Cool wildlife sightings or encounters?

[DAA]

I

[Glockguy]

8 years ago i was driving along the Alaska Highway and saw a black bear browsing around the side of the road.

I slammed the brakes and screeched to a halt and started snapping off pictures. The bear ran off into the bush about 10 yards and I left the protection of the car to get some more pics. At this point the bear was still about 40 yards away...car was 5 yards from me.

The bear stood up on its hind legs and "woofed" at me. it really sounded more like a big dog than what I had ever imagined a bear sounding like.

It then too a swipe a a small (3" diameter) aspen. The aspen broke with a snap that echoes throughout the forest. With that I got back in the car before the bear ran off.

[greyhair biker]

Iv e run across a few mountain lions on trail but the closest one was about 30 feet away up in a tree. My brother and I were hiking up above Wasatch State Park outside of Midway and it must have not heard us cause we scared the crap out of it, or to put it more accurate, it was just a hair more scared than we were :haha: . Ive run across badgers on the trail and snakes that Ive jumped on the bike. Driving over the pass above Flaming Gorge towards Vernal I was nearly run over by a cow moose crossing the road....I say run over cause I was in a little S15 pickup at the time, and her belly was at eye level.
Freakiest encounter: had to put my bike in between me and a fox that would not be skeered away on the trail, it was eerie the way it eyed me up and down...didnt act like a normal animal..thought it was rabid :eek2:

[sparker1]

Moose, fox, coyote, porcupine, black bear, grizzly, wolf, wolverine, elk, deer, rabbit, wild horse, pine martin, otter, muskrat, beaver, marmot, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, caribou, and probably others I don't recall...all I've encountered in the wild. Never a mountain lion (I'd love that). Most exciting was a grizzly about 30 feet from me. I was OK as long as he was focused on his fish. When he noticed me, I beat it back to the car.

[savanna3313]

Moose, fox, coyote, porcupine, black bear, grizzly, wolf, wolverine, elk, deer, rabbit, wild horse, pine martin, otter, muskrat, beaver, marmot, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, caribou, and probably others I don't recall...all I've encountered in the wild. Never a mountain lion (I'd love that). Most exciting was a grizzly about 30 feet from me. I was OK as long as he was focused on his fish. When he noticed me, I beat it back to the car.

Very cool photos! At least the last photo posted wasn't the bear getting a shot of you.. :haha:

[asdf]

You should check out this post.

http://uutah.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3446&highlight=wildlife

[JP]

When he noticed me, I beat it back to the car.
LOL, That was a good decision :haha:

[accadacca]

It was a strange night in the ole capitol city. I would have never guessed that I would see such wildlife and wild scenes in the city. It was about 100 yards from my pickup when it spotted me. I ran like HELL for my truck, it seemed like the longest 10 feet back to my truck that I had ever experienced. I fired up the engine, threw it in gear, and punched the throttle. Barely escaping the untamed beast. I am still unsure of what I saw on that strange night. Has anyone else ever seen such a beast? :eek2:

Photo (http://uutah.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5259)

[DiscGo]

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f375/DiscGolfDiver/DSC00932.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f375/DiscGolfDiver/bear2.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f375/DiscGolfDiver/AlaskanStreetGang.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f375/DiscGolfDiver/20030810BubbleNetFeeding02-1.jpg


I have been very fortunate in being able to have a lot of experiences with wild life. One of my favorite experiences was at a small cabin in a remote location in Alaska that you can only reach by float plane.

My friends and I went to my friend's family cabin for a week. We caught some salmon during the day and we were grilling it on his bbq pit for dinner. We went inside the house to grab some tongs to retrieve the potatoes in the pit, and when we returned a black bear was going after our potatoes. Black bears are usually more afraid of humans than humans are of bums. We started clapping our hands and yelling at it, but the bear didn't even notice us. The bear ended up getting closer to the coals than he should have and got singed a little. He made a really funny noise and ran in to the woods. As he ran away there was a pile of smoking following him. You probably had to be there, but it was great.

[Mtnman1830]

While I went up to waterfall canyon, I saw some blood and dog prints on the trail. I didn' t think much of it, just some dog had hurt its paw.

Further up the trail, I could hear barking dogs. I hiked up the ridge and this is what I saw.
























(okay, so I emblished with the pics. But I ran into some hunters that belonged to the dogs, which had a lion treed.

[sparker1]

DiscGo, I love the shot of the bears on the road. It almost looks like Cassiar Highway in BC. Where was it? You'll see lots of wildlife at Denali this summer.

[DiscGo]

It was in Juneau, AK (actually near the end of the road on Douglas Island, which is considered part of Juneau).


P.S. The picture of the whales doing "bubble net feeding", is far more rare.

[DiscGo]

Mtnman- Those pictures are awesome!

[DAA]

You should check out this post.

http://uutah.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3446&highlight=wildlife

Cool thread, thanks for the link!

Lots of good stuff being posted here. Thanks folks!

- DAA

[Scott P]

[quote]I

[Cirrus2000]

No fair! Scott's been to all the cool places!

Interesting stories, all. I've just got run of the mill bears, elk, mountain goats, etc... Very rarely with camera ready to go. Oh, and the skunk who stole my bread. B*st*rd.

[Scott P]

Scott's been to all the cool places!

Well, not really. I've only been to some of them. I've been only to the countries marked in red on the map. I still have a lot more places to go, even in Utah. :2thumbs: Haven't been to all the cool places yet.

[scoutabout]

I've had several encounters with moose up in American Fork Canyon. There's one that seems to spend a lot of time at Forest Lake in the summer.

http://www.utahoffroad.com/photos/trip_018/images/14.jpg

I've happened into moose several times on the various roads in the canyon. It seems that moose don't care about 4x4's and noise as much as people might think.

I also had a face-to-face experience with a bull moose while backpacking in the Wind Rivers, but I was too concerned about surviving to get a picture.

[RugerShooter]

Them are some nice pictures all of you have taken

[Mtnman1830]

here are some pics that I posted on the other thread. Unlike my cougar pics, these I did take.

[sparker1]

Yeah, I forgot bison, and whales (not exactly on a trail).

[Scott Card]

Here is the wild life I saw last Saturday.

[Scott Card]

Opps, wrong photo. Stupid technology that I still don't know how to use. This time I previewed it.

[Mtnman1830]

Lets talk bison...

[DAA]

...I've happened into moose several times on the various roads in the canyon. It seems that moose don't care about 4x4's and noise as much as people might think....



Moose can be downright aggressive towards vehicles. Actually, one of my own most memorable wildlife encounters involved a moose and a vehicle. Long-long time ago (20 years?), I was bombing up Mirror Lake Hwy out of Kamas one beautiful early summer morning. Came around a corner and there was a spanking new Chevy Berretta stopped in my lane. Stopped because there was a bull moose standing in the road. Just enough traffic coming down to prevent going around it. We sat there a minute, and then the guy in the car honked his horn at the moose. MISTAKE! What followed was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The moose instantly went from bored indiffference to raging aggression. It was going way high up on it's hind legs, front hooves together high in the air, then bringing the front hooves down on the hood of that little car. Within just maybe 20 seconds, the hood of the car was ALL caved in. But then the moose came around the side a little bit, and started to cave in the windshield and roof! The guy driving slammed it in reverse and punched it. Thought he was going to hit me for a second, but he swerved right off the road and crunched the rear bumper into a big boulder. By now I can hear the frantic noises coming from the young Japanese tourist couple inside the Berretta, as the moose comes over and starts working over the car some more. For maybe the next 30 seconds, it sounded like the soundtrack from a Godzilla movie... Breaking glass and bending steel, accompanied by frantic Japanese. Finallly the moose just stopped, and calmly walked away.

I got out of my truck and went to make sure nobody was hurt. The young couple didn't speak a lick of English, and I didn't speak Japanese, but it was pretty clear that they were only shook up and not hurt. And also that the young woman was PISSED at her husband... The car was uglied up something fierce, but drivable. So I left them there arguing and went on my way.

The epiloque came several days later. One of my friends was doing all the body and paint work for Budget rent a car at the time. I was visiting him at the shop and he starts telling me about this Berretta he got in that was all smashed up from a moose... Truly a small world :mrgreen: .

- DAA

[tallsteve]

A couple of years ago, in the fall, I stood about 20 yards away from two bull moose fighting near Mud Springs in AF Canyon. One of the coolest things I've ever seen. They'd back up about 5 yards from each other then charge and "BAMMM"! Hot heads, rattle the antlers for a minute or so, then back up and start all over again. They didn't seem to care that we were so close and watching.
Humpback whale watching from the deck of a small boat off the coast of Puerta Vallarta last year. I don't think I've ever been that close to something so big.

[mroy]

Two summers ago at snowbasin I almost literally ran into a bull moose on the trail. Was riding downhill pretty fast, rounded a corner into a clearing and screeched to a halt 5 feet from the moose. After a couple seconds of looking me over he just walked off, thankfully.

[erial]

owl and owlet in Washington Oaks Gardens State Park north of Daytona, last month.