Yes it does make things different.
Much different actually.
I used to go camping all the time when I was growing up. Never had a worry about anything like bears or cats or packs of coyotes.
Unfortunately, with as much stuff that is here in these woods now, I don't feel safe taking or letting my kids experience the same things I did. And I think that's a huge disservice to them.
Many of the Bears in the area are in the 500+ range. We had one at the house not long ago that tried to fight with my dog and it was so big that my wife is scared (and rightfully so) to walk from the car port to the house without lights on at night now.
I'll be honest, I was trembling when I came back in the house.
And the state flat out denies that there are any big cats in the eastern portion of the US. But I know better. It's not uncommon to hear stories about people seeing them around these parts.
Shooter13, I was going to PM you where I live, but your PM is turned off and I couldn't. I really don't want to say on the open forum. I'm OCD about my privacy.
The place where most of the pictures was taken is on our families property, which does adjoin a state nature preserve that has about 3100 acres of protected land, so we get a lot of "spillover" onto our land from that.
But it always was good hunting grounds even before the state bought so much property beside of ours a few years back.