Critter attacks in camp

[Marble]

36 years of sleeping in the woods...still waiting for the animal in the middle of the night.

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[MTtrout]

@Marble has it right. I’ve experienced things in above post. I sleep soundly now

 

[Marble]

I guess I just don't really give a crap anymore. If it's windy or the elk are bugling or stormy, I put in ear plugs

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[DuckDogDr]

First back pack hunting trip. I had just moved to Idaho at the time. My buddy came up and we were going to get my first elk. My buddy had experience guiding in Alaska for caribou and was a little more versed in extended camping trips than I was.

We had watched a mountain lion walk right through the middle of the elk wallow we were sitting on that day, and that night on the way back to camp he had seen evidence of a bear in the area.
One of our breakfast menu items was a bagel and peanut butter and jelly… about 3 am I woke up with the jar of peanut butter in my sleeping bag..
I kicked him asking him what the hell… he said well I’ve been worried about the bear in the area and I figured the way you sleep… if it woke you up then we would actually have a problem.. vs me that wakes to everything.
No real close encounters that trip…


A couple of years later in early May, me and same buddy were hiking the Appalachian trail.. Going to hammock camp... long story short I actually got in a bind .. and I was just physically done.. Managed to crawl in the hammock and pass out.. didn’t care about supper.
About 11:00 or Midnight, Woke up to him hollering .. something large had ran through the camp, knocked him out of his hammock, knocked over our camp stove and kept going. He finally got untangled out of his sleeping bag and asked if I had seen it.. never found a foot print or anything.. could have been a bear, cat or Bigfoot or a demented hippie millennial

 

[Grizz208]

Had two bull moose fighting right next to our wall tent. Was pretty cool to watch.

 

[GetWestern]

Most of my buddies wonder why I sleep with ear plugs when out hunting, they say don’t you want to hear what’s going on out there. I’m to the point I’d rather get a good nights sleep up till the point a bear comes into my tent and things get western.

 

[gerry35]

Stories like some of these are why I don't want anything to do with sleeping in a hammock! I prefer a tent and the security of a thin piece of nylon myself........

The most intense camp experience I had was in 2011 on a goat and grizzly hunt with some friends. On the trip I shot my first grizzly the first evening and we also had a goat from a couple days later stowed in the snowbank under some cliffs across a small alpine lake we were camping beside. There were 4 of us and one evening the two with uncut tags didn't come back to camp until after midnight with a goat they had taken on the backside of the mountain we were on.

While we were talking together we started to hear some bears bawling and starting to huff which got our attention. I turned out that a sow grizzly with 2 cubs came up from below us and stumbled into our camp. She took off towards the bear skin in the snow slide, evidentially ran into it and got very aggressive alternating bluff charging us and the bear skin 200 yards away. After quite a while and a couple of warning shots she started to calm down but we could tell she wasn't very far away and never left. Of course all this happened in the dark with just headlamps for light. After a while we finally went to sleep but it was the only time I ever had a round in the chamber of my rifle with the safety on while I slept.

When we woke up in the morning we had found that the bears had spent the night up on the cliffs above camp and above the bear hide 465 yards from camp. She eventually got up when she saw us, they went across the cliff face and disappeared. Later when we looked we could see as soon as they were out of sight they bolted, they didn't like it any better than we did lol.

 

[Rich M]

Camping after a race, drinking around the campfire. BIL gets up to relieve self and sees a ring of glowing eyes looking at him in the fading campfire light - pack of coyotes. He jumps back in tent. In the morning all the meta food was gone from the cooler. LoL!

I'm deaf - stuff doesn't really wake me up at night. Best i got is that one day had a mouse in my pocket, where I had a cookie.

 

[Jstumbaugh]

This past September was our first trip to Colorado. We drove straight through for 32 hours to get to our spot. Finically get there about 11pm and find a spot to set up camp. We are exhausted and pop up the teepees quick and turn in. About 2:30 in the morning I hear something walking in the sandy gravel next to the tent and sniffing around. Three of us in the tent with no flashlights other than cell phones and pistols still in the truck. That nylon never felt so thin. I wake up the guy next to me and tell him what’s going on. He confirms he can hear it. We make some noise and yell “hey bear”. Whatever it was left and the third guy slept through it. As soon as it left I got an adrenaline dump that had me shaking for 20 min. Best trip ever.

 

[jjgrow]

Public campground on Mammoth mountain with my three kids over 3 or 4 visits -

- Arrived in the afternoon and was unloading the camping equipment from my suburban, tailgate up. Walked the tent over to a good spot about 30 ft from truck and turned around to see a big sow black bear with her front legs in the truck and about to jump in after the coolers. Lady at a neighboring camp started banging a pot with a spoon and the bitch reluctantly dropped down and walked off.

- Woke up in the middle of the night to a sow and 3 cubs in the camp. Shined a light out the tent door and yelled a few profanities, then just zipped up and hoped for the best. In the morning, found she had grabbed a 6-pack of the kid's grape Nehi off the camp table and chewed them up and lapped up the soda. Rolled my wheeled camp box end-over-end about 40 yards down the hill (nothing but pots and pans but it had a spice wheel in it). Coolers w/ food were all in the bear box.

- In the morning, went to get the keys to my truck which were in my backpack left hanging on a nail on a pine tree. Backpack (and my keys and wallet) were gone. About 50 yards away I saw something unusual, walked over and found my slightly torn backpack with powerbar wrappers scattered all around.

- One afternoon standing on the edge of the lake fishing I looked down at my feet to see a bear head grab my soft-sided cooler filled with a couple trout. He whipped around with the cooler in his mouth and ran head-first into a tree. Dazed, he dropped the cooler, stumbled away and I recovered my cooler and fish.

I don't go to Mammoth anymore.

 

[HoneyDew]

Woke up to something brushing against the side of the tent directly next to my head. I reach over in the pitch black to touch the tent because in my mind something inside is caught between my sleeping bag and the tent and I’m causing it to rub when I move. Well in my stupor with no light I basically punch a black bear in the nose with my open hand through the tent wall. When I hear him step back a couple yards I start to realize what I did and wake up fully. He proceeded to woof and huff at me for a couple minutes before I hear him finally continue on his way.

 

[Zeke6951]

Seven of us were archery elk hunting in CO a few years ago. Truck camping with sleeping tents and a big wall tent for cooking, eating, and hanging out. I was cooking breakfast early one morning and one of my buds was standing next to the tent flap. He turned to us pale as a ghost and said a bear just walked by the door, just a foot away. We all went out and sure enough a yearling black bear was just outside the door. I guess he smelled breakfast. We had a pretty hard time getting him to leave. He went to the camp just down the way and tried to get his breakfast. The hunter next door had a bear tag and was leaving that day anyway. The small bear got a ride in his pick up.

 

[Thinkingman]

Good stories!
I had a couple, I'll try to be brief...
A few years ago, taking the family on a Northern Cascades vacation, car camping in the back of my F150.
To understand, I had built a sleeping platform in the back which left about 18" of space between the platform and the roof of the canopy. For the comfort of the family, we inflated a queen-size air mattress on the platform which took up about 6" making it feel like a coffin. I have somehow developed claustrophobia later in life and this just wasn't working for me. Around midnight, I squeezed out the back of the canopy with my sleeping bag and pillow and converted the picnic table to my sleeping platform. Some hours later, I was awakened to the sound of yapping and squeeling, pretty sure it was a pack of yotes running by, not 50 yards away. This was at the campground near 49 Degrees North, known wolf country. I had proper equipment and never felt threatened, I thought it was cool.

Another was in the campground a the West Fork of the Madison River. A cow moose came running through the campground and back again...Wild eyes, panicked. That was kind of scary.

 

[SoloWilderness]

- Mice are my bane, they have chewed up my tarp, several silicone food bowls, and shit in my coffee cup more than a few times.

- Woken up to does sticking their nose in to check things out under my tarp.

- Not mine, but a good buddy woke up to a porcupine eating the straps and back padding of his backpack. 2 feet from his face. He went back to sleep and wrote the pack off as a loss.

- Had a few elk wander through camp at night making a racket.

- 3 years ago woke up to a mountain lion about 100 yards from my bivy, headed the other way at a slow amble. The rest of the day all I could think of was him sitting and looking at me, deciding if I looked tasty.

- Pine martens eating my game bags has been another one I have run into several times, only witnessed it once, but little buggers tore up 2 bags pretty bad this last year.

- Ants and yellow jackets are the worst of all though. Makes for an unenjoyable lunch when they crawl up your pant leg.

 

[CaliWoodsman]

I don't go to Mammoth anymore.

Same. Beautiful area, but the bear population there is unreal.

 

[f16jack]

Had a griz try to get up to our meat pole in Wyoming the last two years. They can climb trees just fine. Normally it's the horses that alert us to the bear's presence.

 

[6mm Remington]

When I was a kid we had a muskrat come into our tent in the middle of the night. Not sure what the heck he was doing.

 

[bline]

Years ago my wife and I were tent camping with our young boys in the Bighorns in Wyoming. I woke up during the night and heard a large animal breathing heavily and snorting at the ground around the tent. Eventually it worked it's way up to the tent and started sniffing about a foot from my head. I had my pistol in hand but wasn't sure what to do, so I just smacked the side of the tent pretty hard right next to where the nose was pressing against the tent and it ran off. I got up and looked around outside to make sure it was gone, which it was. There were bear tracks in camp to confirm that it was a bear.