chevneck said:
There are enough black bears where I live and walk my dogs that I always carry my cellphone and a buck knife- if I'm gonna get mauled I'm still gonna try to make my mark. The point is I hunt and understand (to a degree) the behavior of bears and have crossed their paths in my sport sandals and swim trunks, I know to look out for them and to make noise and all that hoop-lah, I run into one last June, on a section of trail I use regularly so I could make a reasonable judge of size from the 30m separating us, (I'm 6-2 220lbs) the bear would be above my waist on 4 about 6-6 on 2 and had the swagger and tiny ears of 280lbs + bear. Luckily he just looked at me (yelling my head off) looked back at my dogs (thinking the bear is a new play pal) and sauntered away. I admit I was scared. The point of the story is I was in an undeveloped park, no firearms or protection and I was lucky the bear didn't care. I ran into a lady going into the area as I was leaving so of course I told her what happened and she gave me the ol' "what" bears here? well we are in a park so we must be safe" We have the ability to defend ourselves, but can't, we have enough bears that a CO could "remove" a few extra from urban areas but don't, and enough stunned people that think because they're 100yrds from their SUV they're safe. I haven't really made a point but I guess it's when hunting atleast we can carry rifles and shotguns (to carry a pistola would be illegal therefore none of us would) but I think there will be alot more bear problems as our cities move ever outward. And we still have to remember the regular hikers and flyfishermen, bear bait, with little or no bear sense and un-protected.
