Chorus: "He doesn't know the territory!!!!"
Posted on 07/21/2008 2:55:36 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Bears and mountain lions are getting into trees, trash and backyards all over Colorado, lured by the smell of easy prey and free meals.
They're getting smarter, they're getting fatter, and they're getting killed more frequently, thanks to the thoughtlessness of the humans living in their midst, say Colorado Division of Wildlife officials.
In the northeastern quadrant of the state, which includes metro Denver, there have been some 47 reports of human-bear encounters since April.
A remarkable number of them involve hummingbird feeders, trash left outside, steaks left on the barbecue, garage doors left open.
In Aspen and numerous other communities in Colorado, bears actually know which day trash is picked up, going to some neighborhoods on Tuesday, other neighborhoods on Wednesday, breaking into bins, DOW spokesman Randy Hampton said.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
A few days ago a neighbor saw a big cinnimon-colored bear come through my yard, up another neighbors sidewalk and he was sniffing around their front door. Eventually it wondered off into the forest.
Smarter than the average bear....
Yes, lock up the picnic baskets!
bears actually know which day trash is picked up, going to some neighborhoods on Tuesday, other neighborhoods on Wednesday, breaking into bins, DOW spokesman Randy Hampton said...
Well, that is something new.
Hope the bears check their mailboxes. Our pickup date was recently changed from Thursday to Monday.
Near my uncle and other relatives, there has been in influx of people from California, who have ruined the population of bear. I don’t care if you put good locks on the trash now. Once you teach a bear that humans mean food, you will eventually have a dead bear. Its just the course of events between cause and effect that have to be decided.
I hike eastern forests and black bears are becoming more common. I am happy to give them the right-of-way but should push come to shove can any hunter tell me if a .357 mag would drop a black bear? I can pack a .44 mag but the .357 is a good deal more compact.
And yes, I do know all about saving one round for me and filing off the front sight to make it more “comfortable”
That's the money line. It's those pesky humans, again. If they would just micromanage every aspect of their lives and buy bear-proof refuse containers at an exorbitant price.
Bears are in our yard a lot over a given season. I think we (personally) had around a dozen sightings in our neighborhhod last year. None so far this year but they do leave their calling cards in the backyard so they are here.
They are pretty cool as long as you give them distance and respect.
Do you really want to carry “just barely enough to drop the bear”?
A hunting guide who specializes in black bear hunts with handguns in Washington state and Idaho recommends 10mm as a minimum. Your .357 should be more powerful than 10mm so I think it would do OK with heavier bullets in the 158gr range.
That all depends upon the size of the bear and how angry he is. My dad hit a black bear in the middle of the head with a .30-06 and didn’t kill him. I feel pretty comfortable with my .45 against most critters, but then, I don’t camp where most people do so most critters usually see me as the predator, not the buffet.
And, I carry these: http://www.rbcd.net/ They ain’t cheap, but when you need a real attention getter, it will get the job done.
Check out the new Ruger Redhawk with the 4” barrel. It comes in .44 Mag or .45 Colt. I would imagine it is not much larger than your .357.
How DARE you thoughtless humans enjoy the outdoors, or even your own backyards! Now pull your heads back into your shells, turn around, go back in your burrows, press the 'down elevator' button and go deep, deep down into the Earth's crust, where I command you live out the rest of your days! Bad humans! You are the Earth's worst pollutant! Bad, bad, bad!
If you kill wild game from inside your house with a firearm, you might be a redneck.
Becoming more common is an understatement. Where did all those bears come from and seemingly from nowhere? I carry a .357 158 gr HP., so I think that is enough. There are variables, size of the bear, intent, where you hit the bear.
Most I am seeing are small, as bears go, so a .357 will do the job. Honestly, I don’t think you will ever have a problem. They pay me absolutely no attention whatsoever. I may as well be another tree. Then, there is always the one crazy bear out there and it is better to be safe than sorry. A sow with cubs is probably the most dangerous bear you will encounter. Another thing that helps is always take a friend on your hikes, a friend that is much slower than you. :))
Over the weekend a mountain lion attacked, killed and devoured a pet lama near the Air Force Academy.
The law in Colorado allows landowners to shoot wild animals if they are endangering their domestic livestock.
You know, not every thing in an article is Leftist propaganda. In this case, it is just plain country sense, of which city people have ZERO. You don’t teach a bear to associate a meal with being around humans unless you just like nuisance or killer bears.
(I know this from personal experience shooting a squirrel out my bathroom window with a .22!)
I actually thought that said thoughtfulness on the first read. Of course, that couldn't be.
Chorus: "He doesn't know the territory!!!!"
The Hornaday XTP hollowpoint is designed more as a “controlled expansion” hunting round than a self-defense round. That is likely what I would pick in 357. In 44 magnum there are better choices. I would choose between the Nosler 250gr Partition, Speer 270gr Gold Dot Soft Point and offerings 240gr and up in the Hornaday XTP hollowpoint.
Ah, that would be the increased sound reflected off ceramic tiles that beat your eardrums to death.
Now from the bedroom, with drywall gypsum, not too bad at all. (Second floor, tagged an annoying crow on the fence)
It IS leftist propaganda.
Where I grew up, I didn’t have to worry about being eaten by bears and lions, because they had been hunted out of existence. But now my kids do?
BS! BS! BS!
They should be hunted out of existence again. And so should the GD leftists who say exposing my kids to that kind danger is a good thing — with extreme prejudice. They are being re-introduced into heavily populated areas where people should not have to worry about that kind of thing, by a bunch of humanity hating leftist pukes.
Actually there were seven of them on private property. The owners were out of town and one of the neighbors was taking care of them and letting them out for exercise. I don’t think that will happen again.
This is what comes from retriever training in the summer!
Do they speak Tibetan?
I hope it wasn't the Dali Llama!
I went and checked on her bed. Dolly's O.K.
DUH, Ever since the Colorado banned using bait or dogs for hunting bears, and also eliminated the spring hunt a few years ago, the bear population has exploded.
BTW, 41 or 44 mag much better bear medicine than 357. use hard cast bullets.
Caution: In Alaska we make sure that when we are in Bear terrority we have a “friend” (with us) that can’t run as fast as we can.. Having a gun helps but is not a sure thing.. I know of a bear that had nine 9mm slugs in him when he mauled and killed a park ranger.. Course in ALaska the bears are as BIG as a large SUV...
If three 9mm slugs didn't stop the Pope, how in the heck does anybody expect nine to stop a bear?
Maybe I'll borrow my dad's .348 Winchester and pop some Silvertips and Nosler solids in it . . . . that sounds more like Heap Big Bear Medicine to me . . . .
How does the .375 Weatherby compare to the .375 H&H?
Personally, i wouldn’t carry less than a .44 for a bear. When I was in the service, a friend of mine hunted bear, including in Alaska when he was stationed near Achorage.
He mentioned that park rangers often loaded snake rounds in their pistols. If a bear charged, the snake shot in the face (eyes and nose), was the best bet. The bears nose is very sensitive, and buck shot would there would cause enough pain to send the bear packing. Whereas getting a lethal shot with a pistol might not be as high a percentage.
This is what I have been told, anyway, third hand. Also SW has a compact .44 or .50 just for bear country threats.
“A remarkable number of them involve hummingbird feeders, trash left outside, steaks left on the barbecue, garage doors left open.”
Almost all of the incidents involve Stoopid Humans!
Mrs. BPE and I have lived in the mountains (at 9,750’ above sea-level) going on a decade and a half, and we have all manner of wild animals going through our front yard,including bears and mountain lions, and we haven’t had one incident.
We take the proper precautions and it is ridiculously easy to do.
The deer in the fall graze off my fruit trees so when the first of the season begins I can pick them off in the yard. The squirrels and raccoons stay in my pecan trees and I get them whenever I wish.
The coyotes are collateral damage and I enjoy them meeting my .308 at every opportunity.
So many opportunities from my windows and porch deck, I guess I am a redneck...
Where to begin, where to begin?
The article has sooooo many false assumptions.
To start with, predators have no inherited “fear of man”, so the nice AgencyPerson would be well advised to read before speaking. Predators have to learn fear of man.
That fear is taught by their mother. Momma Bear learns fear by either seeing (very rare) man killing a bear or by scent.
When a human kills a bear, the scent is evident for quite a long time - assuming one is discussing what the bear can smell. Any bear that happens across the kill site can determine who killed the bear.
It helps if the hunter also urinates, or better yet, defecates, on the carcass once it has been skinned and whatever meat, etc is removed. When speaking to bears, do so in language they can understand.
Bears understand scent marking, using urine, feces, etc. in their own scent marking activities. Therefore, do the same and the bears will understand.
The crap posted by the Armed & Rangerous regarding what to do if attacked is just that - crap.
When a predator wants to maul, kill, and eat you, only gunpowder stands between you and the most horrible of deaths.
Remember well the words of the Guru:
“When gunpowder speaks, beasts obey.”
;-)
Good thing there are also no escaped Bengals from a zoo around — then you’d have lions, and tigers, and bears (Oh my!)
I have a 375H&H. It is probably a bit slower than the 375 Weatherby, but not so much that a cape buffalo or elephant would notice. For black bears either would be fine. For the hard-cast bullets...yes I have them too....Double Tap with hard cast wide nose gas check from Beartooth. These bullets will probably go through 3-4 feet of predator. For black bears this is not optimum, a Hornaday XTP would probably do better. For grizzley the hard cast is probably best for a handgun round. The 12ga with Brenneke hard cast slugs is probably the best self defense in a long gun.
My parents were headed off to Alaska to hunt bear, and dad had bought the .348 Win for mom and was shopping for a .375 H&H for himself.
Then they turned up pregnant with me.
Every so often dad looks at me, sighs, and asks, "Why couldn't you have waited until after I bought the .375?"
I'm inclined to get one just because of that.
Bears in this area are rather small and very shy (they are still fair game in GA). Occasionally one will attack a hiker in the national parks, but most of our predators are the two-legged variety.
We cast our own Cowboy Action bullets out of wheelweights -- probably 90 percent of the powder and lead we burn through is for that. We have a friend who does target black powder and he casts bullets considerably harder than ours. Of course at our distances and velocities (800-850 fps and that's considered fast for CAS) it doesn't really matter what metal we use.
If you handload, you can load the 375 235gr at lower velocity for deer. The black bears around here only go 300-400 lbs max so not so hard to stop usually. We have had a window/window frame completely caved in by a bear (window and exterior clawed up badly too). Big dog chased it off (good dog lost to cancer a few years back). Usually 3-4 bear incidents every year. I believe it is caused by city types with mountain vacation property that feed the bears. When the city folks go home, the bears seek other homes for food.
Ponder the Elmer Keith rule: ... over-gunned is better than the alternative.
Of course there's also the Col. Jeff Cooper rule: "A hit with a .22 is better than a loud miss with a .44 Mag."
I'm amazed that anybody is stupid enough to feed a bear. And we live in the suburbs!
Someone needs to get the word out to all the bears and lions about Denver’s free for all in August.......
TJ always packs a .357 when he goes out in the woods, just in case he runs into a bear or a rabid animal. Fortunately, the bear was more interested in getting away from TJ than anything else. Bernheim actually prohibits firearms on the property, but TJ has told me he'd rather be asked to leave than end up running into an aggressive black bear, a feral boar, or a rabid skunk.
My parents live on a tidal island in coastal GA, and it's infested with feral hogs. We arrived late one night when the causeway gate was locked, and I had to walk in to get the key, a matter of about 2 miles. No moon, either.
I had a flashlight and my .45 ACP, but I was NOT a happy camper! I ran across a couple of groups of them in the dark, but fortunately they were more afraid of me than I was of them!
Some of the dogs on the island have been badly gored by the big bo-hogs.
The infestation at Bernheim is so bad that they are actually considering having a controlled hunt to get rid of them. If they have one, I think I will sign up for it. But I will definitely be hunting from a tree stand.
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