daily grist; this thought struck me the other night, since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone would his telephone number be number one? Just wondering.
All of my life I have had the ability to “feel”when something or someone was looking at me from near or afar, especially when I am alone or in the deep woods. My father had the same abilities and I attribute it to our Cherokee blood. Starting as a young boy my father taught me many things about life in the mountain’s and forests. Probably the most important thing he taught me about the forest was how to listen and let it talk to you, and if you listen long enough you’ll hear it talk to you, and soon you’ll learn its language. He also taught me to listen real close when it wasn’t talking to you, which meant that something or someone was watching you, and if you waited real still long enough, sooner or later they would make a movement of some kind and give their location away. When a jaybird starts scolding you know right where they are, jaybird’s are nature’s burglar alarms of the woods. I also learned to trust my sense of smell to warn me of unseen dangers. Once you smell a rattlesnake, you never forget that smell, which forewarned me at least a half a dozen times in my life welll before the snake started “singing”with his rattles and allowed me to send him to snake heaven, if there is such a thing. The one smell that makes the hair on my neck stand up, is that of a mountain lion. That”musky smell” is one that wakens ALL of my senses immediately. The scream of a mountain lion in close proximity does the same thing, and it ALWAYS brings to bear whatever shooting iron I am packing at the time. The first time I had a mountain lion scream at me was in dense manzanita brush while bow hunting for deer back in 1964. He was within 20 yards of me and I never did see him probably because my hunting partner was yelling for me to make sure I was okay. My hunting partner was about 50 yards up the hill from me, and neither one of us saw that lion but we found his tracks and he look like a big male lion. The local game warden reported seeing him two or three times that fall but we never got a look at him.
My next encounter with a mountain lion was right in the middle of the city of Fremont California in 1972. A friend of mine had a world record holding dragracing car, and a buddy of mine and I went to Fremont dragstrip to watch them race on a Saturday. The crew chief on that car was a lifelong friend of mine, Fred Miner, and he asked me if I wouldn’t mind fetching 5 gallons of water for the car, and pointed to the water faucet by the fence about 50 yards distant. He told me go between that blue Chevrolet station wagon and faucet is about 50 yards in front of it. What he didn’t tell me was the fact that the owner of the station wagon had a pet mountain lion sitting in the back of it with all of the Windows rolled down about 6 inches. I grabbed the water can and headed off, and Fred told the rest of the crew watch what happens when that big okie “smells”that mountain lion! He was right ! I got right next to that car and the musky smell hit my nostrils, and I dropped the 5 gallon water can and out came “Earl”, my 1911 semi auto 45 ! Sitting on the backseat staring at me with those yellow eyes was a BIG mountain lion ! He was looking down the barrel of the 45, and never moved a muscle. However, Fred and the rest of the crew was laughing their butts off ! I cautiously gathered up the water can, went and got the water and returned FAR from that station wagon. Fred laughed about that incident until the day he passed away. He said you really disappointed me when you didn’t shoot it, but I assured him I came REAL close to doing it .
My second wife and I bought a house in Glencoe California and moved there in August of 1988. Our 5 acres back up to the headwaters of the North Fork of the Calaveras River, several thousand acres in size and it has a sizable population of deer and mountain lions. In the fall of 1989 my step son and I went deer hunting there, and directly behind the property line was a small knoll about 100 feet high and 40 yards in diameter covered with heavy brush. When we cross the fence I told my son to stand real still because I could feel a mountain lion looking at us. We stood there for a good 10 min. and nothing happened, and I realized that the lion had left the area, so we headed around the mountain and were gone for a couple of hours. When we returned I got that same feeling again, and I realize it was a mother lion with a cub. We stood there for about 10 min. and that is when it screamed at us from about 40 yards away. I screamed back at it and it left, but I never did see it move. In the meantime my stepson was hightailing it to the house about 100 yards distant. His mother was setting on the deck outside the kitchen and she yelled are you guys okay? I told her we were fine, and when I reached the house my stepson told his mother, JD knew that lion was there because he could smell it, and feel it looking at us ! Later that fall a big mountain lion tried to get our dog one night on the back deck but he got away before I could shoot him, however I did send three or four “courtesy” shots his way in the dark of the night. Occasionally at night you could hear one screaming in the woods out back late at night, and that sound always sent chills up my spine.
About 15 years ago on a hot summer night I was getting ready to go to bed around midnight and I had all Windows in my bedroom open. I like to sit and listen to the night before retiring just to listen to the woods “talk”. I was sitting on my bed in front of the window and there was not a sound emanating from the woods. Not even one cricket, and it was then that I got the feeling that a mountain lion was out there looking at me. The hair on my neck stood up, and I got that feeling in my gut, and it was then that the mountain lion screamed at me about 40 yards from the house. So I screamed right back at it ! They don’t know what to do when you scream at them, and they usually turn tail and leave which is what happened that night. The next time that lion screamed it was about a quarter-mile up the ridge line to the east and it got every dog on the mountain barking again.it made about a 5 mile circle that night and screamed a couple more times during the night while heading down the ridge to the West.
One hot summer night I was watering my front lawn when my stepson’s best friend stopped by for a visit. We were drinking a cold beer in the shade of my maple tree and just enjoying each other’s company. Justin is just like me and is much attuned to his sixth sense of awareness. I had the premonition that something in the woods next to the meadow across the road was watching us, at about that time Justin turned to me and said; do have the feeling of something is watching us? I replied, I sure do that I have a feeling it’s a mountain lion, so we turned our lawn chairs to the east and sat there in silence watching the distant woods and sure enough after about 10 min. we saw the mountain lion flick his ear because of a bug of some kind. After about 20 min. of watching him, it realize that we knew where he was and he casually turned and walked into the woods. It was about half grown, probably about a year and a half old. It wasn’t long until the neighbors dog over the Hill a mile away started barking. Justin remarked, man those damn things give me a creepy feeling, and I agreed with him. mother nature will teach you volumes if you will just listen to her.
About 30 years ago while I was still working, the job I was working on had a foreman that had the habit of sneaking around and bird dogging the crew trying to catch them loafing. I was making a weld on a piece of 12 inch pipe when I got the feeling that he was watching us, so when I changed welding rods I spotted him about 30 yards away peeping around a column, and I whispered to my fitter what was going on, so when I dropped my hood to resume welding, my fitter told me real loud I’ll go get some more welding rod, and took off. I raise my welding hood just-in-time to see my fitter sneak up next to that foreman and whisper in his ear; what are we looking for? That foreman damn near jumped out of his skin, and then my fitter and he had a real good “come to Jesus”meeting ! ! That sure as hell cured him of that habit ! !
My gut feelings have never failed me over the years. My daddy taught me real good when I was a little redneck.
