Tom S. Smith, associate professor in the plant and wildlife sciences department at BYU, holds up a temporarily knocked-out family of polar bears.
For what ever purpose, unmentioned, does a “scientist” run around knocking out polar bears. It would appear to be relavent. Another item they did mention caught my attention.
“What they found was that there was no statistical difference in terms of injury or death between those who used their gun (229) and those who didn’t (40)”.
Was anyone injured or killed? Of the 269 was common sense an issue? Of the 40, how many were carrying a gun? How many incidents were surprise encounters? How many were in the wild vs home invasion? How many of the 269 were long time Alaska residents. etc. This guy has a history of feel good and polar bear populations are decreasing articles. The population decrease alone is bogus whether Alaska or Canada.
If you have lived in Alaska for any length of time, you learn it can be dangerous to be outside in the wild with anything less than a 44 mag. Back when I lived there in the 70’s IIRC there was no bear spray and S&W 44 mags were over 600 dollars back then. So then common sense came into play. I didn’t have a 44 so I didn’t go where brown bears were. Did run into a black bear once. A chance encounter, he or she was rooting for food or whatever, and I had sufficient time to reverse course and leave the bear to its business. I was carrying a 357 mag which was one third the price of a 44.
thanks for the reply. Interesting