kanawa,
Thanks for the ping. You said you came past some black bears in that area recently. Just curious, after your experience with the bear how do you react when seeing one in the woods now? Adreneline get to pumping? What about your dog’s reaction?
Did Buck Knives ever get back to you about your experience?
How is your dog doing? He was mauled pretty bad at the time.
The ones I saw were while driving so no problem there.
I only had one campsite in B’C. that made me a little nervous.
I was isolated, lake on one side, bush on the other.
My awareness heightened and the frequency of my look-arounds went up substantially.
I had both knife and spray on my belt. I made sure I had my boots on, not my sandals.
I also did something I had never done before...
collected some good size rocks into strategically placed piles.
I thought that would give me extra option if I had to drive one off.
Since we haven’t had a close encounter since the first one it’s hard to say what Sam’s reaction would be.
He seems to be enjoying the outdoors as much as ever.
When I took my firearms safety course it was on the second floor of a building.
There was a stuffed bear at the top of the stairs that was very close in appearance to ‘our bear’.
I asked if it would be all right to bring him and show him the bear, they said sure.
Now the stairs were the type where you go halfway up to a landing
and then continue to the top in the opposite direction.
I brought Sam in, he was enjoying it,
just dododoing along until he reached the landing, turned and saw the bear.
He stopped in his tracks fer sure!
With some coaxing and reassuring from me he slowly came up the rest of the steps.
When he got close he stuck his head out as far as he could
while keeping the rest of himself back as far as possible
and gave the bear a good sniffing.
So that was good I guess, he didn’t refuse to approach, try to run away or pee himself ;)
I expect in a real encounter he’ll be as brave as he was before.
I had some media fellow call me to let me know that Buck wanted to talk to me.
I probably should have passed on my phone# but I was getting a little tired of all the calls,
wanting my life to get back to what passes as normal, so I gave him my email address
thinking I could consider whatever they had to say before responding.
For whatever reason contact was never established.
Sam is doing fine,
as I tell people there are just a couple of areas where the fur doesn’t grow,
we call them his ‘bear’ spots.