Nocturnal Camp Visitors?

[WapitiTalk1]

Just like the thread title states, what kind of night time camp critters have you have wander in while you were 10 toes up in your tent. If you've got a story to go with the critter visitor, please share it!

[Indian Summer]

We've all had a mouse or 3 in the wall tent. Onetime I woke up to a quarter sized hole in my sleeping bag right up near the opening in front of my face.

One time we were in the guide tent and the chipmunks were getting brave. The escape was the wood pile. I decided to bow hunt them. I'd only draw my bow back about 4 inches or so. I think the elk could hear us laughing for miles.

We had a black bear that would visit most night. Most night... what the heck! He would poke a small hole in a bag of grain pellets. But he would only eat the couple ones that fell out and then he'd poke a hole in a different bag. One time we had a buddy's German shorthair in camp. We figured there was no way that bear would visit without Rooster waking us up. That bear tore open twice as many bags that night and not a creature was stirring.... not even the dog.

That bear would find our elk carcasses from time to time. After about 3 years of this I had a hunter sitting on a huge rock outcropping behind camp a few hundred yards. He said he watched a bear disappear on the downhill side of an adjacent rock pile. One of my guides took a look on his way back to camp and said that sure enough when he looked in there the pellet thief was sitting in there. The next day I walked back. I walked down below the rock pile with a .300 Win Mag and looked in the den. At first I didn't see anything but all of the sudden a head moved from left to right and that bear looked me right in the eyes. We're talking from 5 feet away! I bailed the heck out of there. I came back another time and nobody was home so I crawled all the way in there. You know I don't think a bear went back in there for several years after I did that. But it's a heck of a little hidey hole on a sunny south slope with some thick firs blocking the wind.

[Lefty]

Joes mention of mice.
While on a trip in New York had a bunch of mice crawl up the tent and slide down the side of the tent,. It had been going on for 8-10 minutes,.. hilarius!

Got a pic of a big raccoon going over my tailgate with a bag of dog food.

Rafting the Dechutes river in Oregon we had to pull out of the river because of strong 60-70 mph winds. I was crashed on my tent some distance from the planned campsite , Had a deer and a skunk walk on the tent and check me out.

While camping on Hood Canal some punks took our cooler, Im sure they thought it was beer,.. but it was a limit of shrimp and clams on ice


.
Over the past seven years Ive had coyotes no matter where I hunted in the desert show up and challenge bark nearly every night, they get bored and leave, sometimes coming back a few times.

10 PM an elk bugles 50 yrads from the tent out in the open desert ,.. I hear a few more elk clamoring on the rocks.,.. kind of exciting , I fall back asleep. Around 2 AM vehicle lights reflected in my tent during . Nothing good happens that time in the desert. Im getting in my pickup to leave. They are a couple hundred yards away . Back up lights then away they go. Next day; they had dumped a tied shut freezer,.. I could small hair,.. and could only think its a body,..opened it up , full of ducks and upland birds
Same campsite a couple years later Elk bugling all around the tent,.. bulls fighting, cows mewing . And it was very obvious when the elk discovered they were in my campsite
Two seasons ago a herd of elk went through camp between my tent and pickup same open basin as above,.. but I put eh camp in the rocks think the elk would avoid all the rock,.. Of the 10 or so times I camped there two other times I hunted bugling elk right from the tent

First night of this season had a bull bugle than bark at the tent and truck,.. maybe 90-110 yards

One hot evening back at camp the elk were sounding off all around me. I sat in my chair, in my underwear, no moon,.. bright stars,.. bulls cows calves first experience being surrounded by elk
Had a gopher dig up under my tent this year,.. that was a bit weird watching my tent floor moving.'

Had a city cop shine his flashlight in my face while sleeping in my truck in a secluded public campsite I had used for years,..We became good friends out of the situation.

I was at a leadership training in central Oregon, sleeping in sort of a sub terrain bunk house. it was just getting light out and some guy knocked on my window, yelling and freaking out "they were after him". "They had been walking around his underground shelter all night" " they were going to kill him,..Some clergy had put him out in the woods in a small some sort of sub terrain shelter,.. I think the wind and his mind got to him. The clergy showed up, some time later the police showed up,. handcuffed him and off they went.
I hate cattle in camps,.. while in the Bighorns in a fenced area campground cows came in, broke the mirror my wife's car and and cow plopped as close to the tent door as possible. Nearly the same thing in a campsite on the south end of the black hills. I got up as it was just getting light, crawled back in the tent to wake my wife and daughters the place was thick with deer and elk.

This year a thirties something couple had set up camp next to my pickup at the end of the bear hunt. Plenty of places to camp but they were 5 feet from my truck, a bit strange. I loaded my ATV and baits in my truck.They seemed nice, 6-7 year old kid running around nearly naked. The husband was fall down drunk. He asked if I was camping at my truck and apologized for the intrusion. I mention my camp was a few miles away, He was right there, she seemed to be more than flirting,.. I left,.. something was messed up in that camp, and it was both of them.
11 PM their OHV pulled into the trailhead,.. The OHV sat on the road for minutes, circled the end of the road.. Was it him?,.. or her? or both? I was camped up an old skid road in the trees, not at the typical campsite. It was one of the times I wanted to trade my bear spray for a gun. My dog is mostly deaf, she couldn't hear the OHV so I covered her head to not see the lights bouncing off the tent walls, I snapped on her leash, I put on my boots and was crawling out of the tent.. and yeah,.. I was ready to run further into the woods. Shortly the OHV headed back out. .2 AM the cattle trucks came roaring in, by sunlight there were 100's of cows in the drainage.
Crazy people, moose and grizzlies; in that order, keep me on my toes in the woods

[Indian Summer]

I know a guy like you Lefty. it's funny to watch him go into a bar. The weirdoes flock right to him. he always looks at me and says "Why am I suck an a-hole magnet"

By the way we never did kill that bear that was camped out next to us. But I didn't care. He was more normal than your neighbors.

I am a confessed cow hater. They trash the heck out of lots of things. Here are two pretty good examples of why I don't have an ounce of love for those bastages. We had showed up with mule strings full of gear in mid August to set camp and prepare for bow season. Once the gear is all in we start getting camp together while a couple guides start making hay runs. They pack hay non stop dark to dark for the better part of a week. Mind you as an outfitter this all means money. You have 4 or 5 guys in there getting paid with no clients in camp and just keeping them and the horses fed during the pre season routine gets expensive. Certified weed/seed free hay is expensive to beging with and by the time you feed bales in camp they are worth around $20 each.

So then after that we get a bit of a break before hunters start to arrive. Guides go scout. The day before the season my one guide calls from up on the mountain. "Are you sitting down" We all know what that means right. "Joe man the ranchers cows were in camp last night. Two tents are down, there is shit all over the place... and not one single bale of hay left" If I had walked into camp when they were there I would have kept Arby's in business for at least 6 months!

I had to buy all new hay. Worse than that the rest of that entire season we would fit in a hay run or two when we had the time never getting a break so that we would have enough feed in camp.

Soooo another fine day in the life of an outfitter, just after the whole camp set up thing... I was trailering the stock down the mountain. I had 7 mules and 1 horse in my 16 foot gooseneck trailer. At the points in the road where you come to the draws the road always makes a sharp turn around the gully and it's usually pretty steep on the uphill and downhill sides of the road on those turns. So I come around an outside turn and see that the inside turn ahead is full of prime rib. (I'm like the guy in the cartoons that see a steaming steak when I see a damn cow) They are all right on the road and some are standing on the hill above it. When you pull a trailer that long around those bends you have to swing it really wide to keep the trailer away from the near cliff on the inside. So I did. The cows scattered. Some of them just started trotting ahead of me on the road. Some ran up the hill above the road. At just about the time when the trailer was at the sharpest part of the turn one of those knuckleheads fell over sideways and rolled down at me. I yanked the wheel away from her.... and even faster I yanked it back the other way to keep the trailer on the outside of the turn. Too late!!! I never saw it coming. All of the sudden the whole rig just slammed to an immediate stop. It took a millisecond to realize that the trailer fell off the downhill side. The edge had caved in a little. Had I thought ahead I would have been wearing Depends. In the next millisecond I wondered if the trailer was going to keep going and with all that weight drag the truck over the side with it. I had envisioned this very situation for years and years but never imagined it would happen. The truck was still on the road and the trailer was teetering on the center of the axle right on the edge at literally a 45 degree angle..... with all of the stock flopping around kicking and bucking on the DOWNHILL side of the trailer box. Oh man!!! I jumped out and ran to the uphill side of the whole rig so I could separate myself from the situation asap. Put yourself in my shoes and imagine thinking my next thought: I have to go inside the trailer, untie the stock one at a time, and get them out all of there.

The trailer door hinges were on the uphill side. I slowly opened the latch and pushed the door open a little and looked inside. No blood. That's good. I crept in and untied the first one and spun him around and pulled him toward the door. You couldn't have pounded a finishing nail up my butt with a sledge hammer. It was about 4 feet from the trailer to the ground and he froze at the edge. I was just happy to be outside the box at that point. It took some persuading but I got him to jump. As soon as he committed to taking the leap I had to pull on the lead rope bending his neck to get him turned uphill so he wouldn't go head over heels down the hill. It worked. I pulled him up over the lip of the road and tied him to the biggest thing I could find which was a 1/2 inch thick sapling. Then.... back into the trailer. Jesus! One by one I got them all out... except the last one. You would think that after watching everyone else go out that way he would have followed suit. Nope. He flat out refused. Lucky for me the side door was on the uphill side. It was about 5 feet in the air though. I tied his lead rope so I could reach it from the door side and bailed out. I opened the door untied and started yanking. Now the trailer is rocking a little because all the weight and movement is up in the air with leverage. FINALLY the beast jumps out. Whew!

So now what? Yeah... I need to get the trailer back on the road. I felt pretty safe standing still because there were no more critters in the trailer so I knew it wasn't going anywhere. I thought about things for a few minutes. I wasn't liking that my driver's side door was on the downhill side. I left it open so that I could jump out and get ran over by the truck I guess. I locked in the front hubs. Put it in 4 wheel low so I have as much low end torque as possible. Then I put it into low gear, aimed the front wheel way to the right..... and sat there for like 5 more minutes. I had both feet on the pedals and let go of the brake and floored the gas all at the same time. Thank God a 4 door long bed 1 ton diesel is really heavy. The trailer bounced up over the lip so fast it didn't have a chance to slide downhill at all. Halleluiah right!!!

If I would have had a machine gun there would have been a 100% chance of widely scattered COW! Ever since then I have no compassion for those damn things. You should have seen the looks on the faces of my mules when I was leading them back in the trailer. Pretty funny.

[Indian Summer]

Almost forgot... a mile down the road I had a flat on the trailer. I had to unload all of them again, change the wheel, reload them and get back to my day. I was a hair late for a guide job interview. 6 hours.

Did I mention I'm a cow hater

[Lefty]

Did I mention I'm a cow hater

My father in law ran 1,100 head at one time,.. he still hates cows even with the money he made.
Joe your story sent shivers up and down my spine.
If there are horses there are always rodeos,.. evenwithout cliffs and sharp turns or cows on the road.

While on my moose hunt this year I nearly ate a front shoulder of a cow while on my ATV. Nearly the same thing with a truck on a major highway in SD. Black cows dont belong on open range at night.
And if there are cows,.. they always head for the hay. My daughter had 4 horses for a while. While feeding horses the neighbor cows saw feed and broke down the new fence. The neighbor spent the rest of the repairing then fence ,.. and promise to feed earlier every morning. Range cows are the worst

One day my daughter and I bought 3 #220 lb calves at the auction ,.. I made the comment how each calf had three brands,.. the last brand on each was the same, but all of the calves were different breeds way unusual, but they looked healthy and the price was right I My daughter needed some wild range cows to work her horses I figured these three fit the bill
I told to not let the calves out of the trailer until I got home. the neigbor kid from the cows above, a real cowboy gave up after he wore his horse out chasing the one calf.

OK I think weve sidetracked the thread far enough,.. Maybe we should start a horse wreck thread, and a I hate cow thread,.. and to0- tight-of-gate thread, and open range thread . and why NW Wyoming should be part of Idaho thread, And why are mosquitoes bigger and nastier in Wyoming than in Minnesota . And why are there ranch road exits off the freeway and no ranches, and why do antelope need to race to cut in front of you on a road,.. and whats with the goofy doe antelope jumping fences instead of diving under. ooops time to go to Jackson
another day
Carry-on

[Lefty]

I know a guy like you Lefty. it's funny to watch him go into a bar. The weirdoes flock right to him. he always looks at me and says "Why am I suck an a-hole magnet".

No matter how hungry or thirsty I learned you eat gas-station junk food not bar food in Wyoming. filled up with gas at the only open station in town,.. then the bar to get some warm food.. Obviously this small town place was a local only watering hole,.. and I was an intruder and I knew it, and the bartender wasnt going to help me get out the door. A biker stopped in,.. and did the tension raise in that little place. The biker knew what was up also,.. We made eye contact, with 3 bar stool between us we made a plan without talking, I walked past him he got up leaving his beer, and we both headed out he door together,..exiting the door he mentioned he would wait on his bike till I was gone .
I jumped in my pickup and took off,.. I could hear his bike revving as 3 drunks piled out of the bar, they took the bait and ran/stumbled towards the loud bike. The next morning 50-60 miles away I was talking to a ranch manager and one of those drunks stumble out of a chicken coop relieved himself looked at me and walked back in the chicken coop. The ranch manager read the look on the cowhands face then said he should fire that stupid SOB. I took advantage of the comment told the manager about night before. The ranch manager made some statements that wasnt Wyoming hospitalit, As I headed out a pasture road I saw the manager walk into the chicken coop.
and a mean smirk crept across my face,.. At that timeI didnt know what karma was,.. but that was sweet karma

[Indian Summer]

All I could think of was Charllie Daniel's Uneasy Rider

Just when I thought I'd get outta there with my skin
These 5 big dudes come strollin in
With one old drunk chick and some fella with green teeth

I was almost to the door when the biggest one
Said, "You tip your hat to this lady, son!"
And when I did, all that hair fell out from underneath

Now the last thing I wanted was to get into a fight
In Jackson Mississippi on a Saturday night

Especially when there was three of them and only one of me!