Quote:
Originally Posted by Boise_Chief
A moose on a narrow trail on snow machines is sketchier for me than a black bear. The most nervous I have been was walking up on a fresh cougar kill while elk hunting. I knew it was within 50 yards of me and I couldn't see it. The doe was still warm and the blood wasn't coagulated yet. Definitely a gtfo moment.
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Moose on snow machines are definitely sketchy, although by the time you can ride snow machines it is usually December. The big bulls are no longer in rut and cows are a long way from dropping calves. The issue is more hitting them because they are so damn big than their aggression. You think hitting a deer is bad for your car? Try hitting a moose. They're so tall that most cars and even some trucks go under them, hit the legs and then the body rolls into the passenger section of the car. In this state there is a 'road kill list' of people who sign up to take moose or other game animals that have been hit by cars/illegally shot/otherwise killed. No joke. An average moose will mean about 400-500 pounds of meat.
May is a bad month to see cows up close because they have usually just dropped calves and they are super aggressive. An exchange student got stomped to death a few years ago because he walked out of the back of the college library. The back door went to a secluded parking lot and there was a moose with her newborn calf. Mom was on one side of the steps and the baby was on the other side of the steps. He didn't see them or didn't realize it or something but hit the bottom of a short set of steps and got between them. She stomped him to death in Anchorage so it wasn't even out in the middle of nowhere. Bulls are rutting in September/October and are thus more aggressive then. I saw a moose walking down the middle of a highway in early September on year. Cars were backed up while this moose just stood in the middle of the road. Massive rack and you could tell he just did not give a ****. It was actually pretty impressive.
I have a friend who was driving up to a cabin to do some moose hunting with some people he knew. They had 4 wheelers at the cabin. The cabin was in the middle of the woods off an old logging road and they were in one guy's Ford mini-van. This was about 15 years ago or so. They're driving down this logging road in the middle of nowhere and this huge bull moose steps out in front of them. He didn't take kindly to their proximity so he charged. Driver couldn't stop and reverse in time and the moose rammed the front of the car with his front tines. Went right into the radiator. Once he had the radiator speared, he turned his head and put the minivan on its side. He stepped back and snorted and watched the minivan steam and die. He then went off into the woods.
Rode up a frozen lake one year on a snow machine after a huge snowstorm. We rounded an island and on the lee side of the island were several moose bedded down in the snow. We stopped quickly but we were quite close to them. They sighed and trudged off, snow deeper than their chest. One clearly did not want to move even though my friend was very close. When the moose didn't move, he leaned off his snow machine and petted it on the nose. That was the final straw and it got up and followed the path cut by its friends and trudged away.
Biggest GTFO moment for me was chasing brown bears out of my yard and boat one night. I was holding a rifle but also had a flash light in my left hand (Didn't have a rifle with a tactical flashlight at the time).
We lived on a lake. It was 9/10/01 and this was about 10:00 at night. I was scheduled to start a trial the next day and had come home late to see the bear in our yard. It ran down to the beach area. We'd seen it a couple of times over the previous few days. My kids were much younger then and I did not want a bear around. So I grabbed the rifle and flashlight and went after it.
Saw the bear in my boat. (Boat was an 18' Lund with a kicker pulled up onto the shore). His head was down so he was smelling the fish that I'd caught the previous weekend. He saw my flashlight and looked up at me. He was more curious than aggressive but if you want to talk about a time when your butt puckers, it would be when a brown bear is looking right at you. He stared at me for a bit. Probably 3-4 seconds. Felt like a few months. I fired the rifle into the air.* He took off at the sound and I did not see him again.
* I know this is typically not advisable but I didn't aim straight up. I aimed at about a 45 degree angle. I knew that there was nothing out there so I was not ignoring gun safety.