Then the title is deliberately misleading. The lack of effectivity is not in the firearm's capability but in the mindset of the shooter.
Old news: If you don't have the stones to drop the hammer when required, then don't even bring it along.
Posted on 03/25/2012 5:11:10 PM PDT by SJackson
LANDER — As bears begin to emerge from dens in the greater Yellowstone National Park ecosystem, a new study says carrying a gun into bear country doesn’t make you any safer.
Tom Smith, a professor of wildlife conservation at Brigham Young University, and fellow scientists studied 269 bear-human conflicts in Alaska for a paper appearing in the Journal of Wildlife Management. Those incidents involved 444 people and 357 bears, 300 of which were brown bears.
The team found firing a gun is no more effective in keeping people from injury or death during bear attacks than not using a firearm. Research didn’t find a statistical difference in outcome — injury, fatality or noninjury — when they compared those who used their gun in an aggressive encounter (229 instances) to those who had guns but did not use them (40 instances).
Smith found many people didn’t want to shoot a bear and often went through a decision-making process that took too long when a bear charged, Smith said.
“That reluctance is a built-in problem for this deterrent,” he said.
In his study, 24 percent of people who used guns were injured and of that group, 17 people were killed.
In a paper he wrote in 2007, after analyzing the use of bear spray as a deterrent, Smith found only three of 156 people involved in bear encounters who used spray were injured (less than 2 percent). And all of the injuries were minor, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at trib.com ...
I’ll tell you what.
Let me carry both.
I think a .44 Mag strapped to my side would make me feel just a bit more comfortable than just the spray.
Another version of this thread noted that an old bear hunting guide observed that after a few instances, bears LIKE bear spray.
Think about it.
It’s a CONDMENT.
Not much different than the “Ass In Hell” sauce I put in my chili to liven it up.
Bears are smart, and may come to like spicy foods too.
Oh horsecrap.
Somebody here thinks that a charging grizzly is going to be stopped in the last 10 feet of a brutal attack meant to kill?
Nuts - they ARE fast - a grizzly can cover 100+ feet in SIX seconds from a dead stop. Thats over 30 mph, guys
Your spray is going to stop that instantly??
Fine, go bet your life on it.
When Cleavon Little straps his guns on to go deal with the Alex Karras' character Mongo, who's a huge hulking beast, Gene Wilder says, "Not, no, no, don't do that. If you shoot him, you'll just make him angry. "
A .22 pistol is all you need when encountering a bear but be sure to bring a friend along. When the bear charges, shoot your friend in the leg and run like hell.
Posted warning sign mentions pepper spray:
“Warning: Due to the frequency of human/bear encounters, the Fish and Wildlife Dept is advising hikers, fishermen and any other persons that use the outdoors in a recreational or work related function to take extra precautions while in the field.
We advise the outdoorsman to wear little noisy bells on clothing to give advance notice to any bears that might be close by so you don’t take them by surprise.
We also advise anyone using the out-of-doors to carry ‘pepper spray’ with him in case of an encounter with a bear.
Outdoorsmen should also be on the watch for fresh bear activity, and should be able to tell the difference between black bear feces and grizzly feces. Black bear feces is smaller and contains berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly shit has bells in it and smells like pepper.”
If I'm hiking in bear country, I want a revolver uses canisters of bear repellent pepper spray as bullets!
If Professor Smith were to be dropped into a pit with a bear and given his choice of a gun or pepper spray, I wonder which one he would pick?
I recall using the flamethrower during infantry training after Parris Island in ‘67. Then at Camp Pendleton during staging battalion in ‘69 on my way to Vietnam. Loved playing with it, but it would be bad to carry for real in combat. One bad hit and you go up, along with those around you!!!
My son in Alaska always carries a 45-70 with hot loads with him when fishing in western Alaska...just in case! When hunting brown bears, the minimum is a .338 mag...
JC
“Someone pointed out that all you need is a .22 pistol. Shoot your partner in the leg so that you can out-run him.”
Yep, that would work! HAW
JC
IIRC, the bear incident happened not far from the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. The bear was 'shot through' (the term I recall from reading their journals) some 12 times, and still pursued the hunters into the water.
Even today's smaller versions are a formidable predator, and nothing to mess with if you can avoid it. Still, I'd have both the pepper spray and the firearm, thanks, (.44 Magnum in a pistol, .30-06 or bigger in a rifle), even though 'hitting' with the spray is a little easier under duress, provided the wind is right.
cf C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian:
And talking of breakfast, I didn’t want to discourage your Majesties when you said you hoped King Caspian would give you a good one: but meat’s precious scarce in camp. And there’s good eating on a bear. It would be a shame to leave the carcass without taking a bit, and it won’t delay us more than half an hour.
<snip>
When they rejoined the boys and the Dwarf, as much as they thought they could carry of the best meat had been cut off. Raw meat is not a nice thing to fill one’s pockets with, but they folded it up in fresh leaves and made the best of it. They were all experienced enough to know that they would feel quite differently about these squashy and unpleasant parcels when they had walked long enough to be really hungry.
Cheers!
Then the title is deliberately misleading. The lack of effectivity is not in the firearm's capability but in the mindset of the shooter.
Old news: If you don't have the stones to drop the hammer when required, then don't even bring it along.
Depends on what you're shooting. I've heard tell that a .357 will bounce right off a grizzly's skull.
My guess is pepper spray (the kind that looks like an undersized fire extinguisher) really does work better than a gun 90% of the time. The problem is the other 10% when it just pisses them off more.
Ingredients
* 4 pounds bear meat, seared from the outside
* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon dried oregano
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 4 tablespoons margarine
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 onion, chopped
* 1 cup beef broth
* 4 bay leaves
* 2 pounds red potatoes, diced
* 1 pound fresh mushrooms
* 5 carrots, sliced
* 2 turnips, cubed
Directions
1. Broil one medium sized bear, using a flame thrower, until crispy on the outside and no loner moving.
2. In a large mixing bowl combine flour, oregano, salt and pepper. Place bear meat in the bowl a little at a time and coat well.
3. Heat oil and butter in a large skillet. Chop three pounds of the flame-broiled bear into cubes and fry the bear meat until browned. Let drain on paper towels.
4. Fill a large Dutch oven with 2 to 3 quarts water. Add bear meat, onions, beef broth, bay leaves, potatoes, mushrooms carrots and turnips. Cook on medium-high heat for 2 to 3 hours. Add more water as needed.
Study: Artillery, JDAM more effective than pepper spray in bear encounters
“Guns no more effective than pepper spray in bear encounters...”
From the environmentalist’s point of view they’re both equally ineffective weapons for the bear-.
because bears don’t have opposable thumbs!
If bears did have opposable thumbs they’d prefer guns over pepper spray though.
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