15 Unexpectedly Close Encounters With Wild Animals for Adrenaline Junkies: ‘A great white shark passed around 8 feet under my kayak’

Blake Seidel • That's so Raven!

May 29, 2026 7:30 AM EDT

Have you ever gotten a little too close for comfort with a wild animal? No, we're not talking about your neighbor's slightly unhinged cat. We're talking about lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!

We're getting second-hand from this post in Reddit's r/Survival subreddit, where people spoke about their uncomfortably close experiences with wild animals. For anyone who has had one of their own, we're sure that you can remember it like it was yesterday. This type of memory stays with you for a while, depending on how scared you were.

We'll start by telling you ours: We went for a 2-week hiking/camping trip with a good buddy of ours a few years ago in the North Cascades National Park. As anyone who goes camping knows, you have to tie your food up in a tree so as not to attract bears to your campsite. We put all of our food in a sealable bag, threw it over a tall branch on a tree about 30 feet away, snuffed out the fire, and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, we heard some scratching and grunts coming from outside our tent.

You have to remember that we hadn't seen another human being for at least a few days. So, it was either a deranged hermit or a black bear, neither of which we wanted to deal with. We tried to wait it out, but after 30 minutes of hiding in our tent, we realized that whatever it was, it wasn't going to give up. We grabbed our flashlight and bear spray, then decided to face whatever this creature was, so we could go back to sleep.

What was it?

A mama black bear, attempting to shake the tree down and eat all of our food. As soon as we pointed the flashlight at it, it charged at us. Those 3 seconds felt like a lifetime. We raised our arms in the air, screamed, and readied the bear spray. She stopped her charge halfway to us, clearly seeing us as a threat, then ran off into the darkness.

Guess who needed to change their clothes after that?

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People who have genuinely encountered powerful wild animals in nature or the ocean, what was it actually like?

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A model of a wild animal hunting its prey
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A scuba diver surrounded by wild sharks, as represented by a model
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Unexpectedly close black bear approaches a photographer, model representation
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$It was a whale. We hit a fracking whale! Or more correctly, it well surfaced right under us! Giving us, a short, but memorable Nantucket Slay Ride. There is a smell when they exhale.$

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