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.

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 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 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…

Never.

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

EDIT: /s

I’ve had multiple encounters with bears, cougars, alligators, and meth heads.

The closets I came to dying was being chased around my car for 30m by a mother black bear after I disturbed her hiding in a basement via coal flue. Lost my keys and had to wait for a park ranger to come save me.

I’ve been almost killed by a grizzly, twice, when I used to live on the eastern slopes of the rockies in Alberta. Climate change and human activity are making it hard for the bears and they are hungry as fuck in those parts.

One time when I was like 6 years old camping with my parents, I went on a walk to the river and got charged from behind a bush, but it didn’t seem hellbent on killing me

Another time I was hiking up a fire cutblock and my buddy and I thought we saw three hikers maybe like 3km uphill from us. Eventually it was obvious is was a mom and cubs, and they were chasing at us full speed (we were upwind from them). If we were a little further into the hike, I think one of us wouldn’t have made it back to the truck in time.

I’ve also been trapped by a moose in my parents garage for 6 hours, once

I still would rather run into either these animals out in the sticks than random humans. I’ve encountered some really sketchy people in my time spent in the woods. Seems to be getting worse too. I’m not a gun person, but that’s why I have a gun.

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

I have just a boring one. I was driving on my scooter, in one very early morning, when on a small, forest surrounded road, after a sharp turn around a hill full of trees, a brown bear disappeared in the bushes, from in front of me. I just drove on, and did not stop. My pulse jumped, since it was so sudden and, well, a bear, but that was it. They are usually not harmful to humans around here (Finland), unless they have cubs, or you have bad luck. The poor beast was probably as spooked as I was, from the scooter sounds, since we could not really see or hear each other early enough.

only a coyote, i thought it was a husky one time, but it was actually a coyote casually walking pass me.

Yeah. A pig. A feral boar that weighed in at nearly 700 pounds.

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.

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.

Around day four of a week-long backpacking trip just east of Yosemite, I encountered a bear one morning on my way to do my business. I turned a corner around a large boulder and there he was, was sunning himself on the trail. When he saw me he slowly got up and wandered back into the trees. That simple description left out the few seconds of sheer panic I experienced realizing that the bear could, if it wanted to, cover the distance between us before I could turn around and take three steps. There was nothing but flat, open ground between us and that is what was most frightening.