I am currently reading this book about the five large carnivores of Scandinavia and I am absolutely humbled, both by finding out how little I knew about them, what prejudice I had against them and how people that live in close proximity to them can both love, respect and be angry with them at the same time. I am reading the original release in Swedish.

• What have you encountered in the wild?
• When, where, how?
• What were your initial thoughts, feelings and reactions (physical, psychological, etc.)?
• What do think of them in general? <--- this last question applies to everybody, regardless of whether you have seen or met one of these large carnivores or not.

Personally, without having met any one of them, I am humbled, scared, amazed and intrigued by them. I feel for those whose - for instance - livestock are threatened by them, especially if it directly damages business. I also strongly believe that the matter should not be dumbed down to the dichotmy of "ignore those that suffer from them" or "eradicate them". We are far too intelligent and developed a race to degrade ourselves so.

Not a carnivore ... but a pack of wild boars with piglets in a nearby forest. My initial thought was "fuck" as I walked backwards like Homer in the meme. Once I had some distance I started running.

I saw a guy at a McDonalds who needed two chairs to sit. Terrifying.

I encountered a large carnivore in the civilized before but not in the wild. Canadian here for what it's worth. Ran across a black bear on night shift bang in the middle of a massive oil refinery complex. Paved for a kilometre in every direction.

Black bears are very low risk to humans and I had an F350 between me and it, even still it's just not something you mess with. It changed the whole course of my day instantly as I had to start reporting to site safety etc, I spent the next 3 hours on the radio.

Other than that I've seen the occasional lynx or mountain lion, but at great distance. Generally these things aren't seen by humans unless they want to be or don't care. You see them because they're chasing prey or you get lucky and their out sunning themselves or something and you're far enough away they aren't threatened.

Large carnivores are pretty rare and not necessarily the largest wild animal threats to humans or livestock. Something like racoons or foxes taking chickens is a much larger nuisance to many more people than something like a mountain lion taking sheep. And something like a moose or a goose is a lot more likely to fuck you up because people don't perceive these animals as threats and take way larger risks than they do around predators.

Any animal regardless of size or perceived danger should just be treated like it's 10 times larger and covered in knives if it has babies nearby

I have had three..

Two were encounters with sharks in the ocean, and while both sharkes were not really larged, less tham three feet in lmgth. When you are in the open ocean they might as well have been Bruce.

(Bruce was the nickname of the mechanical shark in Jaws)

The third was a boar when i was stationed in germany. Again the magnificantion effect, ibet the beasty was maybe 50 pounds. When you are stumbling throught the forest at night with mo lights and a thing about the size of a coffee table starts miving around and making noise..

Saw a bear once at the beginning of a hike. The hike was over before it started

I grew up in Florida as a kid, and I lived on a lake. I have on more than one occasion encountered alligators. They are assholes.

I remember on occasion, I was probably six years old, maybe a little older, and my parents called the police because there were a couple of alligators sunning themselves on the back lawn by our boathouse. The local police came over and clearly had no idea what to do. They started yelling at the alligators, trying to shoo them back into the water, with little success.

Eventually, the two alligators did creep back into the water, but they were lingering around the boathouse, and in an effort to get the larger one, a female, to go away, the frustrated officers began shooting at the water. This did not have the intended effect. Alligators are not just assholes, they’re much more clever than most people seem to think.

As the officers kept firing into the water, the alligator would hiss at them, and then go under the boathouse to the other side. As the officers would run over to the other side, the alligator would hiss and, predictably, go to the other side of the boathouse and hiss them again. This went on for about five minutes or so until my father had the good sense just to tell them to stop and request that they contact animal control.

As soon as the officers backed off and left, so did the alligators, with a noticeable final hiss that I swear was them laughing.

I was hiking Crypt Lake Trail a couple of years ago. Didn't have any problems on the way up but on the way down there was a juvenile grizzly bear on the trail in front of me and my brother. We paused on the trail for a bit, looking for a possible mother to be around and I was gripping my bear spray, but the bear eventually moved on.

When approaching the boat dock where the ferry picks up hikers, we heard a lot of yelling "Go away"! "Get back". Didn't heed the warning, but they weren't yelling at us, they were yelling at a very large grizzly bear in the trees close to a group of about 15 people who had finished the hike. The bear had been probably 15 meters from me at the closest. But thankfully with all the people around it too just moved on. Bear attacks are pretty rare, but you still don't want to win that lottery ticket.

The hike itself was already pretty thrilling. Some edge walking, a tunnel and a climb with some metal chain attached to the cliff side to help out before getting to a mountain top glacial lake. It was an exhausting experience.

We all have met OP's mom, haven't we?

I live in the PNW so the large carnivores are orca, man, puma, bear, sealion, eagles, coyote, fox and dogs/cats

I have backpacked and spent a lot of time in the wilds. I have encountered a buch of the preditor/carnivores of my area except bears. I have only seen them in a roadside pasture as I drove by.

I never saw it but I am pretty sure I encountered a puma (cougar) once while backpacking alone. It was a little unnerving but I had my pack tall behind me so it couldn't get my neck if it jumped me. Still to be in the woods full of bird song and other forest noises and then to have it all go cold silent for a while is chilling. I was warned that this is usually how the forest reacts to a puma hunting. Making a lot of noise and making sure to keep an mirror to be sure whats behind me kept me from freaking out too much. I have seen puma on distant hilltops and what not in the same areas and I have no problems with them being who they are. Just hope they never get desperate enough to try taking me on. That is usually the case, a young male without a good hunting area gets displaced and starving and has to try and setting for attacking a person.

I encounter coyote enough, I genually enjoy them. Sure they are devious and dangerous but the little surviors are amazing. I remember one time hiking on the Washington coast and in some places you can see for miles even though its a rocky mess to traverse. So we see this coyote like a mile ahead and we wonder what its doing. It seems to be walking in our direction. As it gets closer we notice it has a problem with one of its legs, so its walking on three. Its walking in a pretty straight line, deviating every so often like maybe there was a goodie to be found here or there. And as it gets closer to us it just walks by looking at us like it wanted to wave and say "oh hello there human, good day for a walk on the beach yeah? well I have to go, have a nice day" and keeps on going the way it was. It was an truly special encounter that I will never forget

Another time backpacking on the coast. The trees are tall and dense so finding a spot to setup a camp can be tricky. We found a nice spot with a good flat area under a huge tree that already had a fire ring so we stayed there for the night. When I woke up in the morning and decied to make a camp fire, about halfway through the process I noticed about 5 feet above me was a massive bald eagle perched on a branch just watching me. I totally got the impression it was sizing me up. It was huge and its claws were bigger then my hands! after some time, it must have thought better of it and flew off.

Looking directly into the eyes of a preditor is a special thing. To know that it is looking at you in the same way you see it. Each of you have that moment together. I love that feeling.

Damn, some people have very interesting lives! I've only seen a fox, and that was at my previous place which had a garden. I was just worried about my cat so I called her in... but I think she could've taken the fox NGL. 😼🤣

On a night hike when I was a schoolkid, our teacher was using a handheld spotlight to show us some nocturnal birds when the light fell on an adult cougar, lounging on a tree branch not far away and examining us. It didn't move or react. We turned around and went back to our classroom/cabin and that was the end of hiking for a while. I'm sure the cougar had been watching us for a long time. I have no idea how big it was. Our teacher seemed very calm and matter of fact, so the danger didn't occur to me or the other kids at the time. Southwest Oklahoma doesn't see many predators bigger than a coyote, so I imagine there were many phone calls while little students were distracted.

2 bears on a hike. Black bears so all i really saw was bear butts running away.

Snakes are scarier. Almost stepped on a greenhead rattler that let me know he was there at the last second. The one copperhead I saw was the scariest, right on the trail in a patch of sun and blended in perfectly. The guy ahead of me.pointed him out or I wouldve stepped on him.

Probably my buddy Larry. Larry’s out there convincing people to go vegan so there’s more meat for him.

Underwater, I have. I've seen two - a group of large barracuda and one extremely large eel - looked like a Giant Moray.

I was probably like 14-16 at the time, diving in the Atlantic and Pacific respectively.

Reactions for both were just to stay away from them and make sure they didnt come closer, while trying to get a good look. It was kind of surreal seeing them, because you don't usually expect to encounter things like these.

Barracuda aren't particularly scary, but they are some of the largest fish I've seen underwater - probably around 5ft (1.5m) long and I was within 20ft (6m) of two or three of them. They are also quite aggressive, though not usually to divers. I was swimming up from below them coming up from around 60-80ft (18-24m), so we got a good view of them swimming around near the surface.

This Giant Moray is the largest creature I've ever seen in the water bar-none. We were diving a reef, and as we swam over some rocky structures, there was this hollow in the rock - like a partly-covered underwater grotto - and in it I could see this absolutely massive eel. I thought it was some kind of coral or something until I saw its face. The surface I saw of the eel had to be nearly 1.5ft wide (45cm), since they'ye ovoid in cross-section I may have gotten the impression that it was larger than it really was. But even still, it must have been nearly that large in diameter and probably about 9ft (2.7m) long, though I couldn't see all of it at once. I was a bit frightened just because of the sheer size of the eel, and I thought they were more aggressive than they are, but we couldn't get too close because of the rock. It was really cool to see. In years since then I thought maybe I was misremembering the event because it seemed surreal to see such a large eel - but then I researched a bit and found that giant morays can be... giant... while there are other species that I've also seen that are much smaller.

I think they're neat. Like with all wild animals, though, I want to keep my distance. Especially to the aquatic variety.

I experienced a sense of awe in both situations as well as a very real sense of how dangerous these animals could be if they wanted to be.

By the way, I don't think I get to decide how to manage these predators, as I don't live in an area where they affect daily life. It would be arrogant of me to tell British Columbia how to deal with bears or Wyoming how to deal with wolves. The predators here were driven out or killed along with the buffalo and many, many other good things that belong. It's sad, but I'm also glad that I don't have to plan for safety because of them.

The biggest carnivores around here are foxes.

I encounter wild boars quite often walking back home after work. My advice is to be noisier than them so they can avoid you before you even know they are there.

Whenever I've seen a fox it's always been through a window or, vaguely, possibly, at a significant distance.

Memories are blurry and I've been in vehicles and houses in the same places I've seen foxes. It's possible I was outside on foot for at least one of those.

On the other hand, I could bend "wild" the other way and think about the handful of scary dog encounters I've had. Never been near enough to a fox to give it the remotest reason to attack. Those dogs were a different matter.

How large is large? I met a particularly chonky beagle once while hiking. Positively vicious slobber attack

I was followed by a fox once. Does that count?

Where I live (Ibiza) was named after being an island with no predators. So the biggest wild predator here is a 2cm tall snake (they're invasive)

It’s an omnivore, I suppose, but I’ve had a few encounters with black bears in my life.

They’re usually harmless if you leave them alone, but one chased me while I was on my bike back when I was 18.

Never.

Seriously lucky to live in Australia, rather than growing up somewhere dangerous.

EDIT: /s

I don't understand being angry about nature being natural.

Also, carnivores aren't the most dangerous animals, necessarily.

More people are killed by elk and moose than anything else (I think elk tops the list because they're so prolific and don't avoid people, while moose tend to be out where people don't go).

Saw a black bear once when I was visiting the Rocky mountains a few summers ago. It was just hanging out eating berries at the edge of the woods beside the parking lot at one of the national parks.

Most of the people just watched or took pictures from a respectful distance. I was delighted to have the opportunity to see a bear in the wild in a (mostly) safe way. I did look around to make sure there was somebody I could outrun, though. You don't have to outrun the bear...

Big carnivores mostly want nothing to do with people and I think we should leave them alone as much as possible. Sometimes they learn behaviour that makes them dangerous to innocent people (e.g. if somebody feeds them) and being a danger to innocent people is really the only reason I can think of that would justify killing them. There have to be better ways to deal with carnivores attacking livestock and such.

Lots of moose, several bears, elk, deer. The coolest I've seen in the wild though was probably a full grown, big adult wolverine. That last one was fun times camping in northern Alberta, just south of the NWT border.

But I heard drop bears were a huge danger.

2cm tall snake

I'm picturing someone painstakingly holding a snake upright to measure their height.

Plenty of alligators, some of them big. They are in most every body of water here, and as long as nobody feeds them or does anything stupid, they don't bother people. Also saw a fox, once. Out in the suburbs. Lots of big birds here, sandhill cranes, hawks, herons. I know cormorants raid fish farms, so I guess they affect livestock.

Canadian checking in! I've been face to face with black bears, grizzlies, bobcats, cougars.

In Ontario, the black bears were the most common. When we would go camping in the summer in the 80s, my parents were given a tip that driving to a local town dump in evening was a sure fire way to see bears from thhe safety of your car. It worked. 5 or so were feeding and would try to get through the closed window. At the same time, we would see bears in the waste bins at the park.

As I got older and did interior camping and true wilderness camping, we would encounter bears often. We practiced extreme camp hygiene and would not have food out, without fire. They would poke around the edges and see more trouble than its worth and leave.

As a working adult, I saw a blackbear on a bc highway and pulled over to take pictures. It ran away from me and I chased after it. Never got the photo.

I also saw two grizzly cubs walking along a B.C. highway. Cars pulled over would roll down their windows and feed the bears. A conservation officer pulled up, brought out his rifle and shot them both dead. The tourists formed an angry mob yelling why did they kill the bear. The CO said I didn't, everyone who fed the bear killed it. They became habituated and a nuisance bear in that moment and the ministry is obligated to kill them before they inevitably attack people.

Only seen a wolf once, but we have coyotes everywhere. Really only a threat to pets and small children.

I've had many encounters with black bears (which are omnivores, and not exclusively carnivorous) while hiking over the years. Generally, they are not dangerous to humans if one gives them plenty of room. Most of the time, they'll go right up a tree at the sight of you. The first couple of times I encountered them, I was anxious, but now I almost expect to see them.

I have had two encounters with cougars (also during hiking) that were much more nerve-wracking, as they were much more aggressive (at least on these two occasions. It's possible that cubs were nearby, but I never saw any). Both times, I raised my arms and shouted and made a lot of noise while backing away and keeping them in my sight. I had read that cougars can be unpredictable, and so I was pretty freaked out. Fortunately, I came away from both encounters without a scratch.

Huge danger, small carnivore. 🐨

Just don't walk under trees, and you'll be right.

Cause you're Canadian I want to ask, have you encountered a moose?

Two events I've had with bears:

1. I'm hiking in a nature park by myself on a trail. I see two small black bear shaped voids run across the trail. Then I see one large black bear shaped void run across the trail. I turned around and went back, cutting my hike short.

2. I'm driving in an undeveloped area and I'm coming up to a construction site. I see a mother and two cubs leap across a construction barrier for the other direction to the median like it wasn't any problem. I commence breaking maneuvers. A car in front of me had stopped as the same family just finished crossing in front of them.

I was jogging at night in rain in a cedar forest in the mountains and had a mountain lion sidle up on the switchback above me. Just checking me out, maybe 20 feet out and 10 feet up.

You have more to fear from a moose encounter than any of those predators in truth.

Carnivores might attack if scared or hungry, but herbivores will kill you just to be sure you aren't going to attack them. Just as in Africa, Cape Buffalo are the most dangerous of their big game animals.

Yes. Many times. The closest I ever got was in Algonquin park, in a canoe maybe 30 ft. It was in kneee deep water feeding as my friend and I and his dad approached quietly. We could see it getting nervous when it peed in anticipation of fight or flight, and we gently backed off and watched from 100 ft or so. It calmed down once we pretended to be interested in the weeds, not it.

I also have family who hunt, so....

I once saw a spirit moose (white, but not albino) in New Brunswick on the highway near Miramichi.

UK?

Sarcasm? Australia is known for having many dangerous/deadly animals.

Nope. If there's dangerous animals there, I won't be. They can have their untamed wilderness, and I'll have my internal organs

Some of the tourists can be pretty ferocious

And yet kinda lacking in large carnivores, I think. They have Crocodiles? I can't think of anything else.

I've seen a black bear- I was in a vehicle and so I was pretty safe, but he was close up. I was driving through a curvy mountain road in Appalachia, and the dude was just vibing off the side of the road.

I've seen multiple Lynxes, usually from a distance. I saw one just crossing the road, the other was on the other side of a lake from me just drinking.

My thoughts were mostly just, "damn, that's cool. Don't usually see those." I was always safe, and I don't have any livestock for them to bother. They can mind their business and I'll mind mine past the occasional glimpse.

Spain, other regions have wolves and shit, but where I'm at is foxes and boars.

Yeah, large carnivores not so much. Apparently dingos and tasmanian devils are the closest in that department. I've just always thought of Australia as a place of greatest concern in terms of animals due to the many deadly snakes and spiders they have.

Mare meva

Black bear, doe moose, whale.

Black bear fled immediately, moose stood there as moose do, and whale was uninterested.

I walked through a field and stand of trees for months, back and forth to work, before learning a cougar sleeps nearby and probably saw my delicious nerd self - such marbling - twice a day.

Sharks. Whites and bulls.

A møøse once bit my sister