Then again, I don't raise livestock, my dogs and cats haven't been disappearing from the back yard of deeply residential areas, and I'm not worried about small children or jogging paths. 2002 was the year with the second-highest number of bear attacks on Philmont hikers, at least at the time. May have been as a result of all of the fires in the north country, or the Scouts who left candy bar wrappers at the foot of their sleeping bags, or the ones who left asthma inhalers in their boots at night without covering them with stinky socks, or the orange-tagged bears who had been spoiled by poorly hung bear bags and had already been tranquilized and flown out of New Mexico, but found their way back.
The bloody paw print on the rock scared the bumpkins out of me, however, and the tawny flashes on either side of the road, and the occasional flashlighted eye flashes from RM's extra powerful torch kept me concentrated on keeping the crew together, hiking fast, and singing.
The two youth crew leaders we told, who kept the crew together, noisy and moving, without telling any of them for a day or two, were champs.
When I used to do wood cutting work in the mountains, camping by myself, and with a wood truck coming up every 2 weeks to load my wood and take me to town for a shower and supplies, I couldn’t resist the impulse to search for the bears unarmed through the woods for recreation, trying to track them , something that probably wasn’t the right thing to do.
Being noisy doesn’t help. Let’s use wolves as an example. A healthy pack of wolves seldom goes after livestock. So killing a wolf that is secure in a healthy pack weakens the group and makes it MORE likely that they will scavenge at a ranch.