The Coyote on the St. Joe.
I'd just returned from packing in groceries and propane on horseback with a 6-horse string from the trailhead downstream on the St. Joe River. We didn't have any clients in camp and it was about an hour or two before dark. I had unsaddled and fed all the horses. I was walking back to the lodge and saw a coyote in a large clearing on the way back to the main camp from the horse corral. The coyote was barking at the tree line and acting pretty agitated. About 500 yards to the left along the river a couple of horse campers had set up camp and had staked out their horses. I figured they were close to the coyote?s den and that's what had the coyote agitated.
As I walked closer to the coyote, it would look over its shoulder at me, then turn and look at the tree line and yip and bark. It did this three times. Each time it barked and looked away from me I moved closer. Pretty soon, I was 50 yards from this coyote. As it looked over it's shoulder one more time, a cougar came bursting out of the trees, after the coyote. The song dog just about turned inside out and ran to my right, directly through the Lodge compound, between the lodge and the clothesline, and out the front gate with the cat right on it's tail.
I was standing there amazed at what I had just seen. Two secretive animals had just been seen feet from where we slept each night. It was then that I realized that it was as wild and untamed a place as I might ever be, despite the 70-year-old log buildings we used as our headquarters.