• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

My Husky Saved My Life!

mnb

mnb

Husqvarna
Pro Class
Last weekend, while riding my 2011 TE310, I flushed out a mountain lion at Hollister Hills, a local state vehicular recreation area of about 5000 acres in size. It was my last loop of the day, with a couple friends behind me. I was wrapping up the day with an easy loop that I could kick my speed up a bit more on and play around. About 3/4 of the way through the Adobe Rd loop, he made his appearance.

He crossed the trail about 20 feet ahead of me as fast as he could go. His head was down and stretched forward and he was really booking. At first, I thought he was chasing something, but nope. Apparently the bark of my 310 was enough. If it weren't for the fearsome 310, I might have been dinner, so I guess I can say, "My Husky saved my life!"


leaping-mountain-lion_1024x768_2849.jpg

Not actual picture from encounter


I've never seen the big cat so close in the wild. I saw one last year at Hollister Hills across the valley. He was walking down Rancho Hill. He went down about a quarter of the way, turned west and slowly walked off into the brush. Wild pigs, racoons and wild turkey are common sights out there and I've seen or heard all but the pigs. I grew up in the country about 40 miles away, but only 10 miles outside of a small town (30k). Wild animals weren't rare out there in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Not many people have seen one that close in the 'real world.' I'm not sure if I should feel lucky, special, relieved I'm still here, elated or all of the above.
 
I encountered a black bear cub crossing a trail about 50 yards in front of me last Sept. in PA. I turned around and hauled butt in the oposite direction knowing that Mama Bear was not far away and would be VERY ticked off if I threatened her baby.
 
Mountain lions are very cool. You are indeed lucky to have seen one. Many in the mountains around my area and yet I have only seen 2 in 40+ years of hiking, back packing, pack tripping, riding, hunting, fishing and driving in this area. Without the aid of tracking dogs they are very stealthy and extremely hard to come upon. They know you are there long before you have a clue. Glad they don't associate humans with food until they are very sick or dying.

Now I did have an encounter with a grizzly bear at very close range and I don't think that stain is ever going to come out of those particular pants.
 
A friend of mine had a bear charge him on a street ride. It was scratching it's back on a telephone pole and he stopped to take pictures maybe 100 feet away. It started to walk away and then looked over at him. It started approaching slowly. He got back on his bike and the bear picked up speed. He didn't have time to do a 180 (he rides dirt too, but was on an FZ1 I think for this ride), so he did a stand up wheelie and made himself as big as possible. The bear took off. He's got pictures of it, but no evidence of the wheelie part of the story, unfortunately.

Pretty amazing encounter. He did the right thing, though. They say to make yourself look as big as possible and he did.
 
4 of us went riding our mountain bikes one day. One guy took a different trail and said he saw a mountain lion. He had little credibility with us so we told him it was likely a bobcat but looks real scary and big when you're alone.

Not much later that year a woman was attacked by one nearby and even later a guy was killed in an attack. Local natural areas of Orange County. Some things to consider if you ride solo.
 
all of the above, we saw a smaller young model puma on MTB ride, he/she was about 100 yards up the trail running on the trail away from us. We just made noise and rode down the trail glad we scared the little beast. Its great to see those thing out there, but shoot they can kill ya for sure.
 
I'm always concerned that if I am ever stuck afoot in the middle of nowhere that a mountain lion will end up being my first responder.:eek:
 
Out in KY we see all kinds of stuff...had a deer racing me, he was about 5 ft off the trail hauling the mail...had deer cut in front and behind me...a skunk, turkey, red fox, beaver, and a mink.....couple months ago a HUGE moose and it would have killed me....in NV we came around the corner and two rams were getting ready to crash each other....and another time came up over a rise and a mexican fighting bull was right there...I was face to face with that thing and it was huge....dont think I ever flipped a U that fast before...its awesome to see wildlife that close...
 
mnb said:
leaping-mountain-lion_1024x768_2849.jpg

Not actual picture from encounter
Click to expand...
Awesome picture never the less, great story too
krieg said:
I encountered a black bear cub crossing a trail about 50 yards in front of me last Sept. in PA. I turned around and hauled butt in the oposite direction knowing that Mama Bear was not far away and would be VERY ticked off if I threatened her baby.
Click to expand...
The same thing happened to me at the fields where I go to run my dog, they are outlined by trees and one day I was blasting on the 610 along the tree line, actually thinking in my head that it might be fuckedup to suddenly lose control, bump my head and become a tasty bear treat because nobody really knew where I was...so as I finish that thought I look back, just in time to see a young black bear scurrying out of the woods about ten feet behind me and running away in the direction I came from
it was so close to me that I just had to stop and look back at it but by the time I did he bolted back into the woods, and then I remember that where there are younguns there might be mama too so I took off
wallybean said:
Now I did have an encounter with a grizzly bear at very close range and I don't think that stain is ever going to come out of those particular pants.
Click to expand...
:lol: you killed me Wally
 
I once took out a flying line of seven birds in my old 71 VW, if was like machine gun fire as they hit the front of my car in rapid succession bursting into an explosion of feathers, was quite a sight in the rear view mirror****************************************:oldman: .
 
Good thing you where not on a 2 stroke. I own an exotic animal clinic complete with 3 african lions, one cougar, one tiger and one black leopard. Its weird...I have first hand experience that 2 strokes make big cats go crazy and want to attack but 4 strokes scare them. Seriously. Whenever I rode my 525 by the cages they would retreat or ignore me. 2 strokes we gotta be very very carefull about cus the noise or smell or something about them pisses them off greatly. They would go crazy and attack the fence.
 
firecrotch said:
Good thing you where not on a 2 stroke. I own an exotic animal clinic complete with 3 african lions, one cougar, one tiger and one black leopard. Its weird...I have first hand experience that 2 strokes make big cats go crazy and want to attack but 4 strokes scare them. Seriously. Whenever I rode my 525 by the cages they would retreat or ignore me. 2 strokes we gotta be very very carefull about cus the noise or smell or something about them pisses them off greatly. They would go crazy and attack the fence.
Click to expand...

Everybody wants a two stroke!
 
I have seen Mt. Lions, Bears, and the biggest animal, a Roevelt Elk up close. Both times for the Mt. Lions I was on foot and alone. :eek: The others mostly on a motorcycle. The bear cub about 5' from me in the dark was scary. :eek:

Another wild life experience I had was back around high school. Some friends and I were out in a residential area driving somewhere. We came around a corner and there were 3 birds (pigeons, doves, idk?) just off the side walk eating bread crumbs a family, with a young kid or two, were tossing to the birds. Some bonehead (me) blasted out "REV". My friend driving the big 'ole 8 cyl 4 door stepped on the gas, the front end lifted up and it was like we hit 3 feather pillows, right in front of the innocent little kid(s) and the family. :( The moral of the story is: Be careful when you shout out "REV". Your buddy just might step on the gas. :busted:
 
Here we have a animal that will attack you at a blink of an eye, and has claws that make Freddy Krueger see red with envy, and as for stealth, this animal invented it, they drop from the sky in day or night with the force of hundred stealth fighters. I have heard stories of riders being attacking and opening the tops of a helmet like a hot knife through butter, these animals are smarter than Steven Hawkins on a good day. Here we call them drop bears, I know, I can just hear you say, Australia doesn't have bears???? well let me tell you the black, Russian, the grizzly and even the panda bear has got noth'n on this bear. Talk to any local here and mention those 2 word that strike the fear of god in people, DROP BEARS. So I warn all fellow rider that intend to visit and ride here, be careful be very careful and look up as well as looking forward

Cheers Kel

koala.jpg

:lol:
 
Was riding WFO down a fire road in the Ozark Nat. Forest a few years ago when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and a bobcat ran into my front wheel. It happened so fast that when I got stopped I asked the guy behind me what it was and his response was "I don't know, but it didn't have a tail"
 
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