things that eat you in the night!!!!

so....I went up to the river to do some trout fishing.....beautiful day on the river...the trout were being finiky..(as is normal) poopy fish....set up my tent...and settled in for the night....alas my utter terror of things in the dark slowly creeps in....I am just drifting off to sleep when I hear a loud snarl/roar sound...and a small animal giving it's death squeak....so I am wide awake....snuggle up close with my knife....and low and behold....what ever the large animal was (cougar maybe) wanders by my tent...makes a lot of snarling noise...marks his territory and wanders away.....so now all I can hear is my heart beat...and I am pretty sure that what ever is out there can hear it too....so after it seems like an eternity of not moving.....I manage to find a comfortable position to sleep in....sleep....yeah....um....more like dosing off here and there.....a little while later another angry animal...I think it was a raccoon snarling under my truck....either way..I'm awake again.....then I hear coyotees in the distance...and I know at some point...they are going to wander my way....and sure enough one of them does...sniffs the tent...a few times....then wanders away.....so now I look at my watch and I have managed to survive to 4:30 am...and I just continue to pray for day light.....I think I am done trying to spend the night alone in a tent....my nerves and active imagination can't take it any more...in fact I was so wired up at the gas stations when some one slammed a door...I jumped...yeah......grrrrrrrr......I need a dog.....or a lobotomy...one of the two...so I hope you all are entertained by the things that might......just might...eat you......

Thats creepy...   The most I've encountered in NC while camping was when one of the scout leaders overbalanced while releiving himself and fell onto our tent

I've been one of those lucky few who isn't bothered by much...
 
Don't worry paddle, I'll take some time off and come protect you, lol.
 
Been a long time since I've played with the wolves!

there's wolves too.......they are few and far between...well except on Isle Royale...and bears...but I am not afraid of black bears....about the only thing I am not afraid of!!

Blackbears can be fun!

Just make sure not to get anywhere near the cubs until the fall...
 
Wolves don't bother ya, unless you do something to annoy them... They generally stay away from humans.

I was at camp one time and we spilled lotion (coco crap) in the tent and it went into the wood floor. We cleaned it up the best we could and when i woke up i saw a raccoon sitting there licking the wood. 

Awe come on Karin!!  You're supposed to invite them in!  They're just cuddly fuzzy aminals!!!

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ORIGINAL: swartlkk

Awe come on Karin!!  You're supposed to invite them in!  They're just cuddly fuzzy aminals!!!

I love the way racoon's like to lick your eye lids in the middle of the night!!! and I'm sure a cougar would make a great body pillow......if it were stuffed!!!!!

I don't do much camping, in fact I haven't been camping since I was about 4 years old, and that was at the beach so I don't think it counted. I'm not a girly girl but for some reason I don't see the point in sleeping on the hard ground with critters gnawing on me in the night.
 
Besides, if I wanted to be attacked by a wolf, I'd just go to the backyard and dangle a piece of meat up in the air, and wait for Hank to pounce on me.

I don't know if I would be unafraid of Black Bears after this: Bear Kills Boy

Well for myself personally I know I'm scared to death of basically anything that moves in the woods...besides like leaves and maybe water. It doesn't have to maul someone to death before I stay the hell away from it, LMAO

Relax Karin and get that active imagination under control. lol

i was readin the Greenville paper comin back from JROTC summer camp today and read a story about an ex-marine who went camping with his three boys. well a 300 black bear wandered in and started raiding the camp, then i guess it decided that the 6 year old looked tastier an it went after him. the father wasnt too happy bout that so he picked up a large piece of firewood (article title said log) and threw it at the bear an hit him in the head. the guy thought he knocked out the bear but that one piece of firewood killed the bear.

ok people enough about bears.....if you actualy read up on the nature of bears and how they react to human's....and their disposition....black and grizzlies....you would actualy know that bears are about the last thing you need to worry about when you are out in the woods.....as long as you take the right precautions.....educate yourself...so people don't continue to spread scarey un truths......so yeah.....

As long as you take the proper precautions while camping nothing should bother you, but things happen.  I can honestly say in all my years of camping the worst thing I have had to deal with is black widows and flooding tents.  The black widows are much easier to deal with.  You leave them alone, and they leave you alone.  Just remember they are there when you are taking down the tent.  Flooding tents are another story for another day. 

dont you have badgers and wolverines and stuff in that area?
 
Where we camp/fish there are only snakes and beavers( mean vile creatures) oppossums and coons, now im more afraid of those damn beavers then anything else around here. I got a coon named rocky( from the beatles song) that comes and sits by my chair and eats my bait shrimp from my hand, BUT, that SOB keeps everything else away at night so its all good.

We have fisher cats in this area....my best friend has fisher cats behind her house and when they scream it sounds like someone is killing a baby....I don't like to go to her house because of the sound those things put off. They're pretty mean, too.

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ORIGINAL: BobTheBlazer

We have fisher cats in this area....my best friend has fisher cats behind her house and when they scream it sounds like someone is killing a baby....I don't like to go to her house because of the sound those things put off. They're pretty mean, too.

 
they look like something that has been spit from the pits of hell, god are those things ugly. I guess we got em here too, they look like some things I see by the river when im catfishing at night. I wonder if they can be domesticated...hmmmmm

I have been camping for like 4 decades. Typically if you clean up all food in camp you wont have problems. the coons like to come visit and will generally leave you alone, but they are ballsy things and will get close enough to spook most newbie campers. They make one hell of a racket when fighting over bacon grease in the middle of the night. they will also try to take a candy bar wrapper out of your back pocket if your butt is pressed up against the tent wall. Of coarse the Scout with teh candy bar wraper in his back pocket will come flying out of the tent in half a second making the loudest blood curdling scream you have every heard, followed shortly by a bunch of adults laughing their asses off and a few I told you so's.
 
I could tell you some stories. All good times.
 
If you are afraid of bumps in the night, sleep by a snorer. The noise will drown out hte bumps, and it will keep the animals at bay. Of coarse you may need ear plugs.  
 
 
As for the rain filled tents. Ohhhhhhhhh I lovvvvvvve to go camping at State parks when we are expecting huge downpours. I like to sit in camp, drink beer and watch all the newbies. they put on a great show. Goes something like this. odarkthirty you hear someone yelling across the tent in the middle of the downpour. A flashlight comes on, everything and everybody in the tent is silouteted and you can see a flurry of activity. Namely them all trying to get everything away from the tent walls. Calm for 10-20 minutes. More yelling, more flashlights, some guy running around the tent pissed off, the wife and kids jump into the car and pop the trucnk open. The guy drops the tent, pulls th stakes, roll the whole mess up into a ball and stuffs it into the trunk. 30 minutes later htey leave.
 
One one particular campout I took my brother with me, we camped up on the hill overlooking the valley sites below. We watched this same scene repeat itself 8 times. We never laughed so hard in our lives.
 
Some come back the next morning, others are never to be seen again. Those that do come back we like to make a visit and politiely point out some tips. Proper tent placement, discount tents verse real tents, tarps, ground sheets, etc....
 

awesome Tim! how'd the porkies go? or haven't you gone yet?...yeah I know nothing can hurt me....but it's the fact that i really like to place myself in the middle of no where.....with an active imagination...I'll get over it...planning on camping out again this weekend.....gotta love fishing and camping...and soon to meet up with a bunch of crazy canadian's for a canoe trip! waaa hooo!!!

It wasn't my tent that filled with water, it was my friends.  She has this big ol' 3 room tent, and I'm talking huge.  The type that has  a metal frame that goes up, and the tent conects to that.  Well, one of the poles became disconected.  This caused the roof to become a giant puddle.  as she tried to push it off the tent the water ran down the side and into a window.  Her air mattress was floating.  

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ORIGINAL: DetroitMuscle
 I wonder if they can be domesticated...hmmmmm

Why oh why would you want to domesticate something like that? I can imagine my husband walking through the house at night in his undies, and seeing "spot" passed out on the couch and nearly messing his pants. Those things are ungodly ugly.

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ORIGINAL: Paddle_grl

awesome Tim! how'd the porkies go? or haven't you gone yet?...yeah I know nothing can hurt me....but it's the fact that i really like to place myself in the middle of no where.....with an active imagination...I'll get over it...planning on camping out again this weekend.....gotta love fishing and camping...and soon to meet up with a bunch of crazy canadian's for a canoe trip! waaa hooo!!!

 
We go at the end of the month. I am stoked. Things are coming together nicely. Some of the people I am concerned aobut making the hike might be dropping out for one reason or other. How did you last trip go, and when is that canoeing trip?

If you're really prepared for camping, you dig a little trench around the base of the tent so the rain water runs around and away from the tent rather than through it.

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ORIGINAL: Chevy Lover

If you're really prepared for camping, you dig a little trench around the base of the tent so the rain water runs around and away from the tent rather than through it.

unfortunately in the "leave no trace" area's...it's frowned apon....but it's about the best way other than pitching your tent on a hill to keep out of water...

oh and Tim....I am so excited for ya! I wish I could go....I haven't done much of anything lately...might do a two dayer in the Manisttee forest by me here..just to get out and stretch the legs.....I go canoing on the 13th and 14th..I can't wait to meet Jen and have some fun drunk paddling...(don't ever get to do that) in a foreign land!!!! oh!!! I forgot...I went camping/fishing last weekend....tried wearing ear plugs.....they work!!! what ya can't hear...you don't know is there...I did have one big animal out side my tent...the same thing that scared the crap out of me last time...same knawing sound....it was wierd because I could kind of hear it..but not really....but I could FEEL...where it was in relation to my tent....freaky.....but not as scarey...winning one battle at a time!