Last year in the central Washington wilderness during high buck hunt in September me and a buddy were sleeping our second night. We are an 11 mile hike back on a trail I’m sure nobody would come down in the next week. In an old burned hillside we found an oasis which was our planned camping area. Natural spring coming from up the hill with plenty of green grass and trees that survived the burn. Put us at the top of the valley to glass from all day. We had a nice stream weaving around our tent and was a really nice setting. We found a horse camp down in the bottom of a valley so we knew weren’t 100% alone, but we were quite a ways in. Anyway he instantly starts sawing logs and I’m finishing up a movie and decide I should probably try to sleep as well when we start hearing a half ass howl followed by a bark at the end of it. I instantly stop the movie and make it silent, again it happens down the hill from us. Earlier in the day we came across some scat but couldn’t make out if it was bear or wolf. If it was coyote it was massive for one of them, so that starts playing through my head right away. I start waking my buddy up and tell him to listen, it happens again but closer. His eyes get big and I knew I wasn’t just hearing stuff. I have my rifle outside under the vestibule so I’m scrambling trying to bring it inside and he gets his knife ready just because. We hear it one more time 60-80yds away and we are about ready for anything at this point. We are laying motionless just listening, the type of quiet where your breathing seems loud. Next thing you know 10yds from our tent we hear a single splash in the stream, like somebody hung a rock over it and dropped it. We instantly give each other the “oh shit look” and wait for what happens next. We decide making some noise is probably a good step and let whatever it was know there’s 2 of us in there. We never heard anything after that. Fast forward 10 minutes later and down the valley at the horse camp we start hearing gunshots and then nothing. We discuss some possibilities and then go to sleep.
upon packing up camp and leaving a hunter walks in as it’s snowing and accumulating fast. Was a nice guy and has hunted down in that valley with his friends the past few years and pay a guy to pack a wall tent in for them. Started asking about the gunshots the other night and he said “oh yeah, there’s a stupid yearling buck that keeps getting into our food at night. He’s like the village idiot we decided so we were trying to scare him off with our pistols and hoped he would get the hint.” Got to talking more about our story with what we heard and he said “oh yeah we saw a massive bear down the hill from your guys earlier while we were hunting the other side of the hill.” So now I know what the scar belonged do. So at this point I have closure to the shooting story, where the scat came from we saw, but still don’t know what it was that came by camp.
also my first backcountry overnight trip so we’ll see what this year brings