Tags: Critters

I recently was able to watch a presentation by an “Outdoor Team” sponsored by a national magazine and several national gear manufacturers. Let me rephrase there – the presentation was at my place of work so I had to watch it.

The talk covered backpacking and was engineered to help encourage and enable people to get outside and explore the nation.

Sounds great, right?

I helped the couple unload their gear and set up; watched as a crowd of roughly forty people showed up to increase their outdoor knowledge. From all appearances, not a very savvy outdoor lot, but then again it is Texas.

The presentation was trucking along – it soon became very apparent that it was geared to neophytes… most of the topics were things any self-respecting Montana pre-teen would know.

I need to keep a spare set of dry clothing while on the trail? Really?

You need to bring water to drink and to cook with? I never would have guessed.

Most of the audience were the less-outdoorsy type and very much got into the talk, nodding and murmuring their surprise at these jewels of knowledge.

I, however, nearly jumped into the presentation at the next words that came out of the presenter’s mouth.

“We’ve hiked everywhere you need to hike in the US and you just don’t need to worry about bears. We’ve never seen one.”

What. The. Hell.

There were several things worth arguing about in that statement. And while the rest of the room was nodding complacently, I stood mouth agape, wondering if I could have misheard.

Never run into any bears? Well clearly this “team” had not spent much time in Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho… and let’s not even bring up Alaska. Last fall I went 3/3 (three bear encounters in three days) with the Chiwulff crew. I can guarantee that if you are about and about in the West you are bound to have a bear encounter.

Likely more than one.

Back to the pre-teen Montana kid… we’re taught early on to keep a weather eye out for bears. The feelings on bear spray are mixed, but most of us carry some form of… ahem… stronger protection out in the backcountry.

It’s just a way of life.

I did not end up interrupting the presentation… after a scan of the crowd that was present I decided it would be a lost battle and, in the end, simply not worth my time.

I’ll keep an eye out for Texan / bear encounters next season.

Tags: Critters

18 foot great white circling the boat (21 footer) roughly 25 miles off the (NC) coast of Wrightsville Beach. Impressive views of the shark despite being recorded on an iPhone; NSFW language less impressive.

Tags: Critters

Several days ago we posted a series of images which appeared to show a fly fisher having a close encounter with a herd of elk, including a fair sized bull, on the Big Thompson near Rocky Mountain National Park.

The pics generated a smatter of commentary and quite a bit of email. The consensus opinion was unquestionably that we were the dumbasses of the month for presuming the images were indeed real; some (mainly women) seemed to think we were being too hard on the fisher with our commentary.

While there are a multitude of reasons we could (and perhaps should) be nominated as the dumbasses of the month in a host of venues, we determined we’d take no more than one man hour and do some further research regarding the pics.

It became readily apparent that the images had traveled far and wide among various hunting and outdoor forums and blogs; a very unscientific, shoot-from-the-hip summary of several hundred perused comments confirmed a very high suspicion that the images were indeed photoshopped.

With a bit of digging further this link surfaced on the Denver Post site – with a note from the photographer suggesting the images were indeed genuine.

With information obtained on the Denver Post site and some lucky guessing, it was actually pretty easy to track down the fisher – ML – who happens to be on the pastoral staff of a church in the DFW metroplex. ML was kind enough to answer my ‘here’s a silly question’ email with this (and kindly offered permission to post it here):

It was me, and the pictures are 100% authentic. I will forward you some of the others taken by a photographer from the Denver Post who happened to be driving by when the elk decided to join my friends and I in the river.  There were a total of five elk with us.  A cow moved into the river about an hour into our fishing trip (it was my first time fly fishing).  The next cow joined her about 15 minutes later.  We heard the male bugle, but my friend assured us he was up the hill on the other side of the road.  10 minutes later the third cow arrived, followed soon thereafter by number four.  They stood together in a group about 25 feet behind me.  A lot of people were stopping to take photos of us with the elk when I heard rustling behind me.  The bull was twisting his way through the trees to join his herd.  One of the cows walked between a friend of mine and I (we were 25 feet apart) and the bull kept eyeing us both to see what we were going to do (it was mating season, I wish I had known).  The bull then walked up to the cow and nuzzled her.  That put him about 10 feet from me and I knew it was time to move out.

I would be happy to talk to you if you want.  I was blown away by the interest in the pictures. We made the front page of the Denver Post, an article in the Dallas morning news, and in Outdoor Life magazine.  God blessed me with an incredible experience.

We hinted to ML that he’d had an extraordinary encounter with a mating bull and his harem on the river, the fact of which he’s well aware by now.

We didn’t tell ML that we’ve spent many a hour in Yellowstone wagering which tourist would be charged first/next as they pestered the elk and bison roaming the Park (a favorite sport of the locals as you might expect).

While it’s easy to poke a bit of fun at the outrageous misperception that large wild animals aren’t potentially dangerous and are in fact as tame as the critters at the petting zoo, it can be and often is a very serious issue.

The good folks who run Yellowstone have this to say about close encounters with critters in the field.  Simple rule – 100 yards for bear and 25 yards for everything else, though a bison lumbering your way looks damned imposing even at 25 yards.

In ML’s defense, most urban dwellers these days simply don’t have any opportunity to enjoy a close encounter with large critters (last time we were lost in the DFW metroplex we gazed upon many a strange sight but no elk, bison or bears).

We’re increasingly astounded at the gaping disconnect from the natural world that most folks seem to exhibit today. Most denizens of urbia and suburbia haven’t ever even seen a large domesticated critter up close (much less a wild one), sadly missing the enlivening experience of being chased across a riverside pasture by a snot-bellowing, enraged cow or bull.  Early fishing companions, chortling SOBs that they were, introduced me to that pleasure on my third fly fishing outing.

(Wiping warm bull snot from the back of your cap as you survey your latest pattern of barbed wire induced extremity and torso wounds, rightfully earned while diving over / under / through said fence, is a right of passage all fishers should experience. Come to think about it, everyone should experience the joy of winning that race; the character building benefits to the nation would be enormous.)

Imagining ourselves in ML’s shoes, the wildest creatures he probably encounters on a routine basis are caffeine-addled soccer moms driving their spotlessly clean Suburbans and Tahoes at breakneck speed around town.

Given a choice, we’ll take our chances with the elk or the slobbering bull any day.

Finally, to be honest, we’re a little envious. ML had the chance to see a mating bull up close and personal, an honor typically reserved for hyperfit, camo-clad, scent-masked bow hunters who have worked their asses off (dodging hyperphagic bears) all day to get up close.

We’ve invited ML for a day on the river back home any time he’s in the neighborhood.

(Image Credit:  Joe Amon, Denver Post.  We’re still trying to track Joe down, he’s not responded to queries thus far….)

Tags: Critters

This set of impressive images was forwarded to me in the past few days by my non-fly-fishy (actually not fishy at all), octogenarian mother, who was passed the images by a here-to-fore unidentified source.

The accompanying brief narrative suggested that this intrepid fly fisher was slipping and sliding his way along the Big Thompson near RMNP when a decently sized bull elk pushed his harem of cows down into the river right in front of said fisher.

From the images and the narrative said fisher continued to flail away within spitting distance of the bull, either entirely ignorant of or bravely ignoring all common sense and other precautions related to encountering elk in the wild.

As the story goes, the intrepid fly fisher was a Texan (could he have been from anywhere else?).

Apparently the encounter made the front page of the Denver Post.

Tags: Critters

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Being in the right place at the right time (the River Shannon in Ireland) can make up for a little rough camerawork. The shot of the young girl’s face at the end is a great reflection of why we all need to spend a little more time in the great outdoors. Damn well done and two thumbs up from our crew.

Tags: Critters

The complaints from those who whine about the ‘extremification’ of fly fishing duly noted, I’ll take a day on the pond / river / stream / flat any day in lieu of the collision this poor bastard had on the South African veldt with a Red Hartebeest.

Who would have guessed there’d be risks inherent in mountain biking the South African wilds?

This makes fly fishing by comparison appear pretty damned sedate, though of course there are common risks all fly fishers brave with dignity.

Thinking about the neighborhood, I guess fishing in Yellowstone you shoulder the burden of disturbing mama griz and the cubs in their daybed as you stumble along your stream of choice furtively scanning for risers and bugs.

And we’ve seen more than one fisher dude chased by disgruntled bison, though to our bitter disappointment we’ve never seen a single one impact the business end of said bison.

No matter where you fish or what you fish for there are the otherwise ever present fly fishing risks – gas station hot dogs, running out of beer just after lunch on a long, summer’s day Missouri float, fishing companions who smell like they rolled in road kill, broken down shuttle vehicles and uncooperative weather.

The list could go on and on.

Oh give me a home where the fly fishers roam.

Tags: Critters

Know they self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories. – Sun Tzu

The Invasion: A Case Study on the Hudson River from AMNH on Vimeo.

Tags: Critters

Baby Permit from william benson on Vimeo.

Tags: Critters

1000 lbs Blue Fin from Eric Kulin on Vimeo.

Tags: Critters

For those so inclined, the full investigative report of the fatal bear encounter 6 July has been released. The full report with images and scans of at least some of the documents generated by the investigators is available here.

Almost all of the friends and neighbors back home who do anything (not just wandering streams and rivers) in the backcountry have a bear encounter story or two to share. Most encounters aren’t truly threatening and are of course embellished beyond all measure of reality by outdoorsmen and women prone to the telling of tall tales.

The YNP July encounter ended terribly and the debate will go in some circles as to how things might have been different. One doesn’t have to read very far into the story to see a snowballing cascade of decisions that eventually led to catastrophe.

Tags: Critters

Via the Chive

Tags: Critters

The report of yesterday’s fatal grizzly encounter in Yellowstone National Park is all over the Montana press today.

The incident occurred on the Wapiti Lake trail (east of the Grand Loop Road south of Canyon Village). A husband and wife hiking were roughly a mile and half down the trail when they first saw the bear and continued; the sow with cubs later fatally wounded the man and attacked the woman (according to some accounts).

Here are links to the official YNP news release and what’s probably the best reported version from the Ravalli Republic.

Of note from the RR story -

It was the park’s first fatal grizzly mauling since 1986, but the third in the Yellowstone region in just over a year amid ever-growing numbers of grizzlies and tourists roaming the same wild landscape of scalding-hot geysers and sweeping mountain vistas…..

In June 2010, a grizzly just released after being tranquilized for study killed an Illinois man hiking outside Yellowstone’s east gate. Last July, a grizzly killed a Michigan man and injured two others in a nighttime campground rampage near Cooke City, Mont., northeast of the park.

Bear precautions are posted more or less at every trailhead and are provided to visitors upon entering the park in the park newspaper and guide – with the grizzly population robustly increasing you must be attentive to the potential of an encounter when wandering off road.

Bear safety isn’t rocket science and is largely common sense; ignore the rules in the neighborhood and you just might have a close encounter of the bear kind.

Tags: Critters

Clouds Of Tricos from coloradoflyfisher on Vimeo.

Trico swarms on an unnamed Colorado river – there’s hope for a season yet.

Tags: Critters

HATCH – Fly Fishing DVD Trailer from Gin Clear Media on Vimeo.

Tags: Critters