Talks like a tough guy, then makes a stupid recommendation like "bear spray first always.  It's the most efficient defense in a bear attack."

Typical GD bear thread is typical.

I do all the time - hell I sleep on the ground in bear country.

But like... lower 48 bear country, not Alaska, lol

Plenty of people enjoy the outdoors without carrying a firearm

Attached File

i'd be too afraid of shooting myself when i'm thrashing around in my sleep and getting all PTSD.

Everyone is a happy camper until the screaming starts.

I often realize just how full of shit many people are when bear threads come around.

<———- Bear will get a face full of Jolly Rogers.

LOL bear spray in a tent.



Clown shoes.

Bear attacks are why I won't go to San Francisco.

I need a circle perimeter and 24 hour watch with random mortar and mad minutes throughout our stay.  I want the plows to push out a kill zone 500 yards from center and I want CAS stacked to the heavens.  and a few of those Aliens hand held movement detectors and remote automated weapons.

They regularly attack people or come mighty close. The tourism board, the chamber of commerce and DNR tends to frown on bear attacks or incident stories, so they usually keep a tight lid on that stuff. It happens far more than you hear about. We had a bear that seemed very interested in obtaining access to our tent one night while backpacking in the mountains, but he just couldn't figure out how to do it. I had the business end of a .357 Ruger stoked with BB hardcast trained on his head for what seemed like forever. He eventually wandered off after poking his snout into my wife's elbow a few times and making some grunting noises. Nature be scary!

A guy and his son were attacked while sleeping in hammocks here in NC a couple years ago. From memory, the bear had his son's head in his jaws and crunched down. Son is sound asleep and then screams at the chewing. The father drove the beast off by beating it. Son had a lengthy stay in the hospital, but did survive.

You may know what you’re talking about but you lost all credibility when you used an apostrophe trying to spell ‘bears’.

Reminds me to see how long my electric fencer can run on my "remote mobile solar" unit I built.

My eldest daughter did her culinary internship at the Awani at Yosemite. One morning about 1:30 or 2 she was waiting for a ride back to the workers' residence after prepping about three to four hundred steaks. She must have smelled like every one of the steaks she'd prepped.  She heard a soft noise crossing the parking lot in front of her. A full-grown cougar/mountain lion crossed within about thirty yards of her. Wisely she stood stock-still didn't try to run back towards the kitchen door under the canopy. The lion looked at her as he walked by but didn't make a move towards her. The workers had been instructed to inform the rangers whenever the predators were seen near the lodge so that they could be caught and relocated. When she filed the report he told her she was lucky, the cat had probably fed relatively recently.

If they can't get to your food supply then you become the food.

Have someone else pack your shit.

The last time I slept in a tent in bear turf was:

The area in Colorado formerly known as "Norrie Colony" - 1994, I believe.  There was fresh snow overnight and there were medium sized black bear prints in the snow.

I never heard the bear though I had some dream about the sound of a "snuffling" animal.  I will always wonder if that was a dream or not.  

I stayed on the floor of a crowded camp trailer the next night.  

Still, this was way, way out from civilization and black bears are usually most dangerous when they live near people.  

But I would not bet my life on it.  Now or then.

Maybe not in this case but many times a grizzly will come back after a couple minutes. Having a gun can save you. Friends of mine had a brown bear trash their camp at illiamna while they were fishing. They were sorting out the mess while my buddy Dominic was cleaning out the raft about 100 yards away. The bear tried to get him but he was able to shove off and paddle to camp. Bear went into brush and started snorting and growling scaring the shit out of everyone. Then it came back and started after them so they shot it. 5 rounds of 44 mag and 3 each of 12ga slugs and 00 buckshot. They were firing close range breaking bones and shoulders and the fucker kept trying to get to them.

As they had no camp left they radioed a passing aircraft to call fish and game who gave them a ration of shit until they examined the bear and saw every wound in the front of the bear. Fish and game then made them skin it and left them without any camp or supplies. Cunts.

Black bear will just start eating you alive so the gun has some chance to save your ass. Unless you lose it in the melee. A 150lb black bear was trying to get in a cabin occupied by my friend Darcy and her S/O @ Crosswind lake in the early  90s. As the bear broke thru a window they ran out the door and climbed a ladder to the roof. They had a Ruger 22 pistol.  As the bear circled the cabin the dickhead jumped down and ran to the boat to get help, taking the pistol with him. While the dumbfuck was out boating the bear climbed up a scrawny spruce to the roof and attacked  Darcy. Now Darcy wasn't your average city gal, she was a big boned Swedish woman of about 160lbs and very capable,  she had crewed on crab boats among other exploits.

The bear drug her off the roof and started eating her alive. When dickface got back with a hunting guide who lived on the lake they shot the bear who was still eating her. Bear was a healthy male about 4 to 7 years old but small iirc.

A week  later a girlfriend of mine was walking home from the State housing at King Cove to her home.  Her 4 year old boy was lagging about 10 yards behind when a brown bear lurched from the brush and grabbed him. DRT,  she could do nothing but run away. Villagers returned and killed the bear.

In all these personal accounts firearms did or could have certainly changed the outcome. In my 45 years plus in AK I know of plenty others and in only one case was a firearm not helpful or needed and that was when Gene Moe killed the Kodiak with his Buck knife. I have held that knife and would rather have a gun.

My wife worked at Corrections with the wife of another hunter who was killed by a  Kodiak a week after Gene's fight. In both cases the hunters had shot deer and were viciously attacked losing their rifles. That was near the beginning of when bears started association of gunshots with a free Sitka Blacktail meal. Now hunters stand guard or quickly drag the deer to a safer location. So while a gun is not usable in every case if you have and are able to your gun should deter an attack.

TLDR Fuck Bears. Shoot all of them.

You can't fix stupid.

Skilak is hardly remote, I can be there in under 2 hours from my house. Sure wouldn't hurt to have a gun.

Bears love to chew up plastic shit, anything plastic.

So why isn't everyone in AK carrying at least 2 guns at all times?

Read my post above

Take your rooftop tent to Kodiak. Some of your new acquaintances can be 15 feet tall.

Bet this guy wished he had a gun instead of an iPhone....

Is that stuffed monster still in the Anchorage airport?

I will never sleep in a tent, period. Those days are long gone.

We don't have bears.

We have gang bangers. But many of the principles are the same.

Nah man, I’ll take FL mosquitoes any day, and I hate mosquitoes. I’ve had a few run ins with bears on my family’s land in WV back in the day…….fortunately for us the patriarch of that side of the family always told us to never go out without rifles on us.

And after reading about some bear attacks and even watching a “movie star Grizzly bear named Rocky” kill a guy on video, nah man, I’ll take the mosquitos

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/24/bear.death

Last trip to MT I did for camping I did a fair amount of research about places where Griz were and where they were not and picked a spot to backpack in that had not had any griz sighting.

Hiked 8 hours that first day and found a nice spot near a lake to camp at.  No sooner had I sat down my pack than I saw a bear print that was almost the size of my head.  It seemed far larger than a black bears print.  

I left, hiked another hour or two to a spot that had no sign of bears and setup camp.

While I am careful and "bear aware" when I would go backpacking, I always thought twice about going solo to areas that are known to have Griz in them.

The most important thing you can do is to not do any cooking, food prep or storage near your tent.

It's a pain, runs counter to convenience, and is even harder when you are tired, and it benefits the next person more than you.  As such, it's probably the greatest best-practices shortcoming seen in the field.

Wow.  Sounds like the best way to keep the hippies/commies out of AK is to spread all the bear stories far and wide!