't had that many notable encounters with anything considering how much time I've spent in the woods. One that sticks out is a moose encounter in early fall. A buddy and I were backpacking in the Mt Bond area of the White Mountains and were driving down an old logging road to the trailhead. It was maybe 7 pm and we were going to hike in with headlamps for a couple of hours and set up camp for the night. Anyhoo, driving down the logging road we pull up on a moose. A male, but not full grown. He turns around and just stares at us for a few minutes, maybe 20 feet in front of us. We were in a truck, so we weren't that worked up. But the damn thing didn't want to let us pass. Finally it slowly walked off the road to a clearing, but it kept watching us as we drove further down the road. We were a little on edge that night thinking that it might try to follow us in.

One other encounter I remember was maybe 10 years ago at dusk on a summer night. My wife and I were driving a back road near our house in the Wells/North Berwick area of Maine ... this was a dark and quiet back road and out of the corner of my eye I notice something large moving immediately to the left of us. I instinctively swerved to the right and missed it. Turns out it was huge ass moose and it almost ran straight into our car. If I hadn't swerved, we would have taken its legs out and been squashed. That was a very close call and I remember being pretty shook up for a while afterwards. A full size moose is an extremely large animal ... I distinctly remember looking up at its belly and thinking that it was just about as big as the old Saab 900 we were driving.

Matt

 

[cool9]

15 yr old niece got attacked by a pelican while boating near Tampa and she freaked out.

Pheasants are the greatest thing in the World to hunt. You have to almost step on them to scare them up and their cackling scares the bejesus out of you. And they are hard to hit - very fast in flight. Beautiful birds.

05-18-2012, N.C. Scientist tries to grab alligator (ie. don't ever try this):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIFBOXHHXOA

 

[waterjetguy]

!

I 've had two really close calls.

I ran up the steps to a friend's deck in Tahoe, and came within about an inch of slapping a bear on the ass, thinking it was his golden retriever. I managed to stop my hand just as his head was swiveling around and I realized that it was NOT Bert's nose. Next thing I knew I was perched on the deck railing with a 12 foot drop to the pavement below me. No idea how I got up there. The bear just took his time and ambled off the back into the woods.

One morning on my daily hike up Rattlesnake Mt (see where this is going?), I decided to run down, and got a good scare. I was going just about full tilt, jumped off a rock, and on the way down, I realized that I was going to plant my foot square on a coiled rattler. I managed to stretch my leg out and land just past him, and man, did I move then! I don't think I've ever run that fast. I was lucky that it was still cold, and he probably could barely move...

 

[drknstrmyknight]

Ex-wife

I think I might have married her, too. :thmbsp:
I was a mailman for many years in Chicago, had a few large dog confrontations.
Encountered a very large (to me) crocodile while my brother in law was trying to fish his golf ball out of the edge of lagoon. I stared at it for it for a second trying to figure out what I was looking at when at lunged but I was a lot younger then and I bet I did 50 feet in three steps.

 

[scuba]

African Bull elphant

Got mock charged by a bull elephant in Chobe National Park in Uganda back in the 70's. My brain told me it was a mock charge just for show, my legs though said F... that and ran the rest of me out of the bush like the hounds of hell were on my tail only to be confronted by my whole family laughing their asses off. It sounds funny now, wasn't funny then. :dammit:

 

[squirrelnest]

....

 

[jhoak]

At 15 to 18 I lived in a house on a canal that lead in to a pretty good sized lake. The house next door was empty and their canal access was pretty over grown.

Early one morning I was at the canal edge drowning a few worms and I guess I caught the attention of a LARGE momma aligator who was guarding her brood. She was NOT ammused at my presence there and came at me hissing and mouth open.

That's the day that I learned that I can run backwards damn near as fast as I can forward.

 

[spaceman]

I hike a lot in Maine and New Hampshire and haven't had that many notable encounters with anything considering how much time I've spent in the woods.

Heh, you just reminded me of something. One of my sisters lived up in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, near Crystal Lake, & I spent some few months at her place, getting over a divorce (back in the 80s). I had a few different jobs, & while driving to one, I came across a HUGE-ass turtle, on the road. It's lucky I wasn't going very fast, cause that thing was about 3 feet in diameter, & probably weighed somewhere close to 100 pounds. I know, because I stopped the car & picked him up, just to do it, and partly to get him the heck off the road sooner. I don't think he was a snapper, cause I put a big stick in front of him, and he clamped on, but didn't break it. :scratch2:

 

[spaceman]

Yeah...Back when I had my beloved Junior, the Dobermann, I got where I'd walk up to "Certified, Guaranteed Killers" Dobies & would invariably end up scratching & lovin' up on 'em. Even had one "paw" at me, 'cause he wanted more...Junior's been gone since '93, I STILL miss him...

You gotta watch out though, some of those Dobermans are perverts, LOL. A neighbor had a female, full-grown but still fairly young, & she'd "present" herself to me, sometimes, or rub on my leg, if I was close enough. Silly animal must have thought I was a pervert too, LOL. :nono:

 

[Bucky Badger]

I was standing out in the backyard with a cold beer in my hands and started to notice a small mound of dirt slowly rising from in front of me. All of a sudden out pops this mole. It looks around and then charges me. I am watching as this furry brown twinkie is makin' a bee line for me. Needless to say, I backed up, tripped, spilled my beer and feel on my ass. Then got up like my pants were on fire.
True story.