As a full time fishing and hunting guide both in Washington state and Alaska I've had plenty of pucker factor experiences.
Can't even count the number of times I've been bluff charged by Coastal Browns (griz) over the past 10 yrs in Alaska. Actually more afraid of a Cow Moose with calf in Alaska than I am a Griz....far more dangerous!!
Anyways scarriest experience for me;
#1 All time worst!! Having two bears in Alaska doing battle just outside our tent in the middle of the night.
They were brawling so close, dirt and rock were getting kicked up on the tent. Heart never beat so hard!!
Anyways, after a good 10 minute battle one of the bears chased the other away from the tent, so I sat up and grabbed my riot gun (sawed off 12 gauge, with pistol grip and fold out stock) Gun was loaded; 1st 4 rounds, buckshot, 5th a slug. Let off 1st round into tent floor to hopefully keep the bears moving away, un-zipped tent door stuck the barrell outside and let the second round off...stood up to chamber another round and then it happened..
..had an 11 1/2 ft tall sow stick her head in the un-zipped door of the tent to let us know she was pissed!!! ALL HELL BROKE LOSE!! Shot the 3rd round at the base of her feet and just jacked the 4th out of the gun ready for the slug and ready to drop her.
She backed out and things got real quiet for awhile. Once we got ourselves gathered we went out to check things out.
Bear encounters are very common where we were at and seeing 6 bears a night was not at all un-common. We even had names for all of them...this big sow we called Skunk Head for the blond stripe running down the top of here head...and she just had a cub that Spring. What we figured out by all the bear sign around camp was that this big boar we named Mongo was trying to kill Skunk Head's cub and she was fighting him off. She had her cub sittin' in the warm coals of our fire pit (right outside our tent door) as she did battle. (If a sow has a cub she wont go back into heat in the fall, so the big males will try and kill the cubs so the sows will go back into heat)
When she chased Mongo off and I let off the first round she came whipping back to check on her cub. Second round I let off was right next to where her cub was sittin',..thats when she stuck her head in the tent to let us know she meant business...and thats pretty much all she wrote!! Very glad I didn't drop her!! A screaming cub will make your neck hair curl and bring every bear around to check it out. (Plus ya never wanna have to drop a griz in Alsaka if its a trouble bear, the shit ya gotta go through with the game dept up there is absolutely nuts,..been there done that)
Have had some good run-ins with moose in rut, cougars, bobcat and black & brown bears and have some other great stories as well from over the years but the story above was the one I thought woulda' been my last. Have some funny ass stories as well with problem bears, like wrapping a can of bear pepper spray with bacon to get rid of a bear that kept raiding our kitchen tent every night. Bear got a whole can-o-whoop-ass when he bit into that can of peeper spray and it exploded in his mouth...its another long story but this post is long enough.
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