Tr Crawford County Not Typical

[Driftless]

 

 

Drove down to southwest Crawford county and accessed some streams from the road.

One stretch screamed for me to wet a line.  I fished for 1 hour and landed 21 browns.  One was decent sized but got off before I could net it.
 

Landed 5 from this hole.

Landed a dozen from this huge beaver dam.  Is where I lost big fish of the day.
 

Went to another nearby stream and caught a couple more. 

About 300 yards from the vehicle I saw movement in the weeds about 50 yards from me.  There is a hound that visits  some of the time while I fish.  I remember it well.  A big floppy eared coon dog that always wants petting and swims in the water in front of me and ruins my fishing.

The movement kept getting closer and I finally caught a glimpse of color through the weeds.  No coon dog colors.  It was black in color and way big.  I had seen bear tracks on this stream before.  My mind began to race.

I thought bear and then I thought mother bear and it being protective of its cubs.  I started searching my vest pockets for my bear spray.  I then remembered I gave it to my wife for her hiking.

Next thought was to climb a tree.  No decent trees and if there was I might have a hard time getting up one with my bad knees.  Running was out of the question also.

I then remembered reading about yelling at bears trying to scare them away.  I started to yell and the yelling had an opposite effect on the movement.  It sped up and came at me faster. 

This big black thing ran like no dog I had ever seen and I was certain it was a bear.  It lumbered and really looked wider across the chest.  I had my Swiss army knife out and was ready to be eaten.

It broke through the weeds and out into the open.  Its head was huge and it was all black.  Then I caught a glimpse of a skinny medium length tail.  No bear has a tail like that. I was relieved.  I had a run in with a Rottweiler once on stream and it was really tense for a while.  This thing was another half size bigger.

I pride myself in reading a dog's body language and this one seemed like it might be friendly.  It ran up to me at full speed and slowed clumsily as it got close to me.  This all black 150-170 pound dog looked like a black lab and mastiff cross.

It demanded to be petted and rubbed on me so hard it nearly knocked me over.  It jumped up on me and put its paws on my shoulders.  I petted it for a while and then walked back to the vehicle.  The dog stayed out there exploring.

About a mile down the roadway I saw a lady walking along the road.  She flagged me down and asked me if I had seen a really big black dog.  I told her where I had seen it.  She grumbled about how much trouble the dog was in and off she walked.