Drawing from decades of guiding in Idaho’s wilderness, Travis Bullock, owner of Mile High Outfitters, recounts memorable encounters with dangerous wildlife including bears, wolves, cougars, moose, and more.
Highlights
- Idaho’s backcountry is home to a wide variety of potentially dangerous wildlife, each presenting unique risks to hunters and outdoorsmen.
- Active wildlife management, including regulated hunting seasons, plays an important role in reducing dangerous human and predator encounters.
- Many of the greatest dangers in the backcountry come from unexpected situations, making preparation, awareness, and sound judgment just as important as hunting skills.
Africa is known throughout the world for its dangerous game. The black continent reveals tales of charging Cape Buffalo, hippos with crushing jaws, and snakes that stand taller than a human. What’s not talked about is the dangerous wildlife here in Idaho, and I think folks would be surprised at the close encounters I’ve witnessed over the years.
Central Idaho has a large population of Black Bears, and when you put that many animals together in large numbers, competition can force unwanted animal behavior that is not always beneficial to humans. A few years ago, my guides and I were in camp, and the bears were extremely aggressive. We had a bear that came into camp and kept eating the horse’s grain. He then walked through the tents while we were sleeping at night. I was asleep in the guide tent and could hear him pillaging outside the tent. I crept out of my sleeping bag, turned on my flashlight, picked up a folding metal chair, and quietly walked outside. The bear had his head in an empty cooler that was sitting in a pile to go to the airstrip. I lifted the chair high over my head and brought it down as hard as I could over his back. The bear pulled his head out of the cooler, looked up at me, and grunted. Moments of clarity hit you like a rock, and at that moment, I decided that, if I was going to pick a fight with a bear, I shouldn’t have brought a chair to a gunfight. Whether he was intimidated by my bold stupidity, wasn’t hungry, or felt sorry for me, the bear decided to walk away. I was now fully awake, so I walked down to the creek, washed my underwear, and went back to bed.
Grizzly Bears are in northern Idaho and Yellowstone. In recent years, these bears have overpopulated their home range inside the park and are looking for new territory. Grizzlies roam outside the park onto private property, and that’s where trouble starts. Every year more human encounters happen with these adventuring bears, and their temperament does not lend itself to a “live and let live” philosophy. To a grizzly bear, if you are moving, you are considered food. Many folks in large cities are out of touch with reality and may consider an ever-expanding grizzly population a success, but a mom watching her kids play in the yard while a grizzly stalks them may have a slightly different opinion. Sadly, the court systems have kept Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming from implementing a Grizzly Bear season. The irony? More Grizzly Bears are killed each year as nuisance bears than the number of tags proposed in a legal take season.
Wolves were reintroduced into Idaho in January of 1996 and, for the most part, wolves will shy away from humans if there is a hunting season to keep them fearful. Before we had a season, wolves were getting a little too comfortable around humans, especially if the person had a dog with them. One of my guides was walking down the mountain trying to work out a lion track, and a lone wolf came after his hound. This incident happened the first year the wolf season was open and after the very strict quotas were filled. My guide had a pistol and fired towards the wolf at less than 30 yards. When I met him at the bottom of the mountain, he was still pretty shaken up. Wolf conflicts seem to have gone down since quotas were lifted, but wolves should never be taken for granted. Wolves can be especially aggressive when you encounter pups in the spring. If you hear barking like it was coming from a Black Lab, be prepared. You have entered a rendezvous site where the pups are being protected by the adults.
Mountain lions are a seclusive animal by nature, but if they ever dug their claws into your flesh, you would have a really bad day. I’ve never had a serious human incident with a lion, but we have a very liberal lion season in Idaho, and even though lions are managed and far from extinction, we hunt them hard. I firmly believe this heavy-handed management keeps the human/lion incidents to a minimum in Idaho. We shot a cat one time, and it came out of the tree, hit the ground, and attacked one of my hounds. The lightning speed of its paw and those invisible claws as they reached out and pulled that hound close is still a vivid blur in my mind. Human eyes cannot comprehend the speed of a lion’s extending paw. The claws were like Velcro. It seemed the lion’s paw just grazed the hound, but the claws were stuck and never let go. To understand the speed, just play with a house cat and a piece of string. Now imagine a 150-pound house cat.
Moose may not seem like a dangerous animal, but during the mating season, the hormones raging through them can create a very unstable situation for humans in the wrong spot. When my wife and I were first together, she brought her house cats to camp to keep the mouse population at bay. We had a bull moose that tore the wood pile apart to get at those cats. Since the wolf introduction in central Idaho, moose have disappeared so- problem solved.
Elk would normally not be considered dangerous unless one comes through the windshield of your Ford Focus at 65 mph. If that happens, there’s a good chance you’re visiting a doctor or mortician, so pay attention while driving; especially at first light and last light when game animals are active and crossing roads.
The last creature I want to talk about doesn’t get the attention it deserves. It is not endangered, and we encounter it each day, so we’ve become desensitized and immune to the dangers. A few years ago, one of my clients decided to bring his wife on a hunt. She was a beginning hunter with a contagious and attractive personality. The great thing about women hunters is they have no testosterone, so they are very willing to listen to advice. The husband, on the other hand, had lots of testosterone. She was in great shape. He was not. The three of us spotted a group of elk, rode the horses closer, tied them up, then stalked within 200 yards. The husband was struggling walking and being quiet, so I asked him to stay behind while she and I closed in for a closer shot. She was set up at 75 yards, and she had her rifle over a rest. She concentrated on keeping her heart rate steady. She looked through the scope while keeping her finger on the trigger guard. Her safety was off. She was ready. The elk slowly grazed into the opening in front of us. As she waited for the bull to step from behind a cow, we heard a loud thump of a boot hitting a log behind us. The elk heard it too and wasted no time making tracks to the next county. The soon-to-be deceased ex-husband had decided that his wife needed backup since it was her first hunt. It’s amazing how fast a hunting rifle can turn into a potential murder weapon. As she slowly but deliberately started to bring the rifle in his direction, I gently massaged it from her fingers. Being caught between a sow grizzly and her cubs would have been preferable to the situation I found myself in.
Husbands, remember, if your wife is willing to use her vacation to follow you through the woods, get dirty and stinky and pretend she’s having more fun than going to Hawaii, please keep your ego in check and do not chase away her elk; otherwise, the trophy hanging on the wall could be you. Hallmark and Hershey’s don’t make enough cards and candy to forgive such a sin.