I have had several weird encounters with wildlife.
A few highlights:
Scariest: back in the early 80s, me and my cousin were squirrel hunting on some municipal land and were ran down by a neighbor's buffalo. Supposedly a pet, but had gone mad. Broke down the fence, attacked a vehicle on the county road, attacked another neighbor's bull and killed it and then found us. Luckily we were right next to the river separating the municipal land and our grandfather's, we chunked shotguns and swam for it. The sheriff put it down later that afternoon.
Early 90s found what I believed to be lion tracks in my dad's garden. We called the game warden and they came took plaster casts of the tracks. Tried telling us it was a bobcat, tracks were nearly as long and wide as a dollar bill. Few days later during the opening of bow season, noticed the deer were extremely spooked and witnessed what I thought was a lion chasing a buck just across the river from our property. Called the GW again and reported what I thought I saw. He came out and repeatedly told me and my dad there were no mountain lions in the area. But we drove down to where I was hunting to show him the area across the river anyhow. When we walked up to the river bank, not 40yds across and slightly up river was a lion drinking, it jumped up the 10' to 12' foot of river bank and disappeared. It couldn't have been more than a second, but he turned to me and asked "You saw that, right?" We and neighbors have had chance encounters with them over the past decades since, usually animals killed, tracks, screams in the dark while duck hunting or heading to the deer blind and my uncle even caught one on his game camera, but it has been rare.
Sitting in my deer blind in the late 90s I saw something that I couldn't identify. Dark bodied critters with long tails with rings, turned out that it was ring tailed cats. Called my cousin who at the time was dating a biologist. I told him and Shelly what I was seeing and she told me what they were. She came out and set up cameras and caught images of them. They eventually created rock piles with "pipe" dens in them. Then we had a series of floods over a couple of months and they disappeared.
Then there was this guy, a coatamundi. Apparently the neighbors, both from old Mexico, had him as a pet. They just abandoned their property and animals during Covid lockdowns. He showed up at our place and kept trying to get in the chicken coop. I went to investigate one afternoon what all the racket was about and found this guy. Went to grab the shotgun but before I could he raised up on his hind legs and pulled a come at me Bro approach, needless to say, he should have brought a pistol to the fist fight. Weird thing was, the gun fire didn't deter him. I thought it was rabid otherwise I wouldn't have shot it, especially if I had known it used to be a pet.
There are other weird encounters, but those are the most memorable.
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n horn was sneaking up on my little fake deer, when it got 2 feet from the fake one ,it made a charge at it with its head down , then stopped.
. It was amazing how much line it took out since we were using light spinning gear and 6 lbs mono. He finally got it in and it was one nasty p'o'ed bird! Threw a jacket over and it wasn't easy to get hook out but he did. Pulled jacket and it went after cousin!! Laughing as he ran down the pierhead away!! After that, we would scan for air cover and then let loose with cast!
