I’ve never actually seen an adder before. Thankfully they are very shy.
My understanding is that their bite is nasty & extremely painful but generally not lethal for most healthy people?
I was under the impression that cattle cause the most deaths (usually by crushing farm workers or attacking hikers who get too close to their young).
Are we considering car accidents caused by wildlife?
I would be interested to know how many sheep manage to kill people in car accidents (given how many I’ve seen randomly wondering around in the middle of the road in parts of Wales). I don’t think it would be fair to say sheep are particularly dangerous animals!
I know a few people do get attacked by deer but I don’t think there’s very many incidents of this? It’s usually down to people in our parks getting too close when they have their young. I thought deer generally run away?
I think that remark was made with a certain degree of sarcasm & humour but to be fair they are known to spread disease.
I attended a MRT seminar a couple of years back. The subject turned to Adders. I asked the team medic if bitten by an Adder, should one should call 999 and ask for mountain rescue. The answer was an unequivocal YES.
None of the UK midge species carry any viruses that affect humans. Yet
I felt like jumping off a cliff to get away from them once! Does that count?
Sheep, mostly rams, have killed farmers, mostly the older less agile farmers. They knock the farmer over and whilst he or she is on the ground they head butt them.
I’ve been attacked by two sheep in my life time, but never been bothered by cattle.
Relatively common here in W4G, too, and we’ve seen them while hiking and also seen them crossing private land adjacent to the national forest. I have never seen one while operating during a SOTA activation, but perhaps I have just been lucky. When backpacking, we cook away from the tent and at night we store all food, toothpaste, and other aromatic attractants in a bear canister that we leave on the ground at least 100 meters away from camp.
Incidentally, we also have bobcat (Lynx rufus) in our Georgia woods but they are small and extremely shy of humans. I’ve only seen one once in real life; mostly I see their picture on my game camera. There are rumors that a very few mountain lions (Puma concolor) lurk in the area, but those are unconfirmed and the official story is that they no longer range here.
Oh, yes – we also have wild pigs in many sizes, include some big ones that are hybrids of escaped domestic pigs and escaped European or Russian boar that were imported for hunting. They are a destructive nuisance in the woods because they are not a native part of our local ecosystems. Usually they flee from humans, but you don’t want to come between a sow and her piglets.
I haven’t seen bears while set up and on the radio, I supposed “CQ SOTA!” frightens them away (it seems to have a similar effect on humans too), but I’ve seen them on the hike in/out.
We have bobcats too. I’ve never seen them in the woods, but I’ve had them run across the road in front of me. Coyotes are becoming commonplace though. I was doing the Sept VHF contest in a local wildlife conservatory this year and had one trot by about 100yds away. When he saw me, he took off for parts unknown. On a recent camping trip, they were running in packs in the valley below us at night. We heard them yipping and howling as they worked their way down the valley. At one point, they were only a couple hundred yards from camp by the sound of it.
No pigs, but we also have our unconfirmed stories of mountain lions.
Don’t forget the venomous snakes. We have 4 different ones in the US, though only 2 are likely to be seen while doing SOTA.
And, if you go out west, you can add brown bears, wolves, and mountain lions to the mix. All three are more dangerous than anything we have in the eastern mountains (besides man of course).
Chris, are you just counting categories of venomous snakes in the US? We have quite a few more individual species here (this website says there are about 30 species in North America, and shows 12 of them). We have six here in W4G land:
Cottonmouth
Copperhead
Timber rattlesnake
Eastern coral snake
Eastern diamondback rattlesnake
Pygmy rattlesnake
I’ve seen copperheads, timber rattlesnakes, and eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, fortunately always from a safe distance. Which two are likely to be seen on SOTA in W4V?
We have those opportunities here, too. We’re just fortunate that the list doesn’t stop there.
There can be other signs of bear besides footprints and scat.
In September last year I was hiking up Short Mtn, W4V/HB-030. I came to a section of trail up near the ridge where there were a lot of trees that had come down. Some broken off at the base of the trunk, with the wood freshly splintered, others were just bent over. Must have been a bad wind storm on the mountain just lately.
Wait a minute. They’re not all lying in the same direction. And another odd thing, no big trees are down, only small ones. Interesting trick for wind.
I continue to the summit and do my activation. As I’m heading back down, I notice more downed trees but one is bent across the trail in such a way that I spot clusters of stems where small berries have been removed.
It’s a sassafras tree. All the downed trees are sassafras, and all of them have had the ripe berries picked off and unripe ones left on the stem. I have no doubt that a bear had crashed the trees over to collect the fruit. Some of the splintered trunks were probably three inches diameter.
Also by the same section of trail was a good size rock, too big for a man to lift, that had been upturned recently, going by the freshly exposed soil. Bears do this to get the grubs under the rock. (Several years prior, I was hiking and happened upon a mother bear teaching her cubs to do this.)
I know very well our bears are harmless, but to tell the truth I was still a bit unnerved to be alone in the woods and come upon recent signs of one, and with striking evidence of its strength.
A couple photos with a close-up of the remaining sassafras berries (I see a couple ripe ones he missed). Should have taken one of the upset rock.
There are other venomous snakes in the US that aren’t really a threat, so they don’t get any attention. One is the ringneck snake that is at most 8" or so long and with teeth so small they’ll struggle to envenomate you. If it manages to do so, it’s about like a bee sting. I see them periodically, they’re kind of cute.
We have copperheads, cottonmouths/water-moccasins, coral snakes, and at least one species of rattlesnake. I’ve seen all but the coral snakes (they’re located east of this region). The cottonmouths aren’t a concern up on a mountain, but could be found in the creeks and streams in the lowlands. The main threat is the rattlesnakes and copperheads.
I’ve seen that sort of thing before (the broken trees or flipped rocks). I think that unnerves me more than prints or scat.
This summer, while activating Little Crease Mountain (W4V/HB-044), I noticed a rock on the way down that had been flipped up like a tombstone. It wasn’t like that when I ascended (was in the middle of the trail and hard to miss). There had been no other hikers that day.
When we rented JW5E shack in Svalbard, there was a pepper spray on the shelf just inside the door with handwritten text:
“Pepper gas MAY help agaist bear!” I just can’t wrap my head around that
I have become very happy with my “Elecraft KX3 Retrofit V2” kit. I just need to open it and plug in the antenna. Yes, it is heavy but it is very solid. It has withstood me dropping the box to the ground, falling on skis and many other impacts. Thanks for the QSO to you too
Yes, it MAY or MAY not. It works only when the pepper gas hits the bear exactly in the face. Handling pepper spray requires training, just like with a pistol.
The person who wrote that warning is kind , because overconfidence in pepper gas can be dangerous.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at it, but my recollection for bear spray is you set up a “wall” of spray fog between you and the bear rather than trying to hit it directly.
There are a variety of pepper spray products available. I use a Counter Assault made in USA. Its gas reaches about 9 meters away in thin jets. I have done spray drills several times with this product and have not experienced any of the problems you said. The only problem is that it may be the most expensive among this kind of products ; Counter Assault 14080 yen (about $100), Counter Assault Stronger (with larger amount of gas) 17600 yen (about $127) in Japan.
My wife and I have been canoeing remote rivers in the North West Territories, Canada a few times.
We’ve had tundra wolves investigate us, but the few black bears we’ve see were rear views as they ran off. But on the Tundra there were many signs of Barren Land grizzlies. We visited several wolf dens which had been ripped apart by grizzlies. In many cases they had ripped, torn and shredded tree roots of similar size to the ones in your photos. Until I saw that evidence of their power and determination I always thought I was the top of the food chain.
A joke amongst the Cree & other locals we met was’" How do you tell Black bear poo from Grizzly poo?
I see them periodically, they’re kind of cute.
, because overconfidence in pepper gas can be dangerous.
; Counter Assault 14080 yen (about $100), Counter Assault Stronger (with larger amount of gas) 17600 yen (about $127) in Japan.