Orienteering long 1:30:00 [1]
shoes: VJ Ints (May 09)
Setting up flagging at Kanata Lakes on the 7.5k course Eric set up in the spring.
Quite the adventure today, heres a summary:
1. Bugs were bad. Mosquitos and deer flies. Very annoying when stopped to hang the ribbons.
2. Saw a massive wild turkey.
3. Crossing the big open area, the grass was really high. Went to cross a bit of a sunken area, but didnt realise that it was a stream. I wasnt really looking at the map, and it was completely grown over with the long grass. So in an instant went from running normally to being in water up to my neck. A bit of a shocker!
4. Half-way around I ran out of ribbon. Decided that I would have to just hang the rest of the controls on another day, but I would keep going around the course just to visit the control locations. On my way to the next control though I found a whole bunch of ribbon hanging in the middle of the forest (probably from mountain bikers). So I took all of it down, and was able to finish hanging the controls. :)
5. On my way to the last control, I popped into a little clearing and found myself running towards 2 deer (about 10m away). Normally when I see deer I dont even need to slow down, the deer usually see/hear me first and are already running away. This time however I had to totally stop...
These two deer didnt even have the normal, 'oh shit a human, lets run away' look. They were standing completly in-line facing me, in a very solid dominant stance, with more of a 'your not coming any-closer' stare.
At the time, what popped into my head was that they were probably trying to protect a fawn, and that I heard somewhere that in rare circumstances deer can get very defensive and try to attack.
So I started to run off to the left to try and take a different route around the clearing area, i looked back though and one of the deer started following me! I wa thinking it was probably the male, but it didnt have antlers. I started yelling at it and clapping at it, but it didnt budge it just kept staring at me. I ran a bit more, looked back and it was still following me! So at this point I was a bit freaked and I quickly ran away.
I was running fairly fast for the rest of the leg without looking behind me, and I managed to spike the control location. I thought I had lost the deer by then, and I'd relaxed a bit. Hung the ribbon, looked back, but the deer was still there staring at me!
At this point I broke off a limb of a dead log, so I could get the loud snap sound, and held on to the broken branch, hehe. He still didnt move though so I continued running and jumped over the fence onto the railway, and ran back along the trail to the car. Kept looking behind me the rest of the way, thinking that he was going to pop up again. :P
Laugh at me all you want, I was scared of a deer... However I think most people would have been freaked by this situation as well. :)