Posted on 03/11/2022 4:08:09 AM PST by marktwain
Handloggers is the biography of Alaskan pioneer W. H. (Handlogger) Jackson and his wife Ruth Jackson, nee Ruth Johnstone. 251 pages, 1974, softcover.
Jackson moved into Alaska about 1917-18, prospecting, handlogging, and trapping. He was born about 1883-84 in California when the fastest transport was a steam engine train. Most of his travels before 1920 were on foot, horseback, or by steamship. He married in 1927 and died in 1970. During his long outdoors career, he developed an outstanding reputation for skill and fair dealing. On page 225, Handlogger writes of the unprovoked black bear attack he foiled with a stout walking stick. It was in 1960, near Kegan Cove. He was about 76 years old.
Book Review and Black Bear Attack Excerpt: Handloggers by W. H. Jackson
He called the stick his “snozzle stick”, claiming if he ever needed it, he could hit a bear on the “snozzle” with it. One day, while hiking, he saw a large animal moving the thick brush, coming directly at him. He could not determine what it was. He was standing on top of a log. From Handloggers:
At twenty yards, I still could not see what it was. I hollered some more, but it didn’t turn. It was something big, coming deliberately at me. There were no grizzlys around, nothing I’d seen that would bother me in all the years I’d worked there. My snozzle stick looked awfully inadequate, but trying to run would be useless.
At thirty feet it broke into the open, a black bear in full charge. No mistaking its intention. Ears flattened, eyes blazing, teeth bared, huffing and snorting, it lacked only the size, speed, and volume of a big grizzly or Kodiak on the warpath.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
math is you friend...I’m not referring to the poster.
What are you commenting about?
I prefer a snozzle stick with a .429” bore diameter.
A bear called Old Groaner was mentioned four times in the link with nothing following.
“What are you commenting about?”
To be honest...I DID NOT READ CAREFULLY ENOUGH! I read the 1927 wedding date as his birth date. Therefore none of his later accomplish made sense to me. A lesson to learn about engaging brain before keyboard.
It truly amazes me just how adept our forefathers were to have survived, thrived and tamed the land we now take for granted.
Sending the average Westerner out into the wilderness today, without modern conveniences and firearms, just produces fat bears.
I have been doing research on it for three years.
This is background information about how the Old Groaner myth evolved.
Lots of bad information on the incident stemming from Jackson's rewrite of the original article, published in 1936.
Great book. I’ve had a copy for nearly 40 years and have read it several times.
“Old Groaner” - isn’t that one of Hillary’s nicknames?
The rangers at Black Rock Mountain state park in Rabun County, GA used to carry baseball bats to hit the snouts of aggressive black bears. Of course the average size of Georgia black bears in that area is only 125-150 lbs but now and then we get a big one. Anyway one ranger told us it was pretty effective.
“Schnozzle Stick”,
Pretty Effective-—Okay.
Apparently This
ole Boy Survived.
Or SNOZZLE STICK.
bump for later
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