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I feel super lucky to see all the wildlife I do while out in the sticks, either on my moto or MTB. Cougar, bear, deer, elk, turkeys, donkeys, bobcat, peacocks, alligators, big horned Owl, more rattlesnakes than I could ever remember, lots of tarantulas, muskrat, beaver etc etc I can keep track. Super stoked every time. These are good stories you guys are posting. Sometimes I save their lives by helping them off the trails.
I'v seen a lot of what everyone else in Texas has. Some close calls also. Not sure if I would consider it wildlife, but a friend fell over in some sand when we were 10 or so and face planted into bull nettle. That was back when open faced helmets were the only thing available. "They" used to say to pee on it to help with the sting...he just cried and went home. LOL
Same. Couldn't help but Google it. I'm going to choose to believe it's just a legend.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cottonmouth-washed/
Watch out for fawns, sometimes they'll hit the ground and curl up and lie motionless to help protect themselves. Easy to miss them.
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My dad grew up on the BC coast north of Vancouver, worked in lumber camps and for the forestry before teaching and then chemical engineering. He called black bears forest rats. God's honest truth I saw him punch one through the tent wall in New Mexico, and chase another with rocks to get it away from our camp a different time. But black bears, and he knew the difference
Dunns Mx playground
might be indiana
rode a few tracks in those 2 states while visiting and can’t remember which track was in which state
I was lucky enough to see a Gila Monster growing up in AZ… you almost never see those so it was pretty cool!
Other than everything else you can see in the desert southwest, bobcats, javalinas, deer, rattle snakes of different varieties… tarantulas and scorpions!
The hippo's and other stuff you have to deal with would have me much more worried than the bees I dealt with. Some of the stuff people run into is wild. It sucked being stung and sick after. Getting bees/wasps, inside my helmet or goggles has always freaked me out. even just thinking about it.
There was a DMXS radio interview with Jimmy Decotis way back. And he was talking about being at a riding school that New England Keith Johnson was putting on. And He was talking about how You need to be ready at any moment , for anything to happen. And saying how you never know what will happen next out on the track and be ready to have stuff you do not expect to ever happen, happen. Then he picked up a live snake that happened to be crawling by and threw it at one of the kids in the class. It caught the kid by surprise and KJ used that as an example of how the kid was not ready." This time it was a snake, but next time who knows what it could be". Not an exact quote but something similar was said. Hearing Jimmy and the DMXS guys tell the story made it much funnier than my retelling I'm sure.
Our wildlife is so cute, don't you just want to cuddle it?
That’s Kentucky. Sounds like a cool trip.
The Concho Enduro is at the Texans Ranch in Blackwell, TX. I almost got cleaned out by an Elk there. They also have buffalo that are always in the track.
This was at a TSCEC race in TX
Yeah you just need to grab those and move them out of the way.
sketchy!!!
I prefer to bob for them like apples
Wow, does this brings back memories...
Early 90's (maybe 92) I stepped on an adolescent cottonmouth about 18 inches long down by the river trails at Blaylock Sports Complex. We had stopped to help a couple guys stuck in a truck and I rolled my bike over to prop against a tree just a few feet off the trail and never saw it right behind where I was standing. I am surprised he was actually that close with all the noise and vibration up and down the trails (as pit vipers sense heat and vibration).
I was wearing an older (well-broken in) pair of Gaerne boots and as soon as I step backward, I heard it more than I actually felt anything. He had bent its body around almost a full 180 and tagged me right where the lower plastic cam buckle base was stitched to the leather. The boot stopped it cold...but didn't do much for the ninja-breakdance jumping and screaming routine and complete loss of all cool points that followed. One of the guys from the stuck truck jumped into action and beat it to death with a jack handle.
I don't know what a big diamond back would have done, but the moccasin didn't even penetrate any layers (plastic or leather), and hardly even scuffed the boot any worse than it already was. I say this because I remember the venom spewing against the boot and running down the heel like it was in slow motion. The takeaway from this is that I think we can feel pretty safe that most moto boots would likely stop a bite from mid sized pit viper. This was an era before everyone having a readily available cell phone. Had I not had the boots on, I would have been in trouble and 20-min from my truck and over half an hour to the nearest phone assuming I didn't waste time to load the bike.
I had to go back to my truck and contemplate life decisions for a few minutes after this, but I rode at Blaylock for many more years up until they closed it...I learned to pay extra close attention to where I put my feet down and never rode alone.
I'm glad that there are few snakes around me. And even fewer that can be a problem. Even so, I have a decent sized black snake that likes to hide in the bushes and scare me when I'm mowing the lawn. I think its a black racer. The interwebs say that people often keep them as pets and they are safe. This one happens to be the biggest snake I have seen in person in the wild.
The snapper I posted a pic of was trying cross the main road and my mother stayed with it for a couple hours. making sure traffic was stopped if needed. It ended up going back towards a marsh next to the river that runs along our property. But we have stopped and helped snappers cross the road a few times. Turkeys ,ducks and geese too.
Not a riding encounter, but I was working on a vehicle wrap outside in the spring . And I was wearing headphones while doing it. A duck kept coming over to me a couple times a day while I was working on it. The last day I was out working on it my headphones were not charged up so I was not listening to anything but nature and I realized that the vinyl made a duck like sound when I picked it up off the van to reposition it. So that entire time the duck was coming to me because of my vinyl peeling duck call.
Pit Row
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