Let's talk wildlife experiences

[Rathwulven BC]

Hi folks

I just had a talk with a fellow mountaineer of mine and we talked about crazy encounters with wildlife. I was wondering if you have stories to tell, too.

I wanna share one:

Maybe you are familiar with the infamous "vixen's scream" of the red fox. Compared to that of a lynx, the vixen's scream is nothing. So it came to be that one day a befriended hiker and me went off to the French Alps, close to Claviere. He is about two heads taller than me and used to brag a lot about his prior carreer as a muay thai fighter and how that made him - as he repeatedly stated, "a tough guy, you know". Let's call him "Bill" for matters of discretion.

So it came to be that we are at an altitude of some 2800m to 3000m - absolute silence, sleeping peacefully. All of a sudden Bill shakes me awake, completely zoned out. "Man! Man! Did you hear that! There is someone! Man wake up for %&/%§"(/& sake!"

Ripped out of my Zen, I heard a familiar sound echoing from somewhere at the edge of the valley. "F..k man, what the hell is going on?" Bill breathes heavily. "What the f... is this??? Is there someone dying or what? $!/"!"§!"!!!!"

Bill rips the tent zipper open, grabs his headlight, a medipack and his Opinel and slowly creeps towards the sound. "Hello?" HELLOOOO?!!" I have to laugh a little. "Jesus man, what is this???? I HAVE A KNIFE!" I burst out in lunatic laughter. "WHAT'S SO FUNNY YOU "!(&§$!("/$???????"

I let him walk for a minute and watched the spectacle. The face of him coming back, out of breath and repeatedly asking what the hell was going on here was just priceless. "I thought you were a cat person?", I asked. "What the f..k is that supposed to mean man????"

The rest is self-explanatory. I explained that what he heard were those fellas here:

What stories do you guys have to share?

 

[Matt]

in reply to your post .....

wind the clock back around 4 years ....

myself and @gavin were on a trip north of the border (Scottish highlands ) ...we found a suitable woodland to set up in and got to work

A couple hrs latter we settled down to our evening meal sat around the fire ...our hammocks and tarps we all set up ready for when we turned in for the night ...

we sat around the fire yapping about how quiet it was and how much we enjoyed heading to the far flung corners of Scotland so we could enjoy the solitude away from the rat race and all that

any way the time came for us to head to our hammocks and get our heads down .....a few hrs latter i was woken buy what sounded like 2 big cats fighting ..

my first thought was i was hearing things and i looked across to gavs hammock and i could see he had a light on so i shouted to him "what the f*ck is that " making the noise ....he answered dont know

my next thought was where did i leave my axe

the next day we ventured into the nearest village and asked at the information center on what the noise could have been and they told us they have wild cats that have been breading in the area ...and if we had a photo of them we would have been paid thousands

 

[1 shot willie]

Remember it well Matt

Scotlands Wild Cats.

 

[Rathwulven BC]

Yeah, they also can make quite some noise.

 

[Joecole]

When I was a security inspector I got a phone call from one of my female security officers saying that somebody as being murdered on the site which also was where my office was. I told her to lock herself I the office and wait until I got there which too about 5 minutes drive. Anyway one terrified female ad about a hundred yards away one very happy vixen. Wat is normal for the lies of us is anything but normal to some people

 

[Rathwulven BC]

How do you mean by vixen - the lynx or the fox?

I can relate to the story with the fox, where I come from there still are myths told to children about witches living in our forests, which are then linked to both the fox's screams as well as to "witch snot" (i.e. jelly-like vomit of herons that ate amphibia and hence trigger a chemical reaction in their stomach) which can be found in the early spring. I guess it is the same mechanism as usual: People are always more afraid of the things they know the the utmost little about. Phantasy and imagination can be a b*tch haha.

When I was a security inspector I got a phone call from one of my female security officers saying that somebody as being murdered on the site which also was where my office was. I told her to lock herself I the office and wait until I got there which too about 5 minutes drive. Anyway one terrified female ad about a hundred yards away one very happy vixen. Wat is normal for the lies of us is anything but normal to some people

 

[Joecole]

How do you mean by vixen - the lynx or the fox?

I can relate to the story with the fox, where I come from there still are myths told to children about witches living in our forests, which are then linked to both the fox's screams as well as to "witch snot" (i.e. jelly-like vomit of herons that ate amphibia and hence trigger a chemical reaction in their stomach) which can be found in the early spring. I guess it is the same mechanism as usual: People are always more afraid of the things they know the the utmost little about. Phantasy and imagination can be a b*tch haha.

sorry for the spelling, sometimes my laptop misses a key hence the missing letters. @Rathwulven BC I'm referring to the fox

 

[Rathwulven BC]

sorry for the spelling, sometimes my laptop misses a key hence the missing letters. @Rathwulven BC I'm referring to the fox

No worries!

 

[Ark79]

Fishing at the rocks in Arbroath a place called needle point. Standing waiting on a bite with the water swishing on the side of my wellies. All nice and relaxed and focused. When a dirty great big seal surfaced right at my feet. Well I shit myself the rod got thrown behind me and I took of to the laughter of my cousins not the best experience but one I will remember lol

 

[Bopdude]

Quiet a few experiences, some closer than others, mostly from when I was living in South Africa, probably the one that have most danger was in the Kruger National Park, had my family over for a holiday so rented a house just outside the park, on one of the visits into the park we were driving down the track towards a tree line, when we got there we got there the same time as a big bull elephant who want best pleased to see us, we slung the cars into reverse as he came toward us ears and trunk flapping and trumpeting, took a coupe of hundred meters before he stopped. A few more stories but that one sticks out.

 

[Rathwulven BC]

Fishing at the rocks in Arbroath a place called needle point. Standing waiting on a bite with the water swishing on the side of my wellies. All nice and relaxed and focused. When a dirty great big seal surfaced right at my feet. Well I shit myself the rod got thrown behind me and I took of to the laughter of my cousins not the best experience but one I will remember lol

Haha certainly worth it, I bet.

 

[Rathwulven BC]

That one also must be a rather impressive experience. I, unfortunately, only met domesticated elephants so far. Their power...

Quiet a few experiences, some closer than others, mostly from when I was living in South Africa, probably the one that have most danger was in the Kruger National Park, had my family over for a holiday so rented a house just outside the park, on one of the visits into the park we were driving down the track towards a tree line, when we got there we got there the same time as a big bull elephant who want best pleased to see us, we slung the cars into reverse as he came toward us ears and trunk flapping and trumpeting, took a coupe of hundred meters before he stopped. A few more stories but that one sticks out.

 

[Rathwulven BC]

I am also just thinking of yet another classic encounter: Man vs. boar. Takes me back some 16 years...

Not sure of my age these days, but it must have been around 14-ish. Went out with all the other rowdies and wannabe-badasses of my airsoft-team, MP5-copy locked and loaded around my neck and covered in camo paint and Flecktarn-BDU. We penetrated one of our local forests for a kilometer or two and to my left I heard some rustling sound in the bushes to my left. Then everything went terribly fast: A bunch of startled shoats ran out of the undergrowth, followed by an outraged mama.

All I know is that I dropped the MP5 at once and somehow made it up a smaller tree. Don't ask me how I managed, but I learned that day that I can climb very swiftly hahaha. The rest of guys somehow scattered and screamed. Me too, of course. Up the tree, the wild sow bomped against the bottom of the tree and kept eye contact for most of the time, grunting and raging. Maybe for 15 minutes, or 30 - I really cannot remember due to the adrenalin rush. Once she calmed down, she made eye contact again and simply stayed at the foot of the tree. Let me tell you that she stayed there for some 2 hours. I still remember the pain in my buttcheeks.

Later that day we all discussed the matter, turning out that two of our guys have also been chased down by a tusker. Luckily only one of them got insured, not fatally but with a decent flesh wound in his lower leg.

To be fair: We were the reason for the entire scenario. Boars, as such, are actually rather peaceful for as long as one knows how to move forests without disturbing the habitat of those territorial animals. We did not know that at that time, and were very, very lucky.