A Reddit user said the one hunting moment that still gives him “The Fear” was not one of the times he had fallen down ravines, spooked a moose, or gotten chased by a rabid skunk. He said this one was different because his 8-year-old daughter was with him. According to his comment, it was her first time out hunting with just her dad, and they were moving slowly through a stand of tan oaks after a good rain had softened the leaves. He wrote that they were trying to creep quietly, hoping to find a nice blacktail buck, and then he heard rustling ahead at about 30 yards. He said he was excited because he was sure it was a good buck feeding on acorns and thought it might turn into his daughter’s first real hunting experience.
He said he crouched down and whispered instructions to her: stay behind him, step where he stepped, and cover her ears if he raised the rifle. Then they kept easing forward toward a clearing. When he peeked around a tree, he realized the “buck” was not a buck at all. It was a black bear. For a second, he thought the hunt had simply changed from a deer hunt to a bear hunt. He wrote that he slowly started to raise the rifle. Then a cub waddled out from behind the sow. That was the moment everything changed.
The hunter said he immediately knew how bad the setup was. His daughter was crouched right behind him, and now there was a sow with a cub inside 25 yards. He whispered to his girl to stay quiet and calm and said they just needed to let the bears move past them. For a moment, it looked like that might work. Then the wind shifted just enough. The sow stood up, sniffed, and locked onto them. He wrote that she started chuffing and huffing, then stomping her paws and clacking her teeth. That was when he knew the encounter was no longer just tense. It was turning directly at them.
He said that was the point where he jumped up and started screaming at the bear, clapping, stomping, and waving his arms while yelling for it to get out of there. He wrote the whole thing out almost exactly the way he shouted it in the woods: just a full blast of noise meant to hit the sow all at once. His daughter, who had been crouched behind him, got startled by the sudden explosion of yelling after all that silence, but it worked. The sow and cub turned and crashed off up the ravine into the forest, in the same direction he and his daughter had been heading. He wrote that the spot was blown for the rest of the morning anyway because the canyon country echoed so badly.
What stayed with him most was not just the sow. It was the timing of it and who was there with him. He said if he had been alone, it still would have been scary, but it would not have landed the same way. With his little girl crouched at his feet while the sow chuffed, stomped, and clacked her teeth at close range, he said he genuinely felt death creep close. He ended the story by saying everything turned out fine, but on the ride home he and his daughter had a talk about how they were not going to brag too much to mom about just how “badass” their morning had been.
What do you think — if a sow and cub suddenly replaced the “buck” you thought you were stalking and your kid was right behind you, would you trust yourself to stand there and make noise, or would panic hit first?
Original Reddit post: What were some of your most intense and possibly life-threatening “close call” moments?
