I loved my time spent at Philmont. I litterally have a dozen other great stories from my time spent there. The skies up there are SO clear that you can see satellites move across the sky. I never KNEW there were so many stars.
Three quick Philmont stories from when I went hiking there as a Scout.
When you arrive at Philmont, and before they let you go hike, one of the resident staff members will give your group a little talk and go over basic safety rules, etc, etc.
It is normal for them to take somebodies pack and go through what they brought with them and say what is good, what is bad, what they need, etc, etc.
In the group RIGHT next to ours the staff member had one of the fathers packs out and was going over its contents. One of the last things he pulled from the guys pack was a Linda Love Doll.
When asked by the staff member what the HECK that was the guy replied "That is my drop cloth".
A couple scouts from my troop went off in the woods to smoke a joint. They ran across a freshly killed male Elk. The blood was still warm it was so recently killed. For reasons unknown these two decided they just HAD to have the antlers so they grabed the antlers and twisted the Elks head off.
About this time the bear that had killed the Elk, who was off in the bushes watching them, decided it didn't like them taking its kills head and came out of the bushes pissed.
Flash to me and everybody else sitting at the campsite and hearing yelling. Looking up we see these two scouts come running out of the woods holding a bloody Elks head by the antlers shouting "BEAR! BEAR! BEAR" and went flying past us. Not that far behind them came the black bear loping along and making angry bear noises.
Several of the adults shouted to the boys to just drop the damn head which they finally did. The bear stopped where the head had fallen, sniffed it a few times and headed back into the woods.
Those two scouts carried those antlers for the next week only to have them taken from them at the end of the hike. You are not allowed to take antlers out of Philmont. I imagine they are on that huge archway of antlers at the entrance.
(I tried to find a pic. of that archway on Google. Did they take it down? It's been 20yrs since i've been there)
I was out late one night to take a leak. I walked a bit from the campsite and relieved myself on a tree. I heard a scraping sound and held still looking about. After a few min. I finally saw a bear climbing a nearby tree. The tree was right next to our Bear Bag and this bear climbed a good 10-15' higher than the bag which was around 20' off the ground.
A Bear Bag, for those that don't know, is a bag that you fill up with anything "smelly" that might attract a bear. You then string it up on a rope between two trees so it hangs there between the trees and the bear can't reach it.
So as I am standing there watching this bear climb and it finally stops. It sat there for a min. and then it LAUNCHES itself from the tree and tried to grab our Bear Bag on the way down. It missed and landed which a very large thwacking crunchy kinda nose.
I thought the bear MUST be dead. Nope, only stunned. After a min. the bear raised up, shook itself, and walked off into the woods.
One of the more bizarre things I have ever witnessed.
(Sigh... good times...)
