ddd-shooter
Senior Member
I bet a few guys would love that campsite location about September, lolCut it close again, but the June edition of the 12 night challenge is complete. What I thought would be a bunch of solo outings has morphed into some memorable times with some of my oldest buds who I have known for almost 50 years.
We drove up yesterday morning to claim an unofficial campsite on NF. By midafternoon everyone had arrived and we had just sat down to enjoy our first adult beverage after setting up camp when a weary traveler strolled into camp. Turns out this fella had slid his 2WD pickup in a ditch about a half a mile down a pig trail and was looking for help. We piled into my truck with a tow rope to see if we could help.
After towing him about 1/3 of a mile back up the mountain out of the slick, red clay washout, we pulled back into camp, only to find a sow with a good size boar happily tearing apart the cooler that one of my buddies had inadvertently left sitting on the tailgate of his truck. Note to self, no matter how brief a time you think you’ll be away from camp it is critical to store all food.
It took some effort to try and run them off. Clearly, these bears had raided campsites before. The sow returned three times within 20 minutes, completely ignoring us as she walked within 15 yards and attempted to enter one of the tents. A small rock to the rump sent her scurrying into the woods, only for her to return 10 minutes later for a fourth time. At that point, I realized since they had already received a food reward, there was no dissuading them and it would be a long sleepless night if we stayed. We ended up breaking camp and dashing about 15 miles away to another little spot I knew of to get camp set up again just before dark.
None of my high school buddies are hunters, and had never seen a bear in the wild, much less up close and personal. You could say the excitement level was high for a while.
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