Interesting animals or close dangerous encounters on a trail run?

Deer, many times. (The most interesting time was running up a steep dirt road / fire trail, deep in the woods, the deer was grazing, and just looked over at me, watched me go by, figured I was safe, and then went back to grazing as I went past.

Flock of Geese...on the beach...at the ocean...in the water.

Dolphin at Pt. Dume Malibu.

20 Bald Eagles...above a beach, near Seattle.

Most dangerous animal of all? Humans.

I haven't had any really freaky encounters yet, but a few interesting ones:

An owl stole my hat.

A bald eagle shit on my head.

Spooked a family of coyotes, and one of the pups dashed straight down the trail. For at least another mile it kept sprinting ahead on the trail, stop, then get spooked again and just keep dashing down the trail. Came across it a good dozen times until it finally ran away into the bushes instead of just down the trail.

Running as teen I had on headphones and sunglasses and barely saw a rattlesnake in the middle of the trail and my heart stopped with my foot directly over it. I stepped back and regained my breath and then watched it slither across. He didn't rattle because it was still early in the spring or he assumed I wasn't an idiot but, since then I don't run with earphones nor sunglasses on certain trails.

In high school 2 skunks ran from beneath the stands of our football stadium right in front of me. I screamed like a little girl in front of the entire girls team.

This winter there was a dead rabbit in the road during a road race. About 10 of us were in the front pack when 3 Turkey vultures swooped down to the rabbit. Those were some ugly mofos and they scared the sh!t out of me.

nuts and bolts wrote:

Rattlers are not a threat as long as you can see them. They are not aggressive by nature and only attack if threatened.

That said, they blend into their surroundings really well and on narrow or overgrown trails there is a danger of stepping on on or near them.

Maybe I am a chicken...or in this case a fried one. Once, I was in a 10k trail race when all of sudden a rattle snake appeared upon my path. I screeched/yelled and knocked over a nearby runner but ended up placing in the top 5 in my age group...lol? ( ok, so what if I am a hobby jogger...jeez)

Bguyjmillenium12 wrote:

considering how many people run, why are there not more mountain lion attacks? are they just shy secretive animals?

Dead people tell no tales.

^ the 2004 and 2007 incident are entertaining

Once while running a marathon on a track I was chased by an opossum.

I have had several dangerous encounters while running the trails of my local state park. I have been stalked and chased numerous times by deer flies as well as stealth gnats that I could feel the stings yet never see them. A few years ago I nearly stepped on a frog. The most frightening encounter was seeing a chick squatting down with her pants around her ankles taking a pi55. I'm shaking just thinking about how many times I have cheated death.

ive run into black bears a few times on isolated running trails. Usually i just scream and throw rocks till they run off, i run with mace strapped to the inside of my hand too though, just flip the safety off with your thumb and spray. i remember running in Gulf Shores golf courses as a kid too and randomly running into alligators on the trails as well.

I've seen a few bears (1 adult and 2 cubs actually), a bunch of moose, a whole bunch of rattlesnakes, and 1 porcupine. The rattlesnakes always scare the $hit out of me, but everything else has been OK honestly. If I saw a cougar, I would probably crap myself, but fortunately I have yet to see one.

In the summer months, my wife and I do all of our runs in the Andorra Forest (famous for wild blueberries) just above Keene, NH. We've run into a few moose and bobcats, but mainly black bears, often moms and cubs--last year we had a mom with 4 cubs in the area, pretty unusual.

Two summers ago I rounded a corner and an adult black bear burst out of the bushes and bluff charged me three times. It happened so fast, I didn't know what to do and just stood there. She (I think it was a female) came at me pretty fast, huffing each time, and stopped abruptly about 10 feet away. After the third time, she turned and walked back off the trail. I assume there was a cub nearby, but according to THE bear expert in NH (Ben Killam), actual attacks by black bears are extremely rare, and when they do happen (highly unusual situations), 75% of the time it is a lone male bear--not a mom with cubs. At least with black bears, the prevailing wisdom is to stand still and let the bear know you are not a threat. Don't lie down, don't run, and don't try to make yourself look bigger. Look at the bear, talk in a normal voice, and slowly walk away once the bear walks away.

I met a lovely Cougar on a run one day.

I asked for her phone number, she gave it to me, then the next day I f***ed the hell outta her. She thanked me and gave me 50 bucks.

I live in Connecticut, so it's not the craziest place for wildlife, but I've had some interesting encounters.

To the people mentioning deer: is it really that exciting? I guess maybe they're less common in other places. I often see about 10 or 20 of them on a regular run. Yesterday I would estimate that I came across at least 40, including a herd of 21 on a golf course fairway.

As for more interesting experiences, I've had a couple. The most interesting was this past summer. I was running in the woods almost in the dark, turning onto a trail that pretty much no one runs on or knows about because it connects two main networks. This one animal started barking and running circles around me, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a dog. It was about the size of a dog, but it ran with scurrying feet like a coyote. It also barked with the low-pitched voice of a dog, but would go into a coyote-style howl sometimes too. It was terrifying. Eventually I managed to slowly walk away after several minutes of its aggression. I didn't run through that section for a while, but after a month or two I started going through pretty often again and haven't had anything else happen. Does anyone have any idea what this thing could have been?

Interestingly, in that same section my friend had a weird confrontation with a big deer. It blocked his path about 10 feet in front of him and whenever he took one step backwards from it, it took two more towards him. Eventually it stopped following him at the same place where my dog/wolf/coyote left me alone. Weird.

Besides that, I haven't had anything too crazy. I came across a big white skunk in the middle of the road in New Haven. Also while mountain biking in New Haven, I saw a bobcat, which was pretty cool. That was around two months ago, and I just saw on Wikipedia that apparently they aren't believed to live in Connecticut anymore. But I'm pretty confident that this was a bobcat.

A lot of the usual rattlesnakes, turkeys, coyotes, bobcats, deer, etc.

But a couple of years ago I had the chance to do some runs on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. I saw quite a few kangaroos and wallabies, but the most interesting encounter was seeing a koala lumbering across a field. That was the only one I ever saw on the ground.

Hawkrunner wrote:

Attacked by an owl in the Great Swamp. Stumbled across a black bear while hiking with wife. Two gay guys going at Belmont Plateau.

That's funny. I have experienced all of those.

Got swooped by and owl running near the swamp at night and in college I ran at Belmont Plateau and saw more than one gay triste.

One night, early in college, I was home on break and didn't get to run until late. I ran on Patriot's path and came across a black bear ripping apart a downed tree, presumably for grubs. Took absolutely no notice of me.

I got charged by a whitetail deer in the woods near Delbarton. Once I started going the other way, it left me alone.

Finally, I wound up in the midst of a herd of Elk in Banff. That was by far the scariest and most dangerous. I was running on a trail with a lot f roots and was looking down most of the time. I came out into a clearing and there was a herd on both sides of the trail.

I've seen a bear, a couple foxes, but the snakes are what get me. They seem to pop up out of no where and nothing gives me the chills like em. When the weather turns warm I start looking. Nothing like almost stepping on a venomous snake to make you run faster.

My husband and I worked in Africa for 9 years studying wildlife so recalling some of the things that chased us is pretty scary. In the first three years it was a Cheetah, Spitting cobra, and warthog for me. My husband ran right into a pride of lions and was charged and ended up climbing Moses Rock to safety. In the second part of our years there the scariest encounter was a hippo that burst out of a hot spring and chased us. I ran up a creek bed and escaped and my husband hurdled a fallen tree where it stopped. We were chased by elephants a few times and could run like the wind through previously unseen trails in the swamps.

Now we live in the west and I've bumped into many moose and elk and a few black bears. My husband had to chase off a mountain lion that wouldn't stop stalking.

After all that the scariest thing was a skinhead threatening folks with a gun on a heavily used trail.

Live in AZ. Lots of rattlers and coyotes, a coral snake, a desert tortoise, and ringtails in Phx area. Trained in Flagstaff during summers in college, and had a huge drought one summer. Lots of animals came close to town for lake water, and the Coconino Forest was completely off limits for even hiking. We hopped the fence and ran in it anyway. Saw a couple of porcupines (which I never knew existed in AZ), foxes, and lots of massive elk and pronghorn antelope. Even ran with a herd of antelope for a mile down a depression/valley that summer, which was really cool.