I once walked up on a sow Grizzly bear and her young adult cub while walking my reactive to everything puppy in the woods. We were alone because anything and everything would set her off and she would scream and carry on, and was upsetting my other dog, who I had, in part, to scare bears.

They gave 0 shits about me, and the puppy didn’t notice them, despite being uncomfortably close, thank God.

My initial thought was ‘oh shit’ followed by ‘yeah, I won’t confuse them with black bears’. (Black bears can sometimes be brown, and I had always wondered how I could tell the difference between a brown bear, and a brown black-bear. The answer is: the desire to poop your pants is much greater with brown than black. Black bears, whole they technically kill more people, don’t instigate the same fear response.

I still hike the same hikes, I just double up on deterrant methods, always go with a buddy, and keep my dogs leashed if there is bear activity. (Unleashed dogs on hikes where I live is a cultural norm) Everything has risk, and I live here because I love nature.

I’ve never seen one but I’m pretty sure I’ve been stalked by a puma on more than one occasion. The silence is the most unnerving part. Just dead silence. The birds the squirrels, all of them suddenly stop yapping. Maybe you hear some snapping in the trees. Not a lot. Maybe one twig. And then you leave the area and thank whatever god you worship that attacks are really rare. If the cat wanted you the cat would have you.

I have seen coyotes, and they’re not scary in the slightest unless you have a smaller animal with you. Coyotes are scrawny little bastsrds but they’re devious. I have heard stories about a lone coyote “playing” with a dog, and then luring said dog into the woods where it is then set upon by the pack. Probably just folklore. What’s not folklore is that they’ll absolutely eat your pets and livestock if you give them a chance. They are, in many situations, pests.

I’ve not met a bear but I’m not looking forward to it.

When i was a kid I lived in the mountains of new mexico, and my dad in his infinite wisdom thought he’d surprise my mom and i by buying me a gokart. There were horse trails behind the house that lead into forest and I’d sometimes take it out over those trails as a kid unsupervised.

There was a point where I was going down one of these and something flashed in front of me and my cart hit the back end of something brown. A small, probably young mountain lion’s ass.

It made a pained hissy growly noise and took off running. I immediately turned around and sped home as fast as i could. Almost pissed myself. even though it was obviously small and not coming after me after I hit it, there was an innate fear that this thing could fucking murder me. It was surprising how much scarier the things are when there is no zoo enclosure glass separating you.

Bears, mountain lions, and coyotes. I’ve not seen a mountain lion with my naked eye yet though. They are all around the area so kind of unavoidable, even if you don’t see them you will find their poop, or with coyotes you hear them at night regularly. I’m cautious around all wild animals but not really afraid of them, the odds of being attacked are very slim. I think they should be left alone to do their thing, but I will make noise if necessary to scare them away. One annoying thing is having to take precautions with food when out in the wilderness since bears can be an issue, especially in a group it can be tough to deal with for a number of reasons.

Where I live bears, moose, and mountain lions aren’t uncommon. But the one where I was the most scared was when I was parasailing in Hawaii and while I was wading in the water and GIANT whale breeched right near me. Like RIGHT near me. He swam right under me after and tickled my feet.

Whilst walking my dog at night in Canada. Followed us for a few hundred meters as I walked backwards back home. Pretty sure it was a cougar (mountain lion) as I don’t think a deer would have followed us, let alone without making a sound through the brush.

Orca and seals, though they aren’t aggressive to humans of course. Coyotes and bears on land. The latter at a distance, which was both of our preference.

I saw eight bears on Skyline Drive and the Blue Forest Parkway back in the nineties: a mother and six cubs on one day, and an adult on its own on another. Those fuckers are big.

More recently I was on a coach from Vilnius to Warsaw and saw loads of wolves. Those fuckers are big.

For both occasions I felt something like a distant, muted, primal fear and I was very grateful to be inside a vehicle.

Not a carnivore, but a few years ago I was hiking alone in northern Norway and I came across a small group of reindeer who obviously took a liking to me and followed me for about two hours, very close. They were big enough to do some damage but I didn’t feel even slightly threatened by them, nor them by me, apparently. Those fuckers stink.

We all have met OP’s mom, haven’t we?

I have had three…

Two were encounters with sharks in the ocean, and while both sharkes were not really larged, less tham three feet in lmgth. When you are in the open ocean they might as well have been Bruce.

(Bruce was the nickname of the mechanical shark in Jaws)

The third was a boar when i was stationed in germany. Again the magnificantion effect, ibet the beasty was maybe 50 pounds. When you are stumbling throught the forest at night with mo lights and a thing about the size of a coffee table starts miving around and making noise…

I grew up in Florida as a kid, and I lived on a lake. I have on more than one occasion encountered alligators. They are assholes.

I remember on occasion, I was probably six years old, maybe a little older, and my parents called the police because there were a couple of alligators sunning themselves on the back lawn by our boathouse. The local police came over and clearly had no idea what to do. They started yelling at the alligators, trying to shoo them back into the water, with little success.

Eventually, the two alligators did creep back into the water, but they were lingering around the boathouse, and in an effort to get the larger one, a female, to go away, the frustrated officers began shooting at the water. This did not have the intended effect. Alligators are not just assholes, they’re much more clever than most people seem to think.

As the officers kept firing into the water, the alligator would hiss at them, and then go under the boathouse to the other side. As the officers would run over to the other side, the alligator would hiss and, predictably, go to the other side of the boathouse and hiss them again. This went on for about five minutes or so until my father had the good sense just to tell them to stop and request that they contact animal control.

As soon as the officers backed off and left, so did the alligators, with a noticeable final hiss that I swear was them laughing.

2 bears on a hike. Black bears so all i really saw was bear butts running away.

Snakes are scarier. Almost stepped on a greenhead rattler that let me know he was there at the last second. The one copperhead I saw was the scariest, right on the trail in a patch of sun and blended in perfectly. The guy ahead of me.pointed him out or I wouldve stepped on him.

The biggest carnivores around here are foxes.

I was hiking Crypt Lake Trail a couple of years ago. Didn’t have any problems on the way up but on the way down there was a juvenile grizzly bear on the trail in front of me and my brother. We paused on the trail for a bit, looking for a possible mother to be around and I was gripping my bear spray, but the bear eventually moved on.

When approaching the boat dock where the ferry picks up hikers, we heard a lot of yelling “Go away”! “Get back”. Didn’t heed the warning, but they weren’t yelling at us, they were yelling at a very large grizzly bear in the trees close to a group of about 15 people who had finished the hike. The bear had been probably 15 meters from me at the closest. But thankfully with all the people around it too just moved on. Bear attacks are pretty rare, but you still don’t want to win that lottery ticket.

The hike itself was already pretty thrilling. Some edge walking, a tunnel and a climb with some metal chain attached to the cliff side to help out before getting to a mountain top glacial lake. It was an exhausting experience.

I live in the PNW so the large carnivores are orca, man, puma, bear, sealion, eagles, coyote, fox and dogs/cats

I have backpacked and spent a lot of time in the wilds. I have encountered a buch of the preditor/carnivores of my area except bears. I have only seen them in a roadside pasture as I drove by.

I never saw it but I am pretty sure I encountered a puma (cougar) once while backpacking alone. It was a little unnerving but I had my pack tall behind me so it couldn’t get my neck if it jumped me. Still to be in the woods full of bird song and other forest noises and then to have it all go cold silent for a while is chilling. I was warned that this is usually how the forest reacts to a puma hunting. Making a lot of noise and making sure to keep an mirror to be sure whats behind me kept me from freaking out too much. I have seen puma on distant hilltops and what not in the same areas and I have no problems with them being who they are. Just hope they never get desperate enough to try taking me on. That is usually the case, a young male without a good hunting area gets displaced and starving and has to try and setting for attacking a person.

I encounter coyote enough, I genually enjoy them. Sure they are devious and dangerous but the little surviors are amazing. I remember one time hiking on the Washington coast and in some places you can see for miles even though its a rocky mess to traverse. So we see this coyote like a mile ahead and we wonder what its doing. It seems to be walking in our direction. As it gets closer we notice it has a problem with one of its legs, so its walking on three. Its walking in a pretty straight line, deviating every so often like maybe there was a goodie to be found here or there. And as it gets closer to us it just walks by looking at us like it wanted to wave and say “oh hello there human, good day for a walk on the beach yeah? well I have to go, have a nice day” and keeps on going the way it was. It was an truly special encounter that I will never forget

Another time backpacking on the coast. The trees are tall and dense so finding a spot to setup a camp can be tricky. We found a nice spot with a good flat area under a huge tree that already had a fire ring so we stayed there for the night. When I woke up in the morning and decied to make a camp fire, about halfway through the process I noticed about 5 feet above me was a massive bald eagle perched on a branch just watching me. I totally got the impression it was sizing me up. It was huge and its claws were bigger then my hands! after some time, it must have thought better of it and flew off.

Looking directly into the eyes of a preditor is a special thing. To know that it is looking at you in the same way you see it. Each of you have that moment together. I love that feeling.