One guy I know who lives in Alaska carries a 45-70 with full modern loads. According to him, first shot on a charging bear goes to the shoulder to slow him down.
Viking said:Why would a bear attack you???
There is many stories of people who encountered a bear and most times it ended bad is one of the following reasons.
1. You end up between mama bear and little bear, same thing can happen with and elk
2. You **** the bear off by shooting at it, the risk is that the bear is only wounded and suddenly the bear is dangerous to anyone walking in the woods. The police need to be called in and special bear hunters will have to come and hunt it down and we will have even fewer bears at the cost of my tax money.
Think before you ACT!!!
... run and climb a tree or something ...
Er, yesgregorach said:I was under the impression that bears are quite good at climbing trees.
arctic hobo said:It might be sad to lose your dog, but it's probably better than shooting the bear
Well, if you quote the whole sentence matey, you'd see what I really meant was that it's better a potential dog death than a potential you death, and a potential bear death. For example:Kane said:Not sure I'd agree with that.
Kane
arctic hobo said:Well, if you quote the whole sentence matey, you'd see what I really meant was that it's better a potential dog death than a potential you death, and a potential bear death. For example:
Scenario 1: Bear goes for dog, dog eventually gets away, bear gives up chase. Bear, dog, and human are all safe.
Scenario 2: Bear goes for dog, dog cops it, bear leaves human (who has scarpered) alone. Bear and human are safe.
But if we introduce guns:
Scenario 3: Bear goes for dog, bear is shot by human, bear survives, dog and human cop it, and if badly wounded, bear may die, and may well go on a bit of a rampage (although I don't profess to know much about bear behaviour).
Scenario 4: Bear goes for dog, bear gets dog, bear is shot by human, bear dies.Only the human survives.
Scenario 5: Bear goes for dog, human shoots bear, bear dies. Human and dog are safe.
So you see, of the "gun scenarios", only one of three is even remotely satisfactory, and in none of them do all three survive. As I said, I've seen a bear charge, admittedly from a distance, but I think you'd need to be extremely quick indeed to get out a gun (assuming it is loaded, even), take off safety, aim, and shoot at least one slug into the bear. Plus this means you're carrying a loaded gun in your bag which is hardly satisfactory.
And as I said before, I'm worried about the false sense of security it would give you. Most of the time it's totally subconscious - only in hindsight do you see that maybe you were straying a little on the wild side. But after a bear attack you won't have hindsight