Thing that go bump in the night

[jejack26]

There has been frequent discussion on different threads about safety in bear country, specifically Griz country. I have my opinions and have become a big believer in bear spray. The reality is your chances, even you use bad judgement in the hills, of having a problem are slim. Using good judgement just pads your side of the column, but I must admit I still don't like sleeping in a tent in Grizzly bear country. I love seeing the big bear and hunting where they live. I hunt and travel differently when they are around and although I'm comfortable have come to the conclusion if one attacks my tent at night I'm a goner.

25 years ago my wife and I floating a river in AK fly fishing for salmon woke me up a bear was rubbing up against the tent. I was exhausted from a portage earlier and told her" go back to sleep" and that bear squirted blueberry juice all across my tent. I slept well, the wife not so much and not very happy with me next day. Two weeks ago sleeping in Grizzly bear central rolled up in tarp along a river I woke to something large jumping up and down on my back. I launched my self upright, nothing there, I searched for tracks in the dark convinced something was there. Alas and thankfully only a very real nightmare, but no sleep for this child that night. I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences and hopefully they all ended well.

 

[Straight Arrow]

During a seven day backpack trek through the Bob Marshall Wilderness we saw large grizzly tracks and piles of scat ... but at the end of the ten or twelve mile day, slept peacefully dreaming of a bear attempting to jump up and reach the suspended bear bag hung away from sleeping area. Nothing like physical exertion for an old boy's sleep contentment.

 

[Duck-Slayer]

IMO bear spray or a hand gun will not save you from a really pissed off bear! Both may deter a not so mad bear…. If it’s your time it’s your time
Matt

 

[BackofBeyond]

Just don't forget bears aren't the only thing that go bump in the night.

Back in high school, I was on a weekend trip with a couple buddies, one who had his well bread, well trained (i.e. $$$ on both accounts) puppy dog along. Second night of the trip we're all sitting around a fire well after dark, and the dog sits straight up, looking dead away from the fire, growling. We all scrambled to find flashlights and during the chaos a big kitty cat jumped into the firelight, gave the dog a healthy smack across the face, bit it behind the neck, and hauled it off into the dark. We found the dog's body the next day about 300 yards from camp, up a tree.

I have never had a worse night's sleep than that night.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Back in 98 or 99, my former GF and I did a 5 day trip into the Cloud Peak Wilderness. We had set up camp for the evening in a lovely little hollow, surrounded by trees and uphill from the creek to keep skeeters at bay. We had a lovely evening, and retired to the tent. Sometime around 2 am or so, she wakes me up and says there's something outside of the tent. It sounds big. Go check it out.

So I grab a flashlight & the 45 and roll out of the tent like I'm Jason Statham in any given movie to come face to face with a fox whom we'd camped on top of her den. So there I am, naked with a flashlight & a 45, ready to rumble.

I think that fox bore the scars of that encounter for the rest of her life.

 

[MTLabrador]

So I grab a flashlight & the 45 and roll out of the tent like I'm Jason Statham in any given movie to come face to face with a fox whom we'd camped on top of her den. So there I am, naked with a flashlight & a 45, ready to rumble.

I think that fox bore the scars of that encounter for the rest of her life.

I did the same thing with a mountain goat in the Beartooths once. Something kept pressing up against my face, and I reflexively punched it. At that point I woke up convinced I had just punched a bear in the nose. I rolled out with a flashlight and my .357 pointed at a very surprised goat.

Except not naked, in case I had to clarify…

 

[Ben Lamb]

I did the same thing with a mountain goat in the Beartooths once. Something kept pressing up against my face, and I reflexively punched it. At that point I woke up convinced I had just punched a bear in the nose. I rolled out with a flashlight and my .357 pointed at a very surprised goat.

a couple summers ago, I was awoken by a large crash somewhere in or close to our house in Helena. I went into full Nick Cage in Face Off Mode and grabbed the 40 in the night stand, a pair of crocs and headed out to investigate. I stopped at the top of the stairs to rack the slide loudly to announce my presence, and intentions.

I crept downstairs, in the dark, moving as stealthily as a fat man in crocs can. Cleared the house, then went outside. I came around the corner and there the culprit was - the apricot tree had split and one of the trunks was laying across the fence. The neighbors light was on on the side that bordered our yard.

At least this time I had grabbed shoes.

 

[BigHornRam]

Pre bear spray days. Night before the unlimited opener. Woke up to something with soft feet walking around the tent. Looked over at my gun laying on my pack....then remembered it wasn't loaded. Figured the worst thing I could do was make a bunch of noise, so I went back to sleep. Woke up an hour later, to hooves walking around the tent, so figured it might be a good time to load the cannon.

Youth backpack trip to Yosemite, one of the camp councilors woke up to a black bear licking her face. Bear probably had a heart attack from the sceam she let out.

 

[Ben Lamb]

In the mid 90's we took an exchange student on a 1 week Yellowstone/Grand Teton trip. It was fairly uneventful, with the usual touristy stuff and stops. We camped at Jenny Lake one night, and made dinner, enjoys some beverages and went to bed. A couple of hours later, we get woken up by something big rustling around the camp, so we decided to take a look carefully.

Biggest marmot I've ever seen was eating an onion the exchange student left out.

 

[Deleted member 20812]

I just about had a mule deer kick me in the head as she was trying to chew on my saddle, which I had moved right next to me because of her amazing and annoying persistence.

 

[BigHornRam]

Did an overnighter in the bighole years ago with the wife and 2 dogs. Set up the lean to on the only flat spot I could find, which had an elk trail running through the middle of it.
Molly was less than a year old and liked to bolt, so my wife decided to clip her into a tie out and tie the other end around her waist.
Middle of the night I woke up to elk barking, dogs barking and the wife dropping the f bomb! By the time I got my headlamp on, Molly had drug my wife about 10 yards out of her sleeping bag!

 

[LopeHunter]

Was camping solo in a tent a few miles in from the trailhead a few miles north of Yellowstone. Never saw another person after the pack string dropped me off until the horses returned a week later. Remote, just like I wanted.

Never saw a bear, grizzly or black, but saw lots of scat of various sizes and some was fresher than others. About Day 4, I crawled out of my tent to start hiking up the nearby ridge when my headlamp lit up a steaming pile of scat that was about 6" in diameter. I presume was grizzly. Maybe a minute of hiking from my tent. I spent a bit more time that day checking my six as was glassing for a mountain goat billy. I carried bear spray and my rifle. Never used either that trip. Kept a clean camp but after a few days of sweating and not bathing I likely smelled like pepperoni.

 

[BackofBeyond]

Four year ago Wifey and I were on a one week stint in Big Bend NP, camped at a primitive site down by the river (Rio Grande.) Wifey woke up and heard a noise outside the tent, close to the pick-up. There was all kinds of literature in the park about locking vehicles at trailheads etc because of theives, so her mind instantly went to someone is trying to break into the truck. I hit the red button on the key fob and pulled a @Ben Lamb out the tent door (naked barrel roll, a-la Tom Selleck/James Bond) to see the ample ass end of a cow disappear into the cactus.

Pretty sure I've still got a piece of a thorn lodged in a very inconvenient place.

 

[Pucky Freak]

Years ago on a hiking trip in Maine I was bathing in a creek at sunset when I could hear something big parting its way towards me through thick brush. I’m trying to think what it might be, and if I should do anything. Before I could make up my mind a 45” or so bull moose pops out, jumps in alarm at the naked human just 15 feet away, and immediately crashes back into the brush.

 

[BigHornRam]

Okay. Too many stories about naked dudes and animals for my liking.

 

[BackofBeyond]

Okay. Too many stories about naked dudes and animals for my liking.

Well, how else are you supposed to sleep? The thread is about things going bump in the night.

 

[Elkmagnet]

I really only worry about hiking in the dark and startling one.
Anyway here is my story.

Somewhere in the early 2000s my wife and I drove into the frank church to a remote trailhead we were going to hike the next day. We had a romantic dinner of hotdogs on the propane grill while watching the sunset. Rolled out the sleeping bags in the bed of the truck and slept under the stars. At dawn I was woke by a nice black bear standing on its hind legs sniffing over the closed tailgate.
In my youthful stupidity I had cooked the hotdogs on the tailgate and I'm sure the bear was aware of that.
I yelled! The wife woke and yelled alot louder. The bear ran faster than I thought one could.
Fyi I was wearing pants but the bear probably saw my nipples.
The end.

 

[rtraverdavis]

Backpacking in the Selway-Bitterroot in Idaho with a buddy one summer years ago, conditions were perfect for skipping the tent and sleeping out. There was no moon and the stars were in incredible, and it was really dark. Sometime in the night I woke to the sound of footsteps and grass being ripped, but it’s coming from everywhere. Got the headlamp on to see that we were completely surrounded by at least a dozen elk that were all feeding in this tiny little meadow we were camped in, the closest of which I could have reached out and grabbed her hind leg. That was pretty neat.

As far as sleeplessness in the outdoors goes though, I’ve found that it’s my own head that almost always causes the problems. About 10 years ago I was working as a steelhead guide on the Deschutes, and by the end of season I was completely burnt out. On one of the last trips of the year—a three-day float with clients that had never fished before and who didn’t bother learning my name, just called me “the guide”—I found myself worrying hard on what the hell I was going to do after the season ended and beyond. Last night of the trip we camped at the tail of a big rapid, and I set up my personal little two-man tent right on a small, level spot on the bank of the river, away from the clients’ tent. The sound of the water was immense. I dreamt that night that I’d for some reason fallen asleep in my drift boat, and that I’d come loose from shore and was floating freely down the river. In the dream I couldn’t find my oars, and was all tangled up in my anchor line and couldn’t get out, and was approaching a large rapid. I woke up with my tent on its side, halfway in the water—I’d apparently gotten up and thrashed around so hard that I’d pushed my whole tent over the bank. Thankfully the water was shallow right there. I stopped guiding shortly after that trip and never looked back.

 

[Southern Elk]

Several years ago one of my hunting buddies brought his wife along on our elk hunt. We backpacked in about 4 miles and set up camp. Grizzly bears are thick in that area and that’s all his wife could think about.

We had 3 two man tents and I stretched a big tarp over the top of all 3 tents so that we could get out of the tents and have a little room in case it rained.

One evening a big hail storm rolled through. The tarp was covered with ice, but the tents were dry!

Shortly after we went to bad, while most of us were half asleep, a chunk of ice fell off the tarp and hit the lady’s feet though her tent. She screamed at the top of her lungs “the bear has got me!” We all had a great laugh. She made her husband climb out of the tent and turn on the lantern. We had to sleep with a lantern on for the rest of the trip. I’m not sure why she thought that would keep the bears away.

 

[Tiredofthebickering]

Back in 98 or 99, my former GF and I did a 5 day trip into the Cloud Peak Wilderness. We had set up camp for the evening in a lovely little hollow, surrounded by trees and uphill from the creek to keep skeeters at bay. We had a lovely evening, and retired to the tent. Sometime around 2 am or so, she wakes me up and says there's something outside of the tent. It sounds big. Go check it out.

So I grab a flashlight & the 45 and roll out of the tent like I'm Jason Statham in any given movie to come face to face with a fox whom we'd camped on top of her den. So there I am, naked with a flashlight & a 45, ready to rumble.

I think that fox bore the scars of that encounter for the rest of her life.

I intentionally search the house in the nude whenever I get sent to check out a noise by the wife. I figure it will buy me at least a second or two of pure shock on the part of any potential intruder, thereby giving me the tactical advantage.

I also jump around every corner kind of like this, but pointing a handgun