last december a woman here was hit by a deer while jogging. what makes that interesting? the deer was flying through the air after getting hit by a car.
i live and work in a suburban/semi-rural area in nj, and also see tons of wildlife on a daily basis. in my yard i've had black bear, red fox, coyote, red tailed hawks, raccoons, skunks, screech owls, deer and squirrels innumerable, and bats in my house several times. most recently two weeks ago, when i had to catch a bat upstairs in my house at 3 a.m. i've come face to face with bears while hiking several times, literally - they're coming one ay down the trail and i'm going the other, we come around a bend and we both get a surprise. last month i had a bear cub about ten feet from me off the side of the trail watching me. i was more concerned about momma bear and got the hell out of there. usually, these being black bears and not perpetually pissed of brown bears like grizzlies, they take off running when you yell and clap your hands. i've posted before about spending a month working in alaska, along the northern coast. look towards the water as you're working, and there go a pod of whales swimming by. look to your left, and there are musk ox, caribou, and ground squirrels hanging around. i was stalked by a polar bear at one point, but our spotter caught my attention, and i got up the hill to the base, while he made a bee line right for the exact spot where i was working.
most of my stories with wildlife are pretty tame however i do want to go live in the alaskan bush for at least a year minimum dick proenneke style
growing up in rural west virginia i had quite a few encounters with snakes and turtles (initiated by me), but the one that stands out most was the owl. i had gotten off work one friday (2nd shift) and was staying at my parents' for the weekend. soon as i stepped out of my car i heard something screaming from the pines behind the house - it sounded like a crow being killed. so i went inside, grabbed a big spotlight and my riot gun and went into the woods to check it out. it sounded like a crow being killed because that's exactly what it was. at the edge of the woods overlooking a long slope into a field (right where crows roost) a barred owl had one pinned to the ground in its talons, and that crow wasn't going anywhere no matter how much it struggled. now, this isn't some cute screech owl or barn owl - this is a big fucking bird. like 44" wingspan big, pitch black eyes, real spooky. and he saw me - i got about 15 feet from him, and he made it clear that the crow was his. i figured fuck, owl's gotta eat too, and went back inside. about an hour later i went back out and both were gone.
oh and i forgot to mention while living out in the bush for 30 years he still made some contributions to science as well as helped fish and game catch poachers.
I was hiking in the Middle of Nowhere, Kentucky last weekend when a 3+foot-long timber rattlesnake decided to slither across the path in front of me and start rattling. My friends and I proceeded to take a (probably unnecessarily huge) detour off the path and spent the remaining 4 miles of the hike on high alert. We were about a mile down a trail an hour away from anything that could be considered civilization, and at least a half hour's drive from a reliable cell phone signal, which made the snake encounter seem pretty serious. But then again, maybe we're just a bunch of sissies.
Most of my interactions with wildlife end with them on my plate but this guy decided he liked to sleep in the bunk house of our cabin, I was taking a nap in the bunkhouse on a futon and when I woke up he was sleeping at the end of the futon right by the door perfectly coiled up. My wife swore it was just a piece of rope until I picked him up with a stick and put him in a bucket. Arizona black rattlesnakes are very good at small rodent reductions so I moved him 5 miles away in an area where there were no people. They are very quiet sleepers so if you are considering one as a pet that is a positive.
I remember seeing this on PBS years ago and loving it. That's the kind of stuff I dream about. I've been very close to some critters while hunting but I think my favorite encounters have been in the Boundary Waters here in Minnesota, on canoeing and fishing trips deep in the woods. Things like watching bald eagles fly across a bay to snatch fish guts off a rock within yards of our campfire, with talons fully stretched on the final approach. Or wake up to find new moose tracks and shit all over the campsite each morning. Moose are huge, yet we were never aware of them despite being a step away from our tents. That amazes me. Last October I found an old wolf turd in our campsite and we heard wolves howling at night, then I saw these super fresh tracks along a damp trail near the campsite the next morning: Spoiler Those very elusive yet very large animals impress me a lot more than your average deer, and constant reminders of how you're in their territory makes those trips even more enjoyable.
I've had a few interesting encounters with wildlife. The most memorable: - I was in Kotzebue, Alaska, working for Crowley Maritime Co. in 2013 as a shop-hand, and every time I went to the dump if there wasn't live grizzly bears there, there was fresh shed fur, poop and paw-prints to remind you that they were there, scavenging for refuse. A few of the native Inupiaq Inuits also had their fish camps broken into while the bear in question, an old boar bear quickly dubbed "Old Yogi the Shithead" by my shop's crew, was never found and shot to anyone's knowledge. I was also able to see lots of marine mammals, harbor porpoises once followed me around from the sea seemingly as I strolled by the beach in early fall. I never did see either an orca or beluga whale, save their remains, but I did see a lot of living seals, I think they were harbor seals as opposed to the more-often Inuit hunted bearded seals (Oogruk or simply oogies in native parlance) and while crab-fishing, got to see one of my fellow workers at Crowley shoot his gun over the heads of some seals to 'haze' them away; in his words "QUIT STEALING MY FUCKING BAIT SHEFISH FROM MY TRAPS YOU COCKSUCKING SEALS!". In winter, when the first serious sea ice set in, I got to see a mother polar bear and her cubs through a night-vision binoculars, and I was amazed how different they looked from the skinnier captive ones I saw at SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo. One night, in summer, the dogs all across the neighborhood, who bark and howl just for kicks, were getting really aggressive with their barking. I go outside in my boxers, expecting to see some other dog making them mad. It was a grizzly bear, eating out of the apartment Dumpster next to my house, and when he saw me, he just carefully got out of the Dumpster, and strolled on. I was only fifteen feet away. Wish I had a picture. I also got to help trap some wolverines to make some parka-lining, wow those are some animals. Strong, wily and very good at using their skunk-like musk to a great effect. Also watched a friend's hunting companion, an enormous Alaskan Husky/wolf/German Shepherd, attack and prevail over a wolverine. He killed it even as it sprayed him, bit and slashed his face a bit, and still within a minute, he was dead. My Inuit friend used that wolverine's pelt for making mittens for his three-year old son. - For the past two years, some nearby moose here have decided getting into my raspberry bushes and strawberry plants would be a good thing to do. My dogs, one of whom is directly descended from moose-hunting stock (His father is a West Siberian Laika with a Russian wolf for a great-grandpa), find this great, because they stalk up, lupine fashion and without any barking, to try and eat them. Moose have this weird bellowing growling moan they let loose when they are under attack by predators to try and intimidate the aggressor away, and my dogs never seem to fall for it as they bite at the moose's heels and artfully dodge the clumsier counter-attacks. Also, the moose, after a few trying to parry the predatory dog pack away with some kicks and rushing at them, gets intimidated itself and runs away. - On a hike, my dogs have frequently encountered many coyotes and to my knowledge only one wolf. They usually just intimidate the coyote away, but one notable time, the coyote play-bowed to them, and then they just romped around, and then the coyote just left, and my dogs came back to me. The wolf was also trying to play with them, but it saw me and took off running. One time a coyote tried to attack my Rottweiler/Siberian Husky who was a half-grown puppy this last winter on a hike, and Maximus and Chinook, my other two, rushed him and beat him into submitting and leaving. (The only reason said coyote isn't a pelt on my wall is because I only had my knife at the time, no bow or firearm) Also near my brother's high school, a pack of wolves found a road-killed elk and fed on it for about three days. It was pretty cool to see. - Deer are everywhere in North Idaho, seeing one now unless it is hunting season is nearly like, "Oh that's cool I guess." Just last week I saw a ten pointer in velvet as well as a couple smaller bucks and does and fawns, everywhere, in Hayden Lake village. I think they like it there because there is so many houses there, so it is in a way nearly a whitetail deer preserve because since most Idaho hunters are gun hunters, you can perhaps bow-hunt there, (FYI: For some odd reason, crossbows are illegal to use to hunt here unless you're disabled, I have no clue as to why.) but for years, the only thing limiting that population was the odd coyote, bobcat or red fox taking a fawn and the odd chance a pack of domestic dogs got together to kill a deer, they are impressive specimens. - Driving to Missoula I nearly hit a puma and her cubs with my Ranger and another time in Utah I saw a bleeding cow elk cross the road in front of me, and then saw the coyotes taking off after her, and yes, coyotes, they do go after bigger prey like elk, but usually only in packs and only in winter. It was amazing to behold.