Didn't get directly charged...
... but was out on a hog hunt in the Everglades with some other guys, when they flushed several hogs. A couple of them came running directly my way.
I wasn't too pleased with the setup. The other guys were concealed in the brush where those hogs had been, and basically would have been my backstop.
I drew the SBH .44 I had on my hip, but held fire and hoped for the best, since I really didn't want to risk a shot with the two guys on the far side of the hogs.
You can bet I was very happy when the two hogs broke off to either side of me.
I was less happy when those two knuckleheads gave me crap about "why didn't you take the shot?"
On another occasion, was at the beach once (New Smyrna), when a dorsal fin started racing my way. A second one appeared, and not unlike the hogs, they broke to either side. Dolphins, as it turned out. For a moment there, I was sweating bricks. Once I recognized them as dolphins, I was a mix of happy and embarrassed.
On yet another occasion, also at New Smyrna, I was body-surfing with some buds. I had just stood up from a wave ride in, when a flopping object flew over my shoulder from the shore side. Appeared to be a small spinner shark; tail almost slapped my face as it flew by. A surf fisherman had hooked him, and had gotten him off the line by whipping it once around his head and slashing the line with a knife. I was going to have a word or two with him about lobbing sharks at people when my buddies decided it might be a good idea to restrain me. The fisherman left the area.
When I was a kid, I was out canoeing with my parents in Maine, when we came upon a moose and her calf, swimming in Flagstaff lake. They are cool to watch, but we opted to switch from paddles to outboard and haul out, when the cow started heading our way. She apparently didn't like the canoe getting anywhere near her calf (not a big surprise, that, but I was eight, and my dad has always made interesting choices when it comes to critters.)
Speaking of my dad's critter misadventures, my mother got charged by a bull moose one night, due to one of my dad's poor choices. Flagstaff lake is man-made, and when Maine has had a dry winter, with little snowmelt in the spring, Central Maine Power still runs the hydro-electric dam. So, the lake reverts to a river in a mud-plain. My grandparents' waterfront property went from a slope into the lake, to about a four foot vertical drop to the mud.
In the summer of one of those dry years, we had come back to my grandparents' cabin from an unsuccessful bit of hornpout fishing near the bridge to Stratton. It had started out well, until my dad shone a light under the bridge, revealing a rather large bat colony. My little sister and my mother were both bat-o-phobes, so this revelation ended that particular expedition.
We went back to my grandparents' (dad's side) cabin, in my dad's then new Saab 99, which was his pride and joy. Mom, my sister and I went inside. Dad apparently decided to scan the river and mud-plain with his high beams. Moments later, he yelled for my mother to come outside, there was something she just had to see.
Shortly after that, my mother came back inside, out of breath, shaking, and muttering "I am going to kill him." Mom is of Sicilian descent, so one can't take such statements overly lightly...
My dad came in a little after that, looking very sheepish, and just a wee bit scared of my mother.
My grandparents just looked perplexed.
Finally got the story, an hour or two later.
When my mother went outside, my father pointed out a bull moose, a couple hundred yards away, in the Saab's high beams. She thought it was something I should see, and wanted to call for me to come out, but my dad told her that would be a bad idea. She asked why, and he explained that there had been a cow with the bull (it was the rut season), and the cow had run when the lights had lit her up; the bull might be just a wee bit hostile.
Turned out to be a spot-on assessment. The bull suddenly charged toward the lights, and my parents.
Mom turned and ran for the cabin. Note: my grandparents were doing some renovations, including replacing the front steps. The old steps had been removed; the new ones were not yet installed; it was perhaps a 2.5ft leap up to the doorway, and my mother was not in top shape at this time.
Mom managed to leap up to the doorway, just in time to hear my dad yell for her to come back, quick! He had never closed the trunk of the Saab, which he had opened to remove the fishing gear, and now he couldn't see in order to back up and away from the bull moose.
My mother ran back and closed the trunk, at which point my dad drove off (not out of maliciousness; just every once in a while he does things without thinking...) The moose at this point was perhaps 50 yards away, and my mother was about equal parts terrified and furious. She made her second run for the cabin.
Just before reaching the door, she heard a loud crash, and some snapping wood. She made it inside, though.
A game warden friend of my grandfather's came by the next day, and checked out the tracks. He said it was a large bull, and that the crashing noise my mother had heard was the bull, apparently blinded by the Saab's lights, running head-first into a birch tree as it tried to make its way up the steep bank. Bark was skinned; pile of droppings was at the base of the tree; large hoof-prints indicated a moose staggering sideways away from the tree.
That moose had then walked down the mud-flat until it reached the community boat ramp; came up the ramp; and headed straight for my grandparents' cabin, where it (for some reason) attacked the outhouse.
My father spent several days apologizing. Over thirty years later, he still hasn't quite lived it down.
Sorry for the long post, guess I'll leave the bear story for some other time.
Cheers,
M
He was getting closer and closer.. The worst part was that I couldn't even get up and run.. I was totally surrounded by pricker bushes. The only direction I could move was the one the bull was cutting off.. At this point I'm thinking that I am going to have to pepper this bull to get out of there..But try explaining that to a farmer?