Unusual wild animal or wild animal event in your campground?

[Professor David]

Yellowstone Fishing Bridge Campground in the early 1960s (when the site was right next to the river, which also happened to be the feeding zone for bears during the fish spawn) with my sister and parents in our Red Dale trailer. Around dinner time, the black bears would come through eating their way from campsite to campsite...and metal cooler to metal cooler...and cleaned trout batch to cleaned trout batch, etc... I especially found it interesting when a bear would flip the top off a metal cooler with one claw and the lid would fly very high into the air. One guy was cleaning his trout and tried to fight the beats off his freshly cleaned catch, which he had displayed out for a photo (what we call a "touron" these days)...of course, the bears won. Last year when we visited Fishing Bridge at it's "new" location away from the fish spawning location near the river, a ranger told us that the park service actually feed the bears as an "attraction" to bring them in to certain location for visitors. She said Fishing Bridge Campground was one of those locations. Different time and different practices for the park service.

US Park Rangers Once Fed Bears to Draw Crowds | HISTORY

Yellowstone maintained a bear-feeding station as an attraction.

www.history.com

 

[Kirk]

Were you the bait?

This is my bait, or mate? I call her Pam.

 

[dave541]

Boondocking: woke up to a large flock of Canada Geese under, atop, and around our rig.
Woke up to a loud crash in the middle of the night. Open range cattle knocked over our grill.
Watched elk browse just a few feet away.
Watched a pair of sandhill cranes try to save their eggs as the lake water was rising over their nest.
A mature male western tanager in full color plumage on a tree branch literally inches from our window.
A curious black bear wandered through our camp. He ignored the grill and walked right past it after a quick sniff.
A pair of squirrels using the top of our rig for a racetrack.

In a campground: Wild burros browsing right next to our rig. One stepped on the sewer hose and bent the wire coil.
Wild turkeys wandering through the campsite (Pinnacles NP -- the resident flock).
Heading into town for shopping. Put the full trash bag in the back of the truck to throw in the dumpster on our way out. Went back inside to get my jacket and a cooler. Took maybe two minutes to get the rest of stuff. In that length of time the crows found my trash bag, ripped it open, and strew trash all around.
The faucet in the campground leaked and left a puddle. I built a little catch basin and made a small ditch leading away from the rig. Birds found it useful as a birdbath (desert, dry area). We must have had a dozen different species visiting us every day.

 

[PancakeBill]

Living at Old Faithful for 10 years. Bison, bears, wolves, pine martens, crazy ravens….

 

[RayIN]

Were you the bait?

 

[Kirk]

One morning while preparing to leave Trapark Escapee park in west TX about 15 years ago, I noticed something disappear in between the dual rear tires.

A Texas Spiney Lizard chose to hide there. I had some difficulty getting him to leave so that I could drive out without him.

 

[JudyJB]

When we volunteered at Shark Valley area of Everglades NP, part of our job was to keep people from crowding the local alligators. This was not in a campground but it was just up the walking area from the visitor center.
View attachment 2446650

I have been at Shark Valley many times to ride my bike on the 18 mile paved trail. Your photo is not of an alligator. It is their resident crocodile that hangs out at the end of the trail near the tower. The rangers told me she wandered in about 8 years ago, and seems to like it there with all of the alligators, though she cannot mate with any of them. Crocodiles are normally several miles farther south along the coast of the Everglades.

You can tell she is a crocodile by her narrow snout and the teeth showing outside of her jaw. I think they called her Sally. Also, her tail has taller spikes or ridges, especially at the end.

 

[Seilerbird]

I think they called her Sally...maybe long short Sally....

 

[Seilerbird]

I had one of my photos used by the park service to advertise an event. They put poster sized copies around the park and had a smaller version on the shuttle buses.

Then there was the time I was attacked by a rogue gator;

 

[Seilerbird]

Then there was the time I was attacked by a rogue T-Rex dinosaur:

I

 

[Firstime RVer]

In our travels we've encountered, chipmunks, squirrels, possums, a skunk, lots of deer, rabbits, a black bear, ground hogs, fence swift lizards and pine snake (NJ pines). None of the encounters ever seemed to be at an opportune times!!
Safe travels and all the best.

 

[garyb1st]

My two most memorable sightings. Once while tent camping at Sequoia National Park. I was playing cards with my son. It was quite dark but the Coleman lantern gave off enough light to see the cards. After a while, my wife said a bear was watching us. It was so dark I didn't think she'd be able to see a bear so assumed she was joking. My son and I just kept playing cards. When my wife said she wasn't joking I got up and turned around. Sure enough, maybe 10 feet behind us a black bear was standing on its hind legs watching us. After I got up it just walked away. Latter that night, we heard some kids yelling and literally chasing a black bear within the campground. The bear had a paper bag in his mouth. The bear managed to climb a tall tree and the kids eventually walked away. Not sure what they had in that paper bag but can't imagine it was worth an encounter with a bear.

Another time in Kings Canyon, my son and I were in our tent trying to get some sleep. Two couples next to us were sitting around their campfire. After a while, they started yelling and banging pans together. Got up and went out to find out what the commotion was all about. A black bear had crawled into the back of their SUV. They hadn't close the hatch and the bear was just doing what they do. They managed to get the bear out and went back to their camp fire. Probably an hour later, more yelling and banging pans. Got up again and went to see what was happening. Believe it or not, another bear, may the same bear crawled back into the SUV. Hard to believe they left the hatch open after the first encounter.

 

[UTTransplant]

Gary’s bear story reminds me of another campground bear story. We were at Sawbill Campground on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness having just returned from a 5 day canoe trip. We had 3 boys with us, our two older sons and one of their friends. We were just sitting around the camp relaxing when all kinds of hollering and yelling sounded across the road from us. Turns out a black bear had broken the rear window of a pickup topper in the camp across from us to steal some bread. The campers chased the bear off, and about half the campground decided to join in including the three boys with us. They all had great fun chasing and scaring the bear. They gradually tromped back to camp and we thought that was the end of the fun. But in late afternoon we heard a gunshot - very, very unusual there. Turns out the same bear had gotten on the porch of a seasonal staff cabin and discovered a can of Crisco. The bear thought all that fat was the best thing he/she had ever discovered! The only thing that drove it off was the buckshot by the outfitter (who had a special permit from the Minnesota wildlife people for that reason). The outfitter said he hoped the bear was gone for good, because if it came back he would have to kill it. It would just be too dangerous to have in a 60 site campground totally off grid and 30 miles from anywhere. “A fed bear is a dead bear.”

 

[Seilerbird]

I was camping at the Norse campground in Yellowstone NP. I was woken up around 3am by heavy footsteps outside of my tent.
The next morning I discovered a fresh pile on buffalo poop less than ten feet from my tent.

 

[RayIN]

Whoa, I've never heard of a white squirrel before. Seen lots of black squirrels when we lived in Omaha/Council Bluffs. But never a white squirrel. Cool.

Oblong ILL is famous for their population of white squirrels. They are protected by city ordnance.

 

[ButchW1]

Oblong ILL is famous for their population of white squirrels. They are protected by city ordnance.

Oh-oh , no more squirrel stew... ....
Butch

 

[JudyJB]

Some of these stories reminded me of two other instances where campers accidentally "fed" wild animals.

1) At Midway Campground on Tamiami Trail, halfway between Naples and Miami, I had a lot of my college students' papers to grade, so I was home all day in my motorhome, and I had a very good view of the tent area of that campground. One "sort-of" camper was staying there a couple of days, sleeping in his car and living on snacks. He drove off for the day, leaving one of those plastic milk carton containers on his picnic table filled with various protein bars, potato chips, and other small bags of junk foods. While he was gone, the crows had a fun time. One would fly up to the box and choose something. Then it would fly off about 50' and open it and enjoy the contents, leaving the wrappers behind. (The stuff was probably too heavy to carry very far, so 50' was their limit.) The other crows did the same most of the day, so that by the end of the day, there was an empty snack box and wrappers strewn in a circle around the camping spot. Did not see the young man come back so don't know what his reaction was, but I hope he had something left to eat and learned a lot about campground crows!

2) In a very heavily wooded state park along the coast of Oregon, it was quite a walk or drive to the beach, so again i was pretty much alone in the campground while I had grading to do. The people kitty-corner from me apparently had a big dog, so they had left one of those huge dog food bags outside on their patio area. All day, I watched an industrious chipmunk chew a hole in the bag and carry off mouthfuls of kibble across the road and into its storage burrows. I think there was plenty left for the dog. I am guessing that these campers learned to keep their dog food inside somewhere!

One of my non-camping friends asked why I did not stop the animals from stealing food, and I said they were doing such a good job, I could not even consider stopping them!!

 

[UTTransplant]

Judy, our kids learned about camp robbing jays when one actually stole a small piece of peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of one of the hands of one of my boys! He had actually finished eating, but he was just waving around the remaining small piece while talking, one of the kids who wave their hands a LOT! Jay swooped in and stole it.

 

[Cmprman]

 

[JudyJB]

I was at Shark Valley just down the road from Midway, at the very end of the 18 mile paved path, near the tower. One guy came back to his bike in the bike rack and was upset to have a protein bar missing from his handlebar bike bag. We pointed out to him that his bag was unzipped and it was likely a crow that had done the unzipping. I always made sure my bike bag was not only zipped tightly but depending on the area, I would add a twist tie to the zipper.

Jays and Crows can be very brazen, and also very clever. I also once had some tent campers next to me upset at a missing pound of hamburger taken from their outside cooler. I pointed out the paw prints on the lid and suggested they needed a cooler with a serious lock on it to prevent raccoon thefts.