Fears

I have done a lot of hunting in my life starting out as a kid hunting with my Dads family. It was always a time of year that we always looked forward too and we had a great time.

As the years passed and my uncles grew older and no longer could go hunting my Dad lost interest in hunting and the game department started a draw system for rifle hunting. As you guessed I did not draw a tag one year so I started bow hunting as there was no draw for tags at that time.

One year we were hunting in this area that had a lot of logs torn up and rocks turned over. One of the guys I was hunting with had no idea what could of caused all that. So I finally told him that it was because of bears looking for food.

Little did I know but he was scared of bears and it seemed to be that every where we hunted that year had lots of sign of bears. He asked me why I was not scared of them and I gave him some excuse for a answer just trying to calm him down.

A couple of years later I was hunting with another friend and there was cougar tracks every where. He did not have to ask me what they were as they are rather distinctive.

We had got lucky that year and were hunting a road closure area so that meant we had to pack every thing out on pack boards. So we had loaded the first pack and my buddy shouldered it and headed off by himself as the rest of us worked at loading another pack.

I took this one and headed out of the canyon that we were in and was about half the way back to the rigs when I caught my buddy trudging along with his pack. I walked up and caught him and he looked over and said thank God it is you I thought it was a cougar coming after me.

So the rest of the way back to the trucks we talked about cougars and I found out that he had a big time fear of cougars. So I told him about my other buddy that was scared of bears as we were walking along. He also asked me why I was not scared of them and once again I also gave him an excuse for a answer to calm him down.

Ok now for the truth I have a very high respect for bears but normally they will just run from you unless it is a sow with cubs. Now with cougars yes I do have a fear of them as they can sneak up on you and you will never know what hits you.

But I had one secret weapon when I was hunting with these two buddies. They were both big boys. I never did tell them until years later that the reason I never had to worry about bears or cougars when hunting with them was...

I could out run them!

It is what it is

Rod