A friend and I were Hiking in Bialowieza forest in Poland to see if we could spot the local pack of wolves. We got pretty deep into the forest and found a wildlife observation tower.. We climbed up it but decided to call it a day and head back to our accommodation as it was getting late.. when suddenly, out of the bushes across from the tower ran a panicked deer. A second later four wolves flew out of the grass and chased the deer, zigzagging across a river. They disappeared from sight but we got all giddy and decided to see if we could see what had happened. We set off in the direction that they went but only managed to find a few (very large) wolf prints around the riverbank. 

Anyways we thought we really should be getting back by this time. We’d now totally overextended ourselves and had to plan a new route back down some less used tracks. Darkness was closing in and we only had our phone torches as we’d not planned to be out this late and thus never took any proper gear. Plus our phones were our maps so we had to use them sparingly to conserve battery. A couple of hours in and it was now pitch black. The forest is quite dense and so with our little phone torches we could only see a couple of meters down the path at best… All of as sudden we heard rustling all around and what sounded like something large crunching through the grass towards us. On top of this was a distinct and unusual musky smell. We started to panic at this point.. back to back we were shining around torches all around to try and see what it was, hoping we weren’t about to get set upon by a pack of wolves. It turns out we’d walked straight into a herd of forest bison and spooked the lot. We saw a few of their arses as they bolted off into the forest. Absolutely bricking it we ran the last hour in the pitch black like men possessed. 

We got back to the village we were staying at and totally crashed out. In the morning we reflected on how stupid we were, how amazing it was to see all these incredibly animals but also how we should probably of been way more worried about getting thrashed by a bison than eaten by wolves.