When I was a young man, teens and 20s, I spent a lot of time camping, shooting and fishing, mostly in eastern Washington.
Usually camping with friends and -or- girlfriend, but sometimes I went solo. The time frame was approx. mid-70s to early 90s. Back then there wasn’t nearly as many people in the state as there is today, and getting away from people was a lot easier. Access to wilderness areas was a lot better, too. Now days everything seems to be gated, people everywhere.

We never camped in established campgrounds, we always tried to get as far away from people as we could. We found some great camping places, often miles from anyone.

Money was pretty tight back then for a working guy, but at some point I had managed to trade for a Smith and Wesson model 29-2 .44 magnum, nickel plated with a 6.5” barrel. I carried it cross-draw in an original Roy Baker pancake holster, and from the time I got it, it went on all my outdoor adventures. Always slept better outdoors, knowing it was within reach. Still have the gun and holster to this day, in fact.

In all the years I spent outdoors, I can only remember one time that I heard something that spooked me a little bit.
I was camping solo, wanting to fish a small river I had been to before, and no one could go with me that weekend. No problem, I loaded up my truck and headed out on a Friday afternoon after work, alone. The year was probably ’87 or ’88.

The area is on the east side of Chinook Pass. After you drop down from the summit a ways, there was a small dirt road leading off into the woods. Really hard to find, even knowing approximately where it was. You follow the very rough dirt road through heavy timber and eventually end up next to a small river. You’re quite a ways off the main road by the time you get to the end of it. It’s been years since I’ve been to this spot and would love to go back. But I haven’t been able to find that dirt road for many years now.

Anyway, I set up camp on the north side of the small river, and since I got there in the evening there wasn’t time for much beyond setting up camp and having dinner. I eventually went into my tent and slept well, tired from working all day, driving, etc.

The next day I fished and explored a little bit. There was a log that you could cross over the river to the other side, but you needed to be cautious. If you got lost over there you might never be found. Heavy timber and miles of wilderness.

This was long before the powerful high-quality LED flashlights that are available these days. I probably had some cheap flashlight in the tent, but my main camp light was a Coleman gas dual-mantle lantern. That was a great lantern, wish I still had it.

It was my habit to prepare the lantern long before it got dark. I topped off the fuel tank, made sure the mantles were good, and pumped up the pressure. As the light started to fade, I would light it and when it was warmed up, I would then turn it all the way down. It would idle along like that, burning almost no gas and putting out almost no light. Turning it up would provide instant light, and a significant amount of light at that. Range was limited, though.
I liked to enjoy the darkness and the campfire, so I would usually have the lantern turned down.

So this night, Saturday night, it was late enough that it was completely dark out. I was letting the campfire burn down before bedtime and it was pretty much just coals at this point, not providing any light to speak of. My lantern was on, but turned all the way down so my camp was very dark.

Almost ready for bed. I was sitting maybe ten feet from the river, enjoying the quiet when I heard what sounded like a pack of large wolves snarling on the other side of the river. Mind you, this is not a big river, maybe 10-20 feet across at different points with lots of log tangles. I could hear them clearly, they were just on the far bank, so very close to where I was. And they were moving. Facing the river from the north side, they were moving from right to left. I didn’t hear any brush popping or footsteps, just the snarling. It was so dark, I couldn’t even see the river, let alone the far bank.

I have heard coyotes plenty of times, when they have killed game, etc. I know exactly what they sound like. This wasn’t coyotes.
And there shouldn’t have been any wolves in Washington state in those years. But that’s exactly what they sounded like. Like they were fighting over a kill, but running at the same time. They never stopped snarling, but the sound faded quickly as they moved down the river. Somewhat unnerving, all things considered.

I didn’t have time to turn up my lantern and the light wouldn’t have reached to the other side of the river even if I did.
I thought about firing a shot or two into the river to let them know I was there, but then I realized they probably smelled the campfire and already knew that.
So I didn’t shoot, I just stood there for a while and tried to process what I had just heard.

And that was the end of it. Didn’t hear another thing the rest of the night. I didn’t think to cross the river in the morning and check for tracks. It was pretty brushy and not sure it I would have found anything even if I did.

I have heard bigfoot reports and some people have said they can mimic a lot of different sounds and animals.
I am a skeptic. Not saying they don’t exist, I consider myself reasonably open-minded, but I’m unconvinced at this point.
The Pacific Northwest is supposed to be a hot spot for bigfoot activity, but I’ve never seen one and not sure I want to.

Don’t think this was cougars, but there are many cougars in Washington state. This didn’t sound like a pack of cats.

It was a bit scary and not something I’ll ever forget.

What do you guys think I heard?

Do you have a scary camping story? Let’s hear it! Real experiences only, please.

Two quick ones.

I was camping in the California Redwoods with a friend. We drove there from Colorado in his ‘69 Z-28 and were touring around N California. We carelessly left some food out when we turned in for the night. Were awakened by snarling raccoons (at least two) who began to fight over the food. We’re sitting up on our elbows when two of them rolled into side of the tent. I bet I came off the ground a foot. No danger at all, but certainly had our attention.

Another time (both these stories are many years ago) I was camping with several friends and I had a little Kodak Instamatic camera that some of you might remember from years ago. It wasn’t until I was back home and developed the pictures that I noticed the tail of a lion hanging down from a limb in a neat inverted question mark from a tree limb just behind our fire.

With the entire world now carrying a video camera in their pocket, and the proliferation of trail cameras, I'm wondering where all the Bigfoots are hiding? I figure we would have gotten some good clear pictures, and even video, by now.

I dig these kinds of threads. Spend enough time in the woods and you're going to come back with a story or two. I don't have anything truly interesting, although I have had numerous times where coyote packs have been in extremely close proximity to me while fishing northern Michigan rivers at night. I don't worry too much about them, plus I am always armed.

The only time I had something happen that truly scared me that I could not explain, happened to me on the property I grew up on here in Southwest MI. I grew up on a small private lake out in the country. It was a great fishing and duck hunting lake, and there was a lot of wildlife all around.

One night as a teenager, I got the idea to go down to the lake at night. There was a two track leading down to the water, and my neighbor had a lilac hedge row that was at least 12 feet high, which established the property line. This hedge ran parallel to the two track for a ways.

As I started approaching the hedge row, something from the other side of it growled at me. I have never heard anything like it before or since. It was an extremely deep growl. I just froze for a second. Other than the shear volume and tone of the growl, what had me so startled and confused was that the noise seemed to be coming from just the other side of the hedge row and near the top of it. It was growling downwards at me. It was confusing because there weren't any trees or anything tall on the other side of the hedge for something to be sitting or standing on, and I cannot imagine anything that could produce that sound, that could be inside of that hedge.

It really rattled me. I finally snapped out of my fear enough to turn around and run back to the house.
I never saw anything, and I never had another experience like that. It has stuck with me ever since, and it still kind of bothers me to this day.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
With the entire world now carrying a video camera in their pocket, and the proliferation of trail cameras, I'm wondering where all the Bigfoots are hiding? I figure we would have gotten some good clear pictures, and even video, by now.

Ever been to the northern CA to OR to WA forest ? Millions upon millions of acres of THICK forests with little to no roads and maybe some dirt logging roads. It gets very remote very fast.

We camped a LOT in the Sierra when I was a kid with my folks. Always in very modern camp grounds on forest service land. With dozens of not hundreds of other families in designated sites. Don’t remember my dad ever having a gun but I know he always had his buck fixed blade on his hip. Most exciting time was when a black bear rolled through the campground


When I got to be an adult my now wife and I would camp often in more primitive campgrounds. Sometimes with a camp hose usually with out. Just put your $5 fee in the envelope and put a tag on your car. Usually no water and vault toilets if any at all. Would usually have a 4 inch smith .357 in the tent at nite ( oh the days when I only owned 1 gun, so quaint). She knew but never said anything. One time we were camping on a Sunday in October. Still warm about to camp but definitely toward end of season nobody around. At like 2-3 AM some car came rip roaring through the forest service road honking and blaring a radio. Like multiple times. She wakes me up to ask if I brought my gun. That’s when I knew she was a keeper.

In 1980 I was black powder deer hunting with a co-worker walking an old logging road in the mountains. The logging road ahead of us went up and around a very large knoll. My buddy decided to go up the knoll over to the other side to see if he could shake out any deer onto the logging road back around to where I decided to sit and have a bite to eat.

I sat on a log facing the knoll, behind me was a steep slope of long ago logged land for a few hundred yards.

As I sat eating a piece of smoked salmon I heard a heavy breathing sound behind me. I looked over and saw a bear within an arms reach of me, head in the air ... sniffing. As I gently stood up I set my piece of smoked salmon on the log and slowly walked away back down the logging road and once around the corner out of sight I started running.

Shortly after I met up with my buddy and told him what happened. He wanted to know why I did not shoot the bear as he had a bear tag on him.

Shooting the bear was the last thing on my mind, especially with a black powder rifle with a dreaded long reload if not successful the first time ... and no back up weapon.

Still scares me to this day.

Mine have all been pretty tame. A friend of mine once related a story wherein she was tent camping alone and got up in the middle of the night to deal with a full bladder. When she exited the tent, with a flashlight, she was confronted with dozens of eyes glowing back at her. Turned out to be a bunch of raccoons out foraging, but they were hissing at her and scared the crap out of her. She went back into the tent and just held her full bladder until dawn. By then they were long gone.

I was with a group hiking in either Shenandoah NP or Great Smokey Mountains NP many years ago - I was just a kid. The people at the front of the group suddenly started screaming as if they were being skinned alive, and went running in all directions. Turned out that they had disturbed a yellow jacket nest and the yellow jackets had come out in a stinging mood.

No other real scares, although I have even seen bears and coyotes at fairly close ranges.

Not camping but I almost let a bear in the house once. Back when I was working in our distribution business with the wife we would get up by three or three thirty am. I was usually the first downstairs and the first order of business was to let the dog out. She would be out fifteen or twenty minutes normally when she would scratch on the door wanting back in. I let her out and went and made coffee.

I no sooner sat down with my coffee and heard something at the door. Not her usual scratching but a noise. I'm muttering on my way to the door damn dog why are you back so soon. I'm still groggy at this point. I open the inside door and had my hand on the outside door handle and started to open it. The door has glass on top and a solid bottom. I just happened to look out the glass half of the door and seen two black eyes staring at me. Nice sized black bear was standing there.

Neither one of us knew what to do for a second when I pulled the door shut and gave the bottom part a good kick to scare her away. About that time my dog comes wandering around the other side of the house looking at me like what the hell are you doing? Neither the bear or dog knew the other was there apparently. I was wide awake after that!

Not a camping encounter but...

We have a house in the Western North Carolina mountains that borders on thousands of acres of national forest land. Walking the dogs around 10 at night, coming down the driveway back to the house and hear some noises on our wood deck. Sounded like a pony back there. I assumed it was a deer. Whatever it was got spooked and ran off as I approached before I could see it. Got the dogs back in the house, and went out on the deck to take a look. I found lines of claw marks gouged into the wood railing and a few of the wood vertical slats busted from the outside in towards the deck. Found the same claw marks and busted slats on another deck on the lower floor. I am guessing it had to be a black bear that climbed over the rail as I approached and dropped down to the lower deck where it grabbed on again before dropping to the ground.

Whenever I go out there now, especially at night, I always poke my head around the corners just to check it all out.

When I was in basic training at Fort Lewis in the fall of 1972, we had a strange event during our bivouac. We started out in rainy (no Kidding) weather until we got to where the drill sergeants told us to pitch out "tents". They were nothing more than our ponchos (2) strung together.
During the night, it snowed maybe 5-6 inches. When we woke up, there were several LARGE footprints in the snow. Drill sergeants told us it was probably a Bigfoot.
Having grown up in the Northeast and being familiar with many animal tracks in the snow, these had me baffled. They were larger than any footprints I had seen. They looked "human", 4 toes and a big toe, but very far apart. The drill sergeants told us it was probably a Bigfoot. I don't know if they were playing with our minds or not; it was Basic Training.
Never seen anything like it since!

This tale falls into two categories: The statute of limitations has probably expired and not my finest moment.
During my time at KISAFB, I used to walk the RR tracks that surrounded the base and used my 10-22 to plink the ground squirrels. My EDC handgun was a Model 19 S&W. I was walking along a section of track that had a swampy area full of cattails and overgrown weeds along the side of the track bed. I had sat down on the track to eat a sandwich when a short distance in front of me something began thrashing around in the swamp and closing the distance with me pretty quickly. I immediately thought Bear! And yanked out the Smith. When I saw a glimpse of something brown parting the brush, I cranked off three shots. One of the shots did the job and all activity ceased. I cautiously approached and found... A thoroughly punctured Sandhill Crane! Federally protected migratory bird. Think jail time, fine and gun confiscation not to mention what the USAF might have thought of the whole episode. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and beat feet. Pretty good lesson in positively identifying your target before opening up!

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Pretty good lesson in positively identifying your target before opening up!

That's one of the most important lessons gun owners should learn, right from the start. ALWAYS know exactly what you're shooting at.

In my experience that I wrote about in my original post, I never mentioned bears. Washington state has a decent number of black bears, maybe some grizzles here and there, but what I heard didn't sound like a bear. And there was clearly more than one animal. Again, a pack of large wolves was the first thing that came to mind and the only thing that makes any sense, even though there wasn't supposed to be any back then.

I have enjoyed reading everyone's stories, keep 'em coming!

Not a camping story, but back when I was younger and very much into bowhunting for whitetail deer, I set out one morning with my Mathews compound and a light backpack to go to a newly hung stand.

There was a new moon, so not much ambient light, and as I left the truck at 4:30 am I opted to try to avoid using a flashlight because the stand was near an area I knew the deer would be moving in and around early.

I had on soft soled moccasins to avoid stepping on branches, etc (like I said-hardcore hunter back then) so I was being very stealthy. As I went around a slow curve to the right down this rough trail, I neared a few bushes on the left side. I could barely make them out, but remembered that they'd been there. Just about the time I got even with them, something leapt from the bushes (about 8 feet off the trail) and right toward me, stopped about 3 feet from me, and started screaming this unearthly scream at maximum volume. I almost peed myself it spooked me so bad!!

After just a few seconds of this screaming, the whole area around me erupted with movement. Turns out I'd snuck into the bedroom of a herd of does, and was dead center of their group when one of them had noticed me and sounded the alarm. It must have looked like a Chinese fire drill there in the mostly dark, but I had some come close enough that they brushed me as several ran in different directions. When they finally had their leader sort the direction they were going, the group ran off, and I sat down for a minute to gather my wits.

I went on in to my stand, which was another 300 yards down the trail, and believe it or not got a doe that day from the stand-never thought I would, but the day was cold and crisp and too pretty to quit just because it started sour.

That's the spookiest thing that I've had happen to me in the dark-but then, Mississippi isn't known for having too many Yeti encounters.

My wife’s family has been holding an annual weeklong family reunion/camping trip up St. Charles Canyon in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest for 60+ years.

About 15 years ago, some black bears decided to invade the camp and explore during the night. My wife’s one aunt went screaming out the front of her tent as a black bear came in the back. This happened to a couple of more tents. In addition, on bear started rocking a trailer or two. The next day Fish & Game and the Forest Service were putting live bear traps out.

A few years ago, a young man was killed by a black bear in a popular camping ground just up from where we live. Black bear are quite common where I live.

In the mid-80's my family went camping at Huntington Lake in CA. It was probably the most beautiful lake I have ever been to. I was in my tent with a cousin and I heard something outside. It was a large bear and the largest land animal I'd ever encountered in the wild. It was digging through our ice chest and ate a pack of butter and punctured a Hamm's beer can and drank it.

He spent the night raiding campgrounds and moving on until he was full. I kept the can as a souvenir for years until my mom's house had a fire in 1994.

On a separate trip to Soquel in the Sierras, my buddy and I were out hiking for the day. It was somewhere around 1993. As we hiked along a beautiful river, a camp site on the other side of the river had a pit bull in the camp. It was probably 6AM and everyone in the camp was asleep. As we walked along the riverbank the dog followed us on the other side. He was excited or agitated or something. About a mile farther he swam across the river to our side and ran toward us. I started to get concerned and I drew a 1911 on it and was about to pull the trigger. He slowed his advancement and sniffed the bore of the pistol, then wagged his tail and licked it. My buddy and I exhaled in relief and I holstered the pistol. He became our hiking companion for a couple of miles and we eventually returned him to his campsite.

About 3 years ago we were deer hunting on the east side of Mount Hood. It was a new hunt for me and I was hunting the edge of a canyon drop-off. As I was slowly and quietly walking through the woods, I heard heavy footfall and I heard growling coming from the brush. I froze with my 308 at the ready for about 5 minutes and it disappeared. I am 90% certain it was a black bear. My heart pounded heavily during those 5 minutes.

Other than that about the only other incident I had with wildlife was coming face to face with a badger peeking out of his den while I was hunting. He just stared at me as I walked on by. His head was maybe 3 feet from my foot when I noticed him. I again drew my 45 (this time a Sig), very slowly and kept it on him until I put some distance between the both of us.

Haven't encountered any wolves yet.

Tony.

quote:

What do you guys think I heard?

D.B. Cooper, given the time frame.

I’ve done tons of camping in very remote places on roads that no other vehicle will travel down in two days and only have one experience that really spooked me. In an extremely remote place next to a creek the first summer of my 16 years of retirement, I got woke up about 4 am by the sound of a cougar. It sent chills all over my body. Only heard the sound once after being woke by the sound. He wasn’t super close, I’d guess within a couple hundred feet, but I chambered a round in the only rifle I had with me and didn’t get back to sleep for quite a while.

During my last camping trip, we found NVA.

And that is why I don't go camping anymore.

.

quote:

Originally posted by benny6:
It was digging through our ice chest and punctured a Hamm's beer can and drank it.

Ah, yes; a bear with very discerning tastes.