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Sun Jan 28, 2018 10:28 am

MsTaboo,

It's serious Grizzly country, and I've got my wonderful wifey to protect. Sitting on a riverbank means you are on a major barrier for them and they'll walk along riverbanks looking for food and a way to cross if they're inclined. Beautiful creatures. I'm a vegetarian, so zero interest in bringing them harm.

Doug

Sun Jan 28, 2018 11:56 am

^ Not to mention outraged bigfoots and those sneaky zombies.

Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:00 pm

In zombie country its a 12g. They wont stop so ya gotta break the machine...

Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:30 pm

wcdennis wrote: AZ Landshaper wrote: Once at some hotspings in WA state (1996) my wife and I had just laid down in the camper when we heard footsteps, zippers and the slider door open. Guy jumps in and lays down next to us and says "just me guys". I said who the hell is just me as my wife laid there terrified.
He obviously didnt recognize my voice and quickly jumped out and closed the door. I heard him yell "SORRY" as he headed down the trail in search of his real friends.
What a gas. Still laughing out loud at that one. -

Seems like the kind of scary mistake that could have gotten someone killed.

Yeah, when the big man with his "sidearm" goes off half-cocked.

Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:35 pm

As they say, "Only in Merka"

Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:43 pm

IdahoDoug wrote: MsTaboo,
It's serious Grizzly country, and I've got my wonderful wifey to protect. Sitting on a riverbank means you are on a major barrier for them and they'll walk along riverbanks looking for food and a way to cross if they're inclined. Beautiful creatures. I'm a vegetarian, so zero interest in bringing them harm.
Doug
I live and camp in bear country, have never needed a gun, just common sense.
It's funny how different people's fears are, my biggest one in the backcountry is gun packing humans. :wink:

Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:22 pm

So yeah, one night we were camped in Tuttle Creek campground at the foot of the Sierras, near Lone Pine. We decided to biv out under the stars and heard something clawing at a crate of dry goods we'd left out. It was a raccoon.

The next Spring we were back at the same place. Now, we don't leave anything out in known bear country, literally ever, but this place is five miles into the desert and there's "no reason" for any big critters to be there. So we left the crate out a few nights over our three-month stay.

A couple times, we heard the raccoon clawing again, but there was no getting in the crate. The last night we heard it, the Missus woke me up. We were sleeping downstairs with heads forward, so I whipped the sliding door open to surprise it but instead it was an utterly-enormous black bear!

We've been around bears dozens of times in our backpacking, so know their traits. He backed away a hundred feet, then wanted to play some more. I leapt out and scared him back but he had all the signs of wanting to win -- and we needed him gone. This was now a turf war.

This went on several minutes, but eventually the bear left. My preferred method is "talking nice" until the beast gets too cozy and wants in. Then I do the exact opposite, screaming and looking big and acting "terrifying." This has always worked, but this time it took a little longer. The bears must surely think me manic-depressive (and I am a Packer fan, after all...).

The next morning I told our camp neighbor friends about this as they, too had seen signs of attempted "raccoon intrusions" into their canned-ham trailer. They are renowned rock climbers -- (they just put up second-ever ascent of a world-class route on the North Tower in Torres del Paine) -- and the guy had lived in a Beetle, then the canned-ham, for over five years in the area.

So he just looked at me after the story and said, "Yeah, RIGHT!!!"

Turns out the bear(s) discovered a peach grove three miles east of the campground... so the campground was a good place along the way for hors d'oeuvres.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:13 am

It's wise to be prepared for the humans with guns. Not all are law abiding citizens. I worked in level four prisons for thirty years and have seen that mentality. Don't take a knife to a gun fight.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:32 am

Well sure, you spent your life around the worst in society.

Please don't try to convince the rest of us that people are inherently bad. I'll be damned if I'm going to live life distrusting every single person I come across.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:28 am

I think a lot depends upon your interests. I love animals, remote spots, and solitude. Last weekend, I spent the night in the van solo camping in the snow up near Priest Lake. Snowshoed at night. Heard distant owls and coyote and hunkered down for a while on the downwind side of the trail hoping the pack would cruise by me. No luck but I could hear them working their way through the valley.

The next day I went out again and saw fresh tracks from a lone wolf, and a bull moose as I noodled my way around in the back country. I love to sit quietly and listen and can do so for hours, which is why I often go out alone. Few are willing or interested in this "passive" and immersive approach to experiencing the deep woods. I've had a pine marten (most will never see these elusive creatures) trot over my hiking boot, I've watched a barn owl in a snowy tree throw his head forward to hoot by moonlight, I've been confronted by a few bears, and I spent nearly a minute 6 feet from a full size male Lynx as we quietly studied each other. I should have been a biologist, and I love that I live in an area ripe with apex predators and a very healthy ecosystem. I get out in it as often as I can.

Last summer, my 19yo daughter and I swam up a creek from a bay we were anchored in. We didn't realize a momma moose was sleeping in the tall grass near the creek, while its calf was out on the shore of the bay a quarter mile off, eating from a shady willow. Upon seeing her, we melted down into the water and moved behind an island the size of a dinner table with grass to shield us. For more than a half hour we watched her as she alternately dozed, got up and drank, munched grass and stretched. Badly injured by a wolf attack, she had managed to heal her wound AND give birth that spring and the calf looked healthy. We marveled at nature's resiliency, the love of mothers, and the complexity of nature. I've been tracked by a mountain lion while out on a search and rescue mission for a missing child. I've had an unseen huge bull moose roar out of a mountain lake and charge my son and I. He was 12 and will never forget me scooping him up onto a stump behind a rampart of trees while I yelled at the moose and unholstered. It stopped 6 feet away with the trees blocking it and broke off after 30 seconds. We then watched it disappear, quietly pushing through the brush.

It's beautiful out there, go see it for yourself. But have a plan B if you intend to immerse yourself.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:32 am

[quote="IdahoDoug"]It's beautiful out there, go see it for yourself./quote]
Nice, thanks for sharing these wonderful experiences...

Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:17 am

Same from me, Doug. Our interests are very similar.

We've hiked or backpacked and traveled over 4,000 days now, and have climbed 80 of the highest 100 summits in the US. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. We only stopped that climbing goal when my becoming a paid nature photographer took all our wild time, and per hiking most of what we've done is deep in wilderness areas.

While we don't carry a rod, we may well if doing more in grizz country. We did a seven-dayer north of Cooke City end of '16, and certainly our eyes were more focused than our other treks in places where only black bears roam. I'd be likely to feel more strongly about protection if we had a kid along, too. While realizing that black bears can go awry as well, after over 30 encounters I choose to not pack iron. To me it's intrinsically wrong to kill a wild animal when we're the intruders, but that's a personal philosophy I don't put onto anyone.

So no worries to those who do, though frankly it pisses us off to trailside chat with anyone whose trust is demanded from us while their pistol is one pull away.

My comment was strictly in defiance of "needing" a gun each and every day to protect from people… quoted by someone with decades of jaded experience in prisons. I'm not going to walk around scared of a low-probability incident, in over 10,000 miles of hiking I've yet to meet a single person I thought threatening. Bad guys don't tend to walk around with backpacks, except as portrayed by Hollywood.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:46 am

When I was stationed in Alaska everyone I saw either had a redhawk 44 or a judge. And you guys are absolutely right we are in their territory. Especially when you are fishing the same salmon bears are. Or if you have a fresh moose kill that you are butchering and has gallons of blood everywhere.

I think if you are in an area in Alaska with lots of people you can be fine without a sidearm because literally, everyone else has one. I think native home grown Alaskan can vouch for this. But if I was camping alone or with my buddies in a remote place to pick some mountain blueberries... I would definitely be carrying.

Over here in Virginia we have black bear and every encounter they always run away. Even the mothers with babies.

I have seen so many moose (meese or as I call them) in city limits of Anchorage. And while they are impressive they are also the clumsiest large animal I have ever seen. I have seen three meese actually fall while walking.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:03 pm

They busted into a case of Moosehead. :wink:

Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:37 pm

a handgun is about the worst thing to use if you are charged by a grizzly

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:28 pm

Xactly.

I also personally think critters are smart enough to know if a human has a mindset to kill it, or not.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:46 pm

I'd think a canned airhorn would be more effective.

Mon Jan 29, 2018 2:12 pm

You've clearly never heard me sing…

So there's been 153 North American bear attack fatalities in 100 years. Interesting is the very first recorded victim was a hunter hunting Grizz in the 1830s...

Best sell your bus, everyone, your odds of being killed with its endless risks and failures are surely way higher than being killed by a bear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America

When bears come into our lands, we kill them.

When we go into their lands, we kill them.

Maybe there's a message in there somewhere...

Mon Jan 29, 2018 2:26 pm

being maimed is no fun either

carry bear spray

for some late night fun, read Steve Herrero's book on Bear Attacks around the campfire...

Mon Jan 29, 2018 4:45 pm

AZ Landshaper wrote: Once at some hotspings in WA state (1996) my wife and I had just laid down in the camper when we heard footsteps, zippers and the slider door open. Guy jumps in and lays down next to us and says "just me guys". I said who the hell is just me as my wife laid there terrified.
He obviously didnt recognize my voice and quickly jumped out and closed the door. I heard him yell "SORRY" as he headed down the trail in search of his real friends.
What a gas. Still laughing out loud at that one. -

Hey.
SORRY about that, I had a little too much to drink that night.