Many of my friends and outdoor acquaintances often greet me with this question … guess what I saw?

Most of these folks really love to be out of doors and in out of the way places as they explore the outdoors for their many hobbies and recreation. Generally, they are hiking trails, birding, hunting or running a trap line, walking in snowshoes, taking pictures or just quietly sitting and watching while doing any of these things.

Often times, they report that they saw something interesting while not expecting to see the surprise creature at all.

First of all, I am going to eliminate sightings of deer, foxes, raccoons, and even bears! The chances of seeing these animals seems to be more likely than you would expect. We are looking for animals that make you double take and wonder what you just saw!

Throughout my travels, both distant and local, I have been given the opportunity to see animals that made me really take a close inspection and watch the animal in its own environment.

North of the border in Canada, I have had some opportunities to see animals that you are not likely to see frolicking about in Butler County. Among these are moose, wolves, spruce grouse, and big cats. The biggest cat we ever came close to seeing was a cougar on a deer trail. The cat was stalking deer along a small stream that had a lot of conifers lining the banks and overhanging the trail.

My buddy and I were hunting moose and we were heading into some red willow thickets upstream. We saw the cat tracks in the powdery snow and also the tail imprint behind the footprints.

We decided to back our way out of this cat’s hunting range and try another area instead. I got a stiff neck looking up in the heavy branches that crossed overhead on our trail … just in case!

Two small creatures caused quite a stir when I was hunting grouse up north on a late fall day. I stopped to locate the source of the sound and to my delight, the critters came rolling past me and nearly at my feet.

Two ermine were battling for supremacy of territory, food, or romance … I couldn’t be sure. These little guys were impressive in their courage and determination to be the dominant ermine in this brushy terrain.

They were so close that I could have reached out and touched their exquisite fur pelts if they wouldn’t have bit the finger off!

A bobcat that sat still for me in the northern tier of Pennsylvania was a favorite memory. He had used a fallen trunk of a tree to cross over a small trout stream and I decided to follow his track up a logging trail. For some reason other than the steep climb, I stopped for a breather …turkey tracks were now mixing with the bobcat tracks.

I looked down the hill from my vantage point and noticed the round end of a cut timber from many years back. Framed in the round of that timber sat my bobcat watching me with curiosity. I guess I was fortunate to see him at all, because when I tried to get a better look by moving a few feet further, he was gone.

In the Allegheny National Forest, I was hunting turkeys when the day got warm and I found a nice pile of logs to sit and make a few calls. It wasn’t long before I heard some rustling leaves and I hoped that some turkeys were working the leaves for mast and heading towards me.

You can imagine my surprise when a fisher stuck his head out of a tangle of tree tops and stared right at me. I didn’t move, but he did and went right back into the cover and headed away from me. That is one animal that you don’t see hanging around the neighborhood!

Porcupines and wild minks gave me a double treat last fall when I was able to see both of them near the headwaters of the Slippery Rock Creek in Game lands 95. The mink popped out of a den in the bank of the creek while I was standing on a hump overlooking the creek.

He never knew that I was there and I observed him as close as could be expected without spooking him. He worked his way up and down the shore line looking for some kind of meal. I never saw him with anything, but he went back into his den and didn’t reappear, I was hoping for some better action from him, but no such luck!

The porcupine came into the story as I was heading up a trail away from the lowlands. He was nearly 20 feet up an aspen tree when I saw him. Going up the trail put him nearly at eye level and next to me because of the elevation rise and I could have reached out and touched him, too!

That might have been a prickly situation, but he didn’t seem too threatened (by the way, the fisher is a natural enemy of the porcupine) and I really had a great opportunity to study him in the wild.

Until we meet again, get out in the wild and let your friends try to guess what you saw!

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle