That brings back the memory of a close call I had. Actually for me a non-experience, but the could-have-been still lingers in my mind as a cautionary thought. We had gotten my partner's bull in close quarters on the edge of a place we call Lost Meadow more than a week before, but I still had a tag to fill. At sunrise we had glassed some elk headed into timber to bed, below another meadow on an adjacent ridge, about where it joined Lost Meadow. The game trail into Lost Meadow would have been my normal trail up into that area, having better stalking cover and a good climbing grade, but as I stood in the bottom of the drainage between the two adjacent finger ridges something told me to take the left, more open ridge up. I listen to those gentle nudges I get out there.
As I climbed the badlands-looking open ridge toward the base of the cliff where the elk had been, I kept feeling a something that kept me a little on edge. There was a good game trail, but the rocky ground gave no clue of what had passed before me other than the toe prints of elk here and there. About when I got to the junction of the two finger ridges I was mulling which way to skulk and was considering making a course adjustment when I decided to check in with my partner. When I made contact he told me that a young friend of ours and his buddy had just come down off Lost Meadow, wildeyed, describing the encounter they had just had with a large, dark grizzly! No shots fired and no damage to anyone, but very up-close. That bear was in the vicinity of where we had left that carcass 10 days before, and had probably been tending what was left of it. They didn't know whether the bear had gone left (toward me) or right (off into a large drainage with thick timber). Either way I didn't like the situation; it could even be coming toward me a I stood on the faint trail I was climbing.
Suddenly the lack of cover on the ridge I was on seemed like a heck of a good thing. I turned around and retreated back down the way I had come. Knowing there was a now agitated grizzly bear in there somewhere ahead was not a comforting thought. That was too close for comfort. It could have been me, alone, facing that bear running at me, but for some instinct or premonition that turned me on a different trajectory that morning. I was lucky that day.