You are quite correct and I think that in going for a catchy thread title, the OP missed the point that large wild or domestic herbivores present at least as great a risk (hence my reference to UK bovine fatalities) to someone hiking and wild camping as predators. In the highly unlikely event of me killed by an animal, I'm not bothered whether the culprit consumes all or part of me or just wipes my blood off its hooves and wanders off eating buttercups. IME, healthy, non-habituated apex predators with access to their normal prey are less of a hazard than female large herbivores protecting their offspring or males pumped up with testosterone during the mating season.
I'd define a "gun enthusiast" as someone who collects or carries guns in situations where there is no objective reason to do so. You have chastised at least one contributor to this thread and dismissed a respected bushcraft expert as not knowing what he was doing for not carrying guns when entering wilderness areas where bears or other large or predatory animals may be present. What I'm trying to work out is whether carrying guns when out in the backcountry is just a cultural thing (i.e. you feel happier carrying a gun, because your daddy and grand daddy did) or whether this is an appropriate response to a real risk to life and limb.
If wikipedia is to be believed then annual fatalities caused by bears in the US run at around 1-2 a year which is a bit less than the annual toll of people accidentally killed by hunters in New York State or a bad month on the streets of Okaloosa County. Given the obsession with bears every time a thread like this comes up, I had assumed that the annual death toll from bears would have been in the hundreds or thousands. What I am struggling to understand is whether the preoccupation with bears in the US is justified by the real rather than perceived risk they present to humans and whether there is any evidence to suggest that these numbers would be significantly higher if people were not carrying guns.
The only statistics that I could find online (without paying for a scientific theses) for fatal animal attacks in the USA suggested that dogs (around 30 fatalities annually) and bees (around 50) present significantly higher risks than bears, wolves, mountain lions etc. etc. Inevitably the number of people heading into potential bear country will be significantly less than the population as a whole but objectively, it appears that carrying a protective bee suit is more relevant to the risks presented by US wildlife than a rifle!
Given how twitchy you guys seem to be about your native wildlife it is probably just as well that the hair-brained scheme to introduce African hippos to the Louisiana bayou a century ago came to nothing.
http://www.heraldguide.com/details.php?id=16250
To give a little perspective for those who have posted information on how big and bad @ssed North American wildlife can be as justification for carrying heavy ordnance into the back country, they are all pretty junior league compared with these guys; big males weigh in at 3 tonnes plus (about twice the size of a bison, 5 times the size of a polar bear, and about 8 times the size of a grizzly), add in 20" razor sharp teeth, a 20 mph top speed on land (which is not bad for a mainly aquatic animal) and a belligerent attitude in both environments - they kill Nile crocodiles (think a bigger, badder version of an alligator) and trash small fishing boats for fun and if the human fatalities caused by hippos in Africa was transposed onto the US population, there would be nearly 1000 deaths a year. For all their size and attitude, hippos know when they are outmatched and step aside when elephants turn up.
On a recent thread, much was made of the hazard from US snakes which cause about 6 fatalities a year, if the annual snake fatalities in India were transposed onto the US population, you would be looking at over 12,000 deaths a year. Clearly a large and expanding rural population working barefoot or in sandals on farms which are encroaching onto the bush and rudimentary healthcare will distort the figures but hopefully you get the point. To put that figure into perspective, it is roughly the same as the annual figure for firearm homicides in the US.
Although I'm a country boy from a country with a comparatively benign climate and fauna, I've been lucky enough to spend a fair proportion of my life travelling and experiencing foreign mountains, deserts, oceans, cultures, wildlife etc. including time working in Africa - because of some of the places I've been to recently, if I wanted to travel to the USA I'd have to apply for a visa as the usual visa waiver scheme for UK citizens does not apply because the US authorities fear I may have become a violent jihadist! One thing that has struck me on my travels is the almost complete absence of Americans (particularly young ones) travelling other than small numbers in organised groups. In contrast, you can't throw a stick in some remote places without hitting Dutch, German and antipodean 20 somethings travelling independently often on a shoestring budget. I had always assumed that the reason that Americans are not big on foreign travel was simply because because the USA is such a great place with a vast range of scenery, climate and wildlife but the more I read threads like this, I'm becoming convinced that its because you guys see the world as a dangerous place and if you can't take your guns with you, you are not going.
Statistics can be misleading but trust me, there will be people reading this thread marvelling at how benign north American fauna is but shocked that a civilised country tolerates the level firearms deaths that occur in the US.
For me, a large part of "bushcraft" is about identifying the minimum amount of appropriate kit to safely enjoy the outdoors - trust me, I'm not an ultralight fetishist and its a constant battle to avoid throwing another shiney toy in the pack "just in case". If you are not hunting, 4-5kg plus of rifle and ammunition is a lot of deadweight to lug around as a "talisman". Staying safe to me is simply about identifying potential hazards, deciding objectively what risk they present and then using an appropriate control to manage the risk. Carrying a gun is one of the range of control measures and (as with polar bears in Svalbard), there are clearly situations where that is appropriate but 500 people die a year in firearm accidents so it appears that sometimes the solution can be more hazardous than the problem. The problem is that if you are a hammer ..
I can't match Joe tahkahikew's lifetime experience in bear country but have spent enough time around African wildlife to understand the difference between the potential hazard an animal presents and the actual risk. Perhaps the following gives an idea of the difference in attitude between first world and first nation attitudes. A while ago I spent a year living in a remote village in the African bush. One day there was a hyena hanging around in the bushes between my house and the neighbours. A spotted hyena is about the size of a mountain lion and despite its reputation as a scavenger is a highly successful predator with a bite which is supposedly more powerful than a lion (lions gnaw bones, hyenas crush them which makes their faeces whitish) and in general you should be wary of any species where the female is not only larger and more powerful that the male but also has a bigger d!ck - g00gle it if you don't believe me! This was not a particularly big one and although I was not worried about my safety, I wandered over to my neighbour to warn her to keep an eye on the young kids playing in her garden. Something got lost in translation and a minute or two later a small posse of kids (the oldest no more than 8, the youngest little more than toddlers) armed with an array of sticks, brooms and other domestic tools were despatched to chase the hyena away from the mzungu's (white man's) house!
Are hippos the biggest killer in Africa with 3000 deaths a year? Not even close! The real risk is from something smaller than the nail on your pinky. If sub-Saharan African deaths from malaria were transposed onto the US population then 100,000 plus would be dying annually and at the risk of straying back on topic, as malaria seems to be re-establishing itself in parts of southern Europe, perhaps a good bug net and repellant should be regarded as essential parts of her kit.
Extraordinary.
Don't carry one then.
Really I just wanted to quote a diatribe that long.
