Who Is Hunting The Hunter?

 The woods of the Grand Nor Du Boise, are for the most part safe, pleasant, and some of the most beautiful hiking you'll experience anywhere on our Great Mother Earth.  Here in the North Country we don't have an excessive population of large predators. Taking a hike here in the forests is fairly safe, and all who have grown here are weened on the skills of watching for mamma bear, moose, and packs of coyotes or coydogs that group up and yap late into the evening.  

I come from a different set of woods.  The mountains I hail from have a whole different set of big toothy critters that have been know to set their sights on the slow two footed snack in the woods.  There are areas in the mountains of my home that you need to hire a professional guide in order to go safely into the night.  These armed mountain guides carry large guns to possibly dispatch the large people eating monsters that do wander to and fro amongst the higher elevations.  

When you grow up walking and riding along some of these places you develop a sense of being followed or watched.  When walking in the woods if a critter runs past in front of your stride, or has the courage to walk up to you in front of your path, that critter is not intending to do you harm.  Often, as we all know, in The Great North Woods, you'll come across bear, moose and even other two legged, most of the time your not going to have a negative experience.  The two of you will most likely have some sort of exchange, a look, a gaze, even a sound, then each goes your merry ways.  Nothing to fear.  However, if you're walking or riding along a path and suddenly get the urge to turn and look behind you, or get the uneasy feeling you're being followed or watched, chances are very high you are being followed or watched.  

In the big woods if you're being followed or watched and get that extremely uncomfortable feeling in the pit that something is not right, you must follow your instincts.  We have the same set of instincts that keeps the fuzzy bunny alive, the squirrel scampering the tree, and yes the people to remain people.  We have a very practiced set of survival skills.  We have developed them over millions of years of evolution and change.  We, because of our nature, are also the ones that do the following, and the watching. We are predators after all.   

Friends will walk up to you and shake your hand in welcome and respect.  They will come to you and introduce themselves.  Animals will come into your field of vision if they do not fear you for much the same reason people do as an introduction.  If you're in the woods and get that feeling, and you turn to look to see nothing, but know something is there, you must follow your instincts because you are being Hunted...

Peace and Balance,

John