POST FALLS - You won't believe the stories about Cougar Bob.

Really. You won't believe them.

This is a man who climbs trees, armed with a pocket knife, to go after a cougar or bear.

And then there's the time he had to outrun a bear set on killing him.

There's even a tale about trapping the "Bayview Cougar" that had killed livestock and threatened kids.

All of them, and more, are in "Close Calls: The True Tales of Cougar Bob," authored by B.J. Campbell, who just happens to be the wife of Cougar Bob himself, Bob Campbell.

The Campbells recently celebrated their 45th anniversary. They have a system. Bob lives it, B.J. writes it. They came up with 26 stories of narrow escapes in the 159-page paperback.

"Stories have value," said B.J. as she sat in the living room of their bright, comfortable Post Falls home. "It's no fun unless somebody else knows what happened. I get a lot of pleasure out of telling his stories and bringing them to life."

Bob sits and listens across the room with a 30-06 Ruger M77 Mark II Ultralight rifle resting on his lap. Still ready in case a wild critter crashes in.

"It's my favorite rifle," he said.

Bob, at 79 years old, has slowed down. No more great outdoor adventures await. No more facing life and death situations. His hearing isn't so good, and he has other physical limitations. But he has already done enough to fill a book. Why push his luck, anyway?

"I've had quite a few close calls," he said.

In his younger days, though, he was fearless and fast.

Asked to recount one of his close calls, he does so, quickly and easily.

He was asked to participate in a Fish and Game fish counting project at Granite Creek and given two weeks worth of food.

"I was over there two weeks and they never showed up. I was out of grub," he said. "So I decided I'd take my boat, crank the motor up and go over to Garfield Bay, which is about eight miles across the lake, to a resort over there and get supplies."

As he was crossing Lake Pend Oreille, a storm blew in out of the east, out of the Clark Fork River. It was sudden and strong.

"There was a black line on the water and they always told me, when you see a black line on the water, you want to get the heck out of there because it meant rough water," Bob said. "It caught me out there in the middle of the lake."

He steered his boat down the trough of the waves, rolled over three or four, then went down the next trough. The boat was taking on water and freezing up.

"I just kept on going," he said.

Finally, he reached the other side and ran his boat up on the beach, where a few men pulled him out.

His hands were frozen to the throttle of the motor. He was hustled inside and the resort owner thawed him out, helped by a "shot or two of whiskey.

"That was the closest I ever came to cashing in my chips. It was pretty scary," he said.

Young Cougar Bob

Bob Campbell grew up on a stump ranch, a mile and a half north of Garfield Bay.

His father, a carpenter who worked on construction of the Farragut Naval Station, bought the land in 1934 for $400. It was the Depression and they were poor.

Bob stacked the hay, cut firewood, picked up rocks and cleared land. He and his two brothers and three sisters looked after the cows, tended to the garden and picked potatoes. He trapped beaver and muskrats, then sold the hides for money.

It was the start of his passion for the outdoors.

"When I was growing up, we more or less lived off the land," he said.

Bob, who loved to joke, still found time for fun.

He once convinced a classmate that a "wampus cat" was responsible for tearing apart a stump and scattering a purse she had hidden in it, when in fact, he did it. He even made tracks in the area with his fists to add evidence to the yarn he was spinning.

When the classmate asked what a wampus cat was, he told her this:

"It was a pretty good-sized cat and it had a ball on the end of its tail and when it got mad at you, it'd wampus the hell out of you," he said, as he laughed and grinned. "They believed me."

The avid hunter liked little more than to pursue coyotes, creatures that caused his family plenty of woes when he was young when they would snatch a chicken or calf. He quickly mastered traps and guns, whatever it took to get them.

"I sure loved to catch coyotes. They are a very smart, cunning, vicious animal," he said. "It's real satisfying to catch a coyote."

"He outsmarts them," B.J. said.

Brave to the end

Bob Campbell was smart - and brave, too. Nothing made him flinch. This is a guy who lifted a live porcupine by its hind legs. This is a guy who dropped into a canyon at the end of a rope. This is a guy who freed a bobcat caught in a coyote trap.

"He's full of stories. He has tales to tell," B.J. said. "That book doesn't even scratch the surface for the number of stories he could tell."

For many of Bob's adventures, she was there to witness the unbelievable. For others, they spilled out over a meal at the dinner table, and as he would tell them, B.J. would listen. She preferred writing over wilderness.

"By the time he was halfway through, I would say something like, 'You did what?'" she said, smiling.

"Then I would write the notes down on a napkin, save that, from the notes later I would write a story."

Those early accounts of Bob Campbell's life came to be part of "The Cougar Bob Review," a one-page newsletter that B.J. began sending out to friends and family about 20 years ago. They were short, strange, amusing tales - all rolled into one. Many of those were added to "Close Calls" adding to the legend of the man called Cougar Bob.

"People would never believe it if they heard us talk," B.J. said.

Believe it.

The book published by Gray Dog Press is $14.95 and is available at Auntie's Bookstore and the South Hill Hastings in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene Hastings.