Wildlife Encounters

[farleycat]

After watching a wildlife show the other evening I was thinking of the encounters I have had which aren't many. Mostly with snakes either in the water or on the way to water. In all cases I give them a WIDE berth.
What encounters have you had when flyfishing? Bears, angry moose, snakes or whatever...just curious.
Bernie

[Lew]

Three moose, a black bear, a skunk, and one very ticked off beaver. Sometimes a wide berth isn't an option, so luck comes into play. Fleetness used to help, but not any more.

[DG]

There should be a couple threads of this in the archives, but...

I have been run out of the river by moose, snarled at by otters many times, had bears wander past and meet me on the trail. I once hit a bighorn sheep with a backcast, and several years later met another on a trail on a narrow shelf above some deep water. I have also had a bald eagle nearly land on my head while I was tying on a fly.

[flyfishfairwx]

bears and moose and wolves, on this one encounter I was sure glad to have Fischer with me, he alerted me to the two wolves watching me!!!.
have saw Cougar tracks over mine, and saw sheep and goats, at elevation..

Living in SWAB Can I am sure that I will see more..

[Marco]

A few bear encounters and two moose encounters. I had to spend a full day on a Snake River island onaccounta a moose was on shore st the shallowest crossing point. The bear encounters were a bit tougher. This griz guarding his buried elk kill made a few nasty noises toward us but thankfully held his ground . The pic was taken through a binocular lens.

[Panman]

Summer of 1963 my partner Wayne Cousins & I were motoring in a boat towards Valdez Alaska after a great outing for salmon. There was an old deserted cannery along the shore with a deck out into the bay. There was a ladder on the deck that allowed a boater to tie onto the deck and go into the cannery door which was maybe 10 or 15 ft away. Being nosey we pulled the boat up to the deck & Wayne held the boat and I started up the ladder. I was about 3 steps upon the ladder and waist high above the deck and I was just getting ready to hoist myself onto the deck when the door to the cannery swung open and a 5000 lb (lol) grizzley stuck its head out and let out a great big woof. I let go of the ladder and fell into the boat and away we went both scared beyond belief.

The most painful was on a small creek out of Evergreen Colorado when I stepped on some debris that was lodged between two rocks in the center of the creek. There was a coloney of bees of some type that didn't take kindly to be being disturbed and let me know it.

[branhap]

I've had a few encounters with Bison when I fished Soda Butte this past summer.

The first case was a bison that came off the ridge and decided to lay down/roll around on a small island, basically blocking my way back to the trailhead.

The second case, I was fishing, with the bison over the ridge. The herd moved off the ridge down to the river to get drinks of water. 5 minutes earlier I was fishing the hole they were drinking out of, so I was very pleased to have left a few minutes earlier.

Same trip was fishing the Madison, and could hear several elk in the pines beyond my view.

Outside of Yellowstone, I've mainly had Antelope and deer as I'm driving out to a lake with the boat in tow. In one case, I narrowly missed a large mule buck running in front of my truck.

Paul

[modocdan]

Probably the most painful I had was getting covered with red fire ants while bustin brush between holes on the Pit River in N. CA...... I hollered, stripped down, and jumped in the cold water with my rod in my hand. Had quite a few dozen welts on my hide from it......My fishin partner Terry just laughed and laughed til he couldn't see through the tears in his eyes.............

[hungNtree]

Probably the most painful I had was getting covered with red fire ants while bustin brush between holes on the Pit River in N. CA...... I hollered, stripped down, and jumped in the cold water with my rod in my hand. Had quite a few dozen welts on my hide from it......My fishin partner Terry just laughed and laughed til he couldn't see through the tears in his eyes.............

Clorox bleach. My wife is from South GA and there are plenty of fire ant mounds down there. They say that pouring bleach on a bite will burn a few minutes but then take the sting out!?! I hope I don't have to find out if that works or not.

Mostly I have just encountered snakes, and that is plenty for me. I am 6"4" and weigh way to close to 300 pounds, but I'll run like a little school girl to get away from them things.

hNt

[Old #art]

Back in high school days--while using a makeshift latrine in our campsite, looked back between my legs and there was this 4 foot timber rattler moving slowly toward me. You cant move very well with your pants down around your ankles.

Then there was the alligator that I had hooked while fishing with my son in a canoe. He thought it was a big drum and grabbed the shock leader to get him up to unhook it. It surfaced with open jaws and "the kid" fell backwards in the canoe and came very close to putting both of us in the water with the gator.

George