Last August Wife and I went to Glacier National Park and the Canadian Rockies. I shared some photos here after our trip, as well as a few details. I made reference to an encounter we had with some bears, but did not go into details.
I recently wrote about this experience in my weekly column and wanted to share with blog readers:
https://brentwoodhomepage.com/bob-mckinney-what-i-know-293/
5 comments:
Great story! I have seen plenty of bears in the woods--my most scary story was walking back to my backcountry camp in Yosemite, where I had hiked to a cliff overlook for sunset. It was dark and I was by myself and the next think I knew, a full grown bear suddlenly rose up in front of me. I stepped back and he (or she) took off but left a pile of crap in the middle of the trail. I managed not to leave a similar pile in my pants.
Had I found a cub in the trail, struggling to breath or not, I would have high tailed it out of there just in case Mama bear was around.
I've seen lots of black bears on foot but usually the hind end as they were scrambling to get away from me. I've seen a couple grizzly from the safety of my vehicle along the road in Yellowstone. However, my closest encounter to a grizzly was in Glacier. We were hiking the Gunsight Pass Trail and I heard a rustling twenty feet ahead in a large clump of bushes. I thought it was a deer or something similar until I rounded the clump of bushes and saw a steaming pile of grizzly bear poop right in the middle of the trail. After that, I made more noise while walking.
Great story, Bob! I would have been rattled, too! (and I honesty can't say whether I would have whipped out my phone for a photo or not)
Unlike you, Ed, and Sage, I have no wild bear encounters to share. My only sightings in the wild were from my car in the Smoky Mountains while in college. I know AG&F (re?)introduced them at Felsenthal, but I'd be very surprised if one wandered my direction.
Oh my gosh, good story, but I can imagine your concern. It is not the first story this year I have heard of people having encounters with bears. I wonder if it was the mild winter or spring that many talk about that has brought them more out in the open, closer to where people will be. I love wildlife from afar, but I think that would spook me for sure.
Here's a funny story from Pennsylvania for you, as related to me by one very elderly (and funny) man: "I was sitting in my chair watching television one evening, and I heard the door to the mudroom slam. I figured it was my son stopping by to check on me, so I didn't pay any attention. But I could hear him moving around, not saying anything. So I yelled, 'I'm in here'. I got no answer, but could hear somebody rattling around. I figured that there was somebody in my house. So I got up out of my recliner, and headed for the back door. I threw open the back door to the mudroom, and there he was: a bear, holding on to a bag of bird seed. I was so shocked I just stared. He was so shocked he stared right back. Suddenly he let loose with a stream of pee. There was no noise but the splashing of pee on my floor. When he was done, he turned around with the bag of birdseed, went right out the screen door and the last I saw him he was heading to the woods at a pretty good clip." I was howling as he told me the story. He looked at me dead serious and said, "T'ain't funny. Do you have any idea how much a bear can pee? What a mess that was to clean up, and the mudroom stank of it for quite a while."
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