Lots of bear encounters here in NM over the years, but my scariest moment happened after the fact. Did not even know I should have been scared at the time.

On a spring turkey hunt up at the ranch a number of years ago. Still snow on the ground. I cut a set a moutain lion tracks in a gulley, and that really got my attention. I immediately added a couple of slugs to the shotgun, and carefully finished my hunt. Back at the cabin, one of my buddies mentioned finding my tracks and the lions tracks, and we sorted out the timeline and where we all intersected, and we determined that the cat had cut my tracks, followed me for quite a while, then circled around ahead of me. It is one thing to enter the woods, pondering an encounter. Knowing for certain that I was being tracked and would have been lunch completely at the cat's descretion, that one still rattle's me to this day. I am very happy he was not too hungry at the time ;^)

Craig