I was talking with an Outfitter just last Saturday who regularly travels into Bear Countty. Unarmed.
He says he uses a common sense approach to never cross a mother and her cubs. And that most bears run way from you when possible.
Still. I don’t think I’d go off in the woods without firepower. Not me.
I have 32 acres in south central Kentucky, 27 of which is wooded with two streams. People have seen black bears around here quite a bit. I’ve read up on them quite a bit and I’m not all that concerned.
For starters, unlike Grizzlies, momma bears are not all that much perturbed by someone coming between them and their cubs. The challenge tends to be the males. However, their average size is actually smaller than me. Of course, the same can be said about a badger, but still. However, I’ve also learned they are rarely aggressive unless they are really in a feeding or rutting frenzy.
The article has got me thinking about carrying my .380 with the lethal load I have in it when it’s in my car.
We used to go on camping vacations to Idaho and Montana.
We were fishing a river somewhere in Idaho in ‘79 or so, and my wife asked if those were bear tracks in the sand. I said no, that looks like a barefoot boy walking his dog.
Not far from where we had pupped our tent.
Years later I saw that in a magazine as a decription of bear tracks.
As I understand it, in most cases it’s not the adult bears alone that provoke an attack. It’s curious young cubs relatively separated from a mother that find their proximity to humans that provokes an attack.
Me neither. I understand that in some locations, I have to be heavily armed to remain at the top of the food chain.
“And that most bears run way from you when possible.”
I think I see a serious hole in his reasoning.
In November my son and I had a close encounter with what I believe was a black bear in the Superstition Mountains here in AZ. Something was definitely moving around the tent (my son heard it first). Heard it moving through the brush, sounded fairly large. The I heard breathing and snuffling that sounded decidedly bear-like. I whispered to my son (he’s 12 and he was holding onto me in a death grip lol) that bear attacks are pretty rare and we might be more likely to scare it off. In the meantime I was trying to formulate a plan on what to do if it tried to get in the tent. And I was praying it was not a mama bear with cubs. The only thing I had close to any kind of “weapon” was a pair of hiking poles, but they were just outside the door of the tent. I then heard a licking sound. I had moved all of our food in a bag to a fence down the hill. But our packs were still outside, about ten feet from the tent. We had no food in the tent, of course. After a while, we turned a light on and started speaking in normal tones, hoping if it was still lurking about, to scare it away. Finally I went outside to check it out. Nothing was around, nothing too disturbed, but one of our day packs did look wet (like it had been licked). Next morning I only found one, old, bear track. No other animal tracks that I could make out. Our bag of food hung on the barbed wire fence down the hill was undisturbed. To this day I do not know what I would have done if it tried to get into the tent. I felt completely helpless, but if I had at least even my .40 I would have felt better protected in that situation.
Smart Alaskans carry at least a .357, no autos.
“I was talking with an Outfitter just last Saturday who regularly travels into Bear Countty. Unarmed.”
They have a name for guys like that; bear scat.
The problem with “never cross a mother and cubs” is that that while we sad humans in the woods know that, it’s those pesky mother bears with cubs that seem to have a habit of finding us between them...
Hence, we carry the tools required for extrication from the equation. Oh well.
I would like to know the name of or the organization this out fitter works under so as to avoid him....