This happened to me...

[cnelk]

The 'Bear Encounter' thread got me to thinking about having a 'This happened to me' thread
We all remember the OUTDOOR LIFE section that I for one, couldnt wait to read.

Lets hear those stories guys...

Embellishment is a must!

[buglmin]

My dad would read it to me when I got into bed...man that was a long time ago!!

[pointysticks]

first thing i turned to everytime my copy fell into my young hands. i loved it.

strangely, i remember alot of them. like the one guy that poll-axed a bear during an attack. i wish Outdoor life would put out a compilation.

[Lefty]

This was printed in the American trapper a few years back here is part of the article
Ther are more, but this is a good start,.. lets just say hunting is much safer than trapping
No need to embellish, Just the facts
Plenty more stories,
braking the axle on my truck after driving across 3/4 of ice over 22 feet of water
plunging inthrew the ice 2 miiles from the launch and an amazed deputy
getting stuck on a small island in 60 mph winds
nearly dashed to death on sharp rocks and roaring water inthe Cascade
log truck nearly dumped me off 200 ft drop
The last person on FS41


Even muskrat trapping has posed risks. I had a close call. I had been trapping muskrats under the ice on a large wetland in Southern Minnesota. Swan Lake near Mankato has a big history of “rat” trapping. I was trapping nearly 3 miles from the landing. We hadn’t had much snow. The ice was smooth and slick. I would wear ice skates to pull a sled with my extra clothes, gloves, and lunch each day across the lake. I would skate back with my catch each day on a small sled. Leaving my trapping sled and most of my gear hidden in the cattails. Through out the day the temperature had gotten colder. The ice was booming and banging all day,… just making ice. It was almost dark as I put on my skates and left the end of the lake, much like I had for the previous week.

Right in front of me the ice didn’t look right and I made a quick hockey stop. I realized my sled was still slipping forward. A lineal hole miles long had formed. Ice pressure ridges are common on big lakes. This ice ridge went downwards. The ice formed a “V” shape into 4 feet of water. A few more feet and I would have been trapped in that water. I can only venture to guess the outcome.

I had been trapping beaver under the ice for a week, and then weather turned cold. I enjoy my treks to my traps in the brisk air. The temperate warmed up to –22 below zero before I headed out to check traps. I had a new pickup ordered and was using a car to trap. The first location was a stop alongside a 4-lane highway. I had an extra set of keys in my pocket. I locked the doors and left the car running.
At the first set I chopped open a small hole with my hatchet. The trap had been sprung. As I was remaking the set I dropped my hatchet, while reaching for the hatchet water had flowed into both of my gloves. I realized too late my arms were soaking wet. I was getting cold fast. I threw the trap into my pack basket. My fingers were cold. I knew was going to have problems before I got back to my car. I put my car keys in my mouth, and took off for the car.
As I came out of the river bottom a highway patrolman greeted me. He had stopped to check my running car and had spotted me in the distance running for the car. He asked if he could be of assistance as he looked at my keys in the ignition of the locked car. My fingers couldn’t move. He was a little surprise when I spit a second sent of keys out of my mouth.
I returned in the spring and got my hatchet. The leather has shrunk on the handle from the 3-month dunking and the sheath has been lost for years. The hatchet hangs with my favorite hammers above my tool bench. I still use that hatchet. For the past 23 years it has gone beaver trapping. And that hatchet is always within reach.

The fall of 1979, the state of Minnesota opened a fall beaver season. The area lakes were frozen tight, open water muskrat trapping had ended. Fur prices were up, I had the equipment and decided to chase beaver. The Minnesota River was flowing at spring levels, and had overflowed the banks in some areas. I was trapping a 16-mile stretch of river and was doing very well. Cold Canadian air had moved in. The temperature was dropping. The river was icing up. Today I would be pulling traps. At noon the temperature was 5 degrees with the temperatures expected to drop through out the day.
My new pickup was having warranty work done in the small town were I pulled the boat out of the river. My plan was to put the boat in the river at home and cover the 21 miles of river to the area where my traps were set. I would be covering a total of 37 miles of river. The fourteen-foot aluminum boat with a 20 hp Johnson out board and the high river flow I could cover the water quickly. The mechanic at the Ford dealership would be working late into the night and was expecting me around dark.
After pulling my second trap the clutch dog in the lower unit of the outboard broke. I no longer had the forward gear. I had plenty of daylight left. I figured with reverse and the swiftness of the river I would only be late an hour or so.
I was at my fifth trap; I had the bank stake pulled up with a nice blanket sized beaver on the end of a # 4 Herters coil spring. On the end of the drowning cable was a 1/2 of a cement block . I slipped on the bank and the fast current caught the boat. I grabbed the boat. I was wearing a life jacket and my main concern at first was the losing there beaver and the boat. I hooked my right arm over the gunnel of the boat. Flopped the concrete block in the boat followed by the beaver. Quickly followed by me, nearly flying into the boat. I dumped the water out of my hip boats. I decided to head to the closet home or farm, may be only 2 miles away. I had enough clothes on with my life jacket cinched tight the water hadn’t soaked to my chest. After a few minutes my toes quit hurting. I had dressed for sub zero weather , although wet I felt plenty warm. I had on plenty of clothes. The ice was getting thicker in the river as the day progressed. I had to break over an inch of ice along the shoreline to get to some of the set locations to retrieve my traps some of the traps .
I was making a good catch of big beaver; every beaver weighed over 55 pounds. I wasn’t making the progress needed to be at the boat ramp at a reasonable time. At one location I unloaded the cement blocks that I used at the end of the drowning cable.
The last trap of the day I had made a catch. Somehow the big beaver had pulled the cement block up and wrapped the trap and drowning cable around a submerged tree. I was able to get the beaver out of the trap, but unable to cut the cable. I filled my gauntlet glove with icy water. That was enough. I would get my trap another time. My fingers were now cold too. I wiped my hands dry the best I could before putting on a pair of chopper mittens.
I motored the boat up the boat ramp. Grabbed a four-foot long T-bar trap stake and anchored the boat. I felt good, eight blankets and super blanket beaver were in the boat, and I was a little cold.
The Ford dealer was a ½ mile up the road. I stated jogging towards the dealership. Panic stuck. My legs went working right. There wasn’t any feeling in my legs. I walked carefully to the service center. The mechanic greeted me at the door. I explained my situation. The mechanic tried to get my boots off of my feet. My feet were frozen to my socks and my socks froze to my boots. He grabbed a hose turned on the hot water and filled my hip waders with water, after a moment my feet were free. The mechanic happened to be an old trapping budding of my fathers from years ago as young men.
Well my truck wasn’t ready. My dad was called to come and get me. I had my feet soaking in an oil pan full of warm water, as the mechanic shuttled hot broth and chocolate to me while my feet thawed. As the feeling came back to my feet I was oohing and aahing over the pain, he explained how he had froze his feet trapping muskrats a long time ago. . Dad brought me a change of clothes. We loaded the traps and frozen beaver in to my dads work truck. We each grabbed one end of the boat to put onto the truck. The boat wouldn’t move. The bottom of the boat had a layer of ice two inches thick in some places. We knocked the ice from the boat with hammers and 2x4, s.
My feet had a funny color. A week later I lost a bunch of skin from my toes and the bottom of my feet. I lost the feeling in 5 of my toes, and as I sit at the keyboard I still “feel” the pain.

I had another real close experience beaver trapping. I was trapping beaver on a small section of the Minnesota River in early March. Part of the river was open from the warm water discharge of an electrical power plant. The weather had been warm and the beaver were working the exposed banks of the river. I slid my boat down the bank onto a ledge of ice along the river. I loaded my boat with a handful of traps and gear, and slipped into the river. I planned to set three beaver colonies up stream. The first location looked hot. The beaver had worked a small willow patch about 80 yards long. The sun had melted the surface of the mud on the exposed bank. The river water was running clear and fast. The beaver were feeding and had a number of castor mounds along the bank. Downstream, I ran the boat up onto an ice shelf and grabbed the gear to make two sets. I filled two sand bags with gravel from the bottom of river to be used as drowning weight at the end of a ten-foot drowning cable. I left the one trap rig where I filled the bags. A short distance up I began making my first set on a small castor mound. The trap was staked in a few inches of water, the drowning weight was tossed out until the cable was taunt. I made a trap bed and placed the trap in 10 inches of water right on the edge of the bank. A small twig sapped behind me out in the river. I unscrewed the cap on the lure bottle, as I was placing the lure a chill went down my spine. I turned around. Then pure panic, filled with adrenaline.
Somewhere upstream a piece of ice had broken and was floating down stream. The piece of ice was huge, 40 yards across and a couple hundred yards long and fully 20 to 30 inches thick. Hundreds of tons of ice were coming straight at me. I wildly tried to step up the bank and slipped. I franticly jumped up the slick mud bank and slid back into the water, once, twice, tree times. Trying to reach a willow growing up on the bank. The ice was moving fast in the swift water. I calculated the speed of the ice chunk and jumped onto the leading edge of ice. The ice chunk shot me eight feet up in the air , and crashed through the willow patch another eight feet. The ice gouged and flattened the riverbank and willow patch. I fell off of the leading edge of the ice as it retreated, almost silently to the river. Exhausted I lie on my back in the willow thicket. My chest heaving up and down as I tried to get more air. I knew my life had been spared, and said a prayer of thanks. I retrieved my traps and went home.

[Indian Summer]

I was showing a new guide some country in early August. it was hot out and mid day we took a nap. At some point I became aware that occassionally something was bouncing off of my hat and chest. I guess I was snoring a little and he was trying to lob a dried deer turd into my mouth. lol... so I jumped on him, got him in a headlock, and we rolled down the hill about 10 feet or so. When we came to a stop I looked up and a mountain lion was standing broadside about 10 FEET away. Just standing there looking. I later surmised that in his world he must have thought we were predator and prey going at it. Anyway we had a staring contest for about a full minute. That is LONG at 10 feet! Then he walked slowly away without a worry in the world and we just looked at each other in amazement.

One other snowy day we were out looking for lion tracks with a box of hounds in back. We cut two tracks together and turned out the dogs. They went straight up the hill and eventually over the top and out of earshot. We sat there for awhile with the telemetry tracker going but then I heard the dogs again. My buddy was fiddlng with something in the truck and I walked away from the parking spot a little to take a leak. All of the sudden I hear a little swish in the snow just above me and a lion runs right at me, jumps from the uphill side and hits a tree 10 feet from me about 7 feet up and scurries up it into some thick stuff. Wow!

So I scoot back to the truck and my partner has the tracking receiver in his and and I say uuuh "Hey man I know where the lion is" Is that hilarious or what!!! He's like "WHAT???" I said he just ran up that tree right there and point at a Doug fir only 40 feet from the truck. Of course he's having a hard time comprehending what I just told him because you have a better chance of hitting the Powerball than running a lion back to the truck and treeing it. So he says "just hit the dirt and see what the dogs do" Sure enough here they come right to the tree I pointed at and hes like "No way!" it was a female so we pulled the dogs and rode off. But the look on the dogs faces was priceless when we stood up and said "What took you old hounds so long" How often does a guy beat the dogs to the tree? NEVER!

Year before last I was in a buddies tricked out Toyota going up a mountain road in about 2 feet of snow to retrieve a camp that was snowed in. Just as we crested to last rise to the trailhead my buddy (The same one who 10 years ago was wrestling with me on the hill) says "there goes a bobcat" Well it only took me a split second to yell LION because I saw 3 feet of tail disappearing into a pine. So we hit the gas and I hung my head out the window and started bawling to beat the band like and old Walker hound. Don't you know I treed the cat. And three more!!! Turns out it was a female with 3 kittens that went about 60 pounds or so. She treed further up the hill but the little ones did as taught and scurried up to safety right off the bat. Funny thing was one was only 6 feet off the ground. ha ha. So we went over and took a bunch of pics before we decided to let the little family regroup and went to finish out work. here's a couple pics.

Lions are cool to watch. Last year in Wyoming me and a buddy watched 3 mature cats frolicking on a big rock for about an hour. Those kind of things make your day.

[Indian Summer]

"You can't see me" lol

[Buglemaster]

GREAT pics Joe!!! Enjoying the stories also. Keep em coming.

[LckyTylr]

Lefty, for my own piece of mind . . . would you PLEASE consider a Different hobby that does NOT involve ice and water?

Whew!!!

[cnelk]

I think year was 1978. Northern Minnesota. Late spring

Beavers were causing water problems everywhere. Dams backing up water. Trees being felled.
Some of the ponds covered 15-20 acres of water and flooding fields.

Me and my cousin and another friend rounded up some dynamite... 17 sticks... caps and fuses for good measure.
We were going to propel some fury on a beaver dam.

We drove as close as we could to the dam, grabbed all the supplies and hiked the rest of the way.
The day was perfect. Not much wind. Just a gentle breeze lapping the water against the dam

The main dam was about 50 ft long. Water was 8-10 feet deep

We found what was pretty the center of the dam, and proceeded to prep the dynamite.

The first set was 2 sets of 3 sticks wrapped together with about 18in of fuse.
We plunged 2 holes into the muskeg on the backside of the dam - about 8 feet apart and dropped them into place

You may know that fuse burns at 1 foot a minute. So we had approx 90 seconds after the fuse was lit to find a safe place.

Lets set the stage...
SWAMP
Poplar trees
Willows
Mosquitoes
Rubber boots
Dynamite
Teenagers

Someone lit the fuses. Everyone ran.
But no forethought was given to where!

Imagine 3 guys running thru a swamp, darting between trees, tripping, not really knowing how far to run!

Well, we decided running wasnt really necessary. So finally we gathered behind some bigger trees and waited.

Do you really know how long 90 seconds is when you are waiting for 6 sticks of dynamite to go off?

We didnt either


KAAAAAABBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

Sticks, mud, and water pelted us. The ground shook

HA! That was cool!
The water was flowing!

We still had 11 sticks of dynamite to play with so off we went up to the dam again.

This time we prepped 2 more sets. FOUR sticks each

Not sure who's idea it was, but we decided to combine the 2 sets of into one set of 8....
I think we may have been short on fuse or caps or something [remember, this was over 30 years ago]

Anyway, I do remember plunging a hole for the dynamite, near the edge of the water on the dam.
Down went 8 sticks of explosive with only the fuse above the water by 2-3 inches.
I also remember the breeze lapping the water toward the fuse so I looked around for a log to
place across in front of the fuse.
The log was about 4 ft long and 6in in diameter. [this log is key]

Someone lit the fuse and off we went again!
This time there wasnt any stumbling or helter skelter actions... we were pros now.
We also didnt go as far as the first time...

We wait a bit..

KAAAAAABBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

Ha! More fun!

We walked back to the dam to access the damage. The water was really flowing now

About that time we heard this swooshing sound. We looked around and suddenly KERSPLASH! about 10 feet from us, out in the water...

It was that log I had placed in front of the fuse!

No idea how high that log went but Im sure it went up a long, long way.

By this time, The water level had dropped by 6 feet so we figured we better save the last 3 sticks for another time and more fun

The good ol' days...

[Lefty]

Lefty, for my own piece of mind . . . would you PLEASE consider a Different hobby that does NOT involve ice and water?

Whew!!!

I followed my wife back to Idaho,.. I left Minnesota ice and most of my trapping days behind me
I didnt tell you about the time: Duck hunting on Vancouver lake (Washington) 9 degrees when I went out, broke ice most of the ways to where I set out decoys,.. outgoing tide. I started kicking ice off decoys when the undercut bank broke off about the size of a school bus. I still clearly remember looking up though the stained water at bubbles trailing upwards.
I knew I was down deep, It was clear in my mind what I needed to do. I swam up with my gun,, spun to face the shore . made a number of strokes, jabbed my gun into the mud, slid onto the solid shore, drained my hip boots.
My Carharts were soaked. It was hard to get to my feet. Emptied my gun, ran for the boat about 600 yards away. Put my truck keys in my mouth, Motor stated first pull,.. Broke ice 2 miles back to the launch, Anchored the boat in the water, I was just starting to get cold
Unlocked the truck, started the truck up. Stripped to my underwear as a deputy pulled up. He asked if I needed help; was I OK; then commented,.. "You've done this before"
I was cold when I got home. Showered, changed clothes, grabbed anouther gun, headed back out and finished my hunt

[LckyTylr]

Dennis . . . I'd venture to say that you are either insane . . . or you have no fear.

[Lefty]

Dennis . . . I'd venture to say that you are either insane . . . or you have no fear.

Hmmm,..While I lived in northern Utah A number of DWR employees nicknamed me "the crazy school teacher". an older lady from church one time came up to me, "Was that You hunting Willard Bay?" "I thought so" "You were all over the emergency scanner "

I believe Ive just been in a lot of outdoor situations most never expierience, and things do happen. I also believe Ive been blessed to survive a few things that should have ended worse. I also believe Ive tried hard and learned to be prepared for what ever may come my way.

Most of us couldnt get in a car and go around a track at 200 MPH,.. Im good in the woods, Ok the desert

This was part of the article,.. still sends shivers up my spine how close this one was

For seven years, I lived in the Pacific Northwest. A real trapline was tough for me as we lived in a suburban area. But each year I did manage to run a few traps and snares for cats and coyotes. The first season I discovered how effective log crossings were for traveling animals. While camping I had discovered a few fallen log crossings on a Cascade Mountain stream that would make great locations for snares. Winter came, the snow deepened and the stream turned into a roaring torrent.
I might add there are only two weather conditions during winter in the Cascades. Rain or snow. Today it was raining. The plan was to set a number of log crossings where huge old growth Douglas firs had fallen across roaring streams. The first log was a massive tree, six feet in diameter. I guessed the log had served as a bridge for a good 40 years. The old growth tree had fallen across the stream cavern 60 feet above the water. This location showed lots of furbearer signs. Tracks in the two-day old snow told me two bobcats and six coyotes had crossed since the snow fell. What a hot spot!
I grabbed eight snares, wire staples, a lineman’s pliers and my old faithful hatchet. I set four snares on the log. On the far side of the log I admired my handiwork, and imagined three or four holding furbearers when I returned.
The sound at this location was tremendous with the water below rushing through the cavern. What a neat place, what a view. The rest of the world was missing a fantastic experience in the deep white snow, rocky cavern, and a rushing torrent of water.
Wishing I had snowshoes, I tromped another 400 yards to another tree fallen across the wild water. This log was smaller, and like the previous location, the sun had melted the snow on top of the log. While I guessed this tree had fallen only a few years ago, a single coyote track told me it knew where this bridge was too.
The bark remained on the lower 20 feet of the log, and this made it somewhat easier for me to walk on the log to set my snares. I planned to set four snares on this log too. The first snare was set quickly using a fence staple and a double twist of #14 wire for a snare support. Simple, quick, and effective.
Just as I was stepping beyond the attached bark, I tried the traction with my foot softly and discovered it was slicker than ice. Looking down the 50 feet , shivers went through my spine. If a man fell from here, there was no chance of survival landing on the sharp rocks below protruding from the torrent. I figured a man wouldn’t have time to drown, the power of the water slamming his body into the rocks would take the life quickly.
As I retrieved the snare I had already set, I looked closely to evaluate the single coyote track on the log. It had indeed made similar progress on the log, but a film of pollen on the log told the story. It had slipped too. Claw marks revealed the coyote had spread its toes to gain traction, but new scratch marks on the side of the log and no tracks either backtracking or on the other side of the log confirmed the coyote had met a fate that might have been mine as well.
I collected all five snares, including those on the first log. Then I spent the next 45 minutes driving home, and wondering.