No Guns in the Wilderness? Are People Nuts? GRAPHIC!

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Cougars are a recent problem where the cities are growing into the mountains in California. Cyclers and hikers on the trails carry little more than a granola bar for defense. Odds are in your favor, but even a lightweight, descreet pocket knive would have saved some lives.
 
This reminds me of a story I like to tell. It is a true story about a nice, gentle man who loved Grizzlies. He had a documentary series which I can;t remember the name of on the Discovery channel. He lived in Alaska among the Grizzs for two or three seasons and made quite a few snide comments about those of US who go into the wilds armend for our self defense. All the while saying if you respect the animals they will respect you ad infinitum....

The last episode of the series came prematurely because they stopped hearing from him and his girlfreind who was with him, one month and when they got up there to see what happened they found their remains, those remains of being eaten by the very Grizzlies he so respected and supposedly respected him.....friggin tree huggers....if it wasn't so predictable ( I nailed it in the first episode) it would be sad.....but you reap what you sow.....and if you don;t carry a big bore hand gun or carbine EVERYWHERE in back country, you are askin for it!




Synopsis
Timothy Treadwell's death was as sensational as his life: Having presumed he could live safely among the grizzly bears of the Alaskan wilderness, the outdoorsman and author (Among Grizzlies)--along with his partner, Amie Huguenard--was eventually killed and devoured by one of the very animals to whom he had devoted years of study.
 
Actually more are killed in falls than any other way, but still, it makes a attack by an animal "avoidable" if you have a firearm, but if you don;t the other alternative is far worse.
 
I knew it!!! I knew that miserable Congress would disarm the animals. :eek: Oh, you meant humanoid CCWs. Can you imagine a more stupid law?

In Michigan, we can CCW in our parks.
 
That is why I do not go to National Parks to vacation. If they do not honor my rights as a citizen to be able to protect myself, why should I patronize them in any way?

I will go and spend my time and money in places that do not restrict my right to be able to protect myself.
 
Yeah, I don't know why there isn't more emphasis on the reason I, personally, would not go into the wilderness without a handgun.

I've been packing in bear country, even stayed in campsites in NM where every single tree in the site has had all its bark removed up to about 7' from the ground from clawing. I've run into bears on the trail. I'm still around and in one piece, because there are rules, and if you follow them, you're not really in any more danger than when you drive to work.

Why do I need a handgun in the wilderness? It's the same exact reason we need handguns at home. Only the naysayers can't possibly feed me the old jaw that it's the police's job to save us from rapists and murderers out there.

It's ridiculous enough when I have to wait 45 minutes to get to my house. If I'm attacked without defense in the wilderness, they don't have much of a chance of even finding my body.
 
This brings a question to mind for me that I have thought of from time to time. OK, first a statement, we are by law not supposed to carry in the Natinal Forest, aand the reason s never givin clearly or one that has any intellegence behind it. They, the naysayers of gun hating public say we don;t need to protect ourselves that that is the job of LE or in this case, the Game wardens or Park Rangers. Now if you asked why a park ranger has a gun I'd love to hear why that is any differnet than why we should be able to. Also, if one does get attacked in the NF and doesn't have a firearm because it is AGAINST the law, can we sue the National Government for neglect in making a law against being able to protect yourself, and them not being able to do it even though it is "their job"....I thnk if there wer more lawsuits against them for this the law about being able to carry in the NF would change.

Ill carry there anyway, as I live in New Mexico and it be Bar country......
 
The pictures simply show what can happen to you, not exactly case points, okay?
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So they are no longer case points of numbnuts because they don't fit your claims? You are right, they are poor case points for your argument about being unarmed in the wilderness given that the injured folks were all armed and the first example wasn't even in the wilderness. They are still numbnuts, armed numbnuts who still failed to use proper judgment.

The last episode of the series came prematurely because they stopped hearing from him and his girlfreind who was with him, one month and when they got up there to see what happened they found their remains, ...
Click to expand...

Actually, Treadwell and his companion missed their scheduled pickup and that is what set things into motion. see ... http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=153604&highlight=treadwell
 
I've been charged by a sow grizz in AK. The bear retreated at about 10 yards away AFTER me and my buddy let a few 12ga slugs fly into the air. Any closer and she would have got a nice dose of 3" magnum slugs.

I've had to camp right next to FRESH grizz tracks in the snow in Glacier National Park.

I've walked down the road at my land one way and on the return trip crossed FRESH cougar tracks where I had been 10 minutes earlier.

I've encountered 100 different scenerios where a firearm could save my life, or be very useful in the wilderness. I pack heat every time I'm in the wild. Even in National Parks (.44 mag in my pack).

I like having my face attached to my head.

--Grizz
 
two men trying to hit one of the poles (south/north, don't remember) during the worst season of the year to do so. Among their equipment was, shock me dead, a S&W .44 Magnum "for bears."
Click to expand...

That tells you what pole it was. Of course the leopard seals will still eat you at the other pole, but there's no bears.
 
Sniper-X, it's National PARKS that don't allow humans to carry proper weapons, not National FORESTS.

It's a good thing, because there's a lot more National Forests!
 
I carry nearly everywhere I go - especially in the wilderness...The 5 months I was in Africa however were different. There where many places where carrying a firearm was not only illegal, it could get you shot on sight...My only defense along the Savuti river for lions was a 6-cell Maglite and an airhorn...Thankfully, I never had to use it... ;) I can however say that animal threat levels in Africa appeared to be seasonal. In the Okavango for instance, the animals were well-fed and largely ignored us. In the dry season however, it was a bit different. Food was scarce and we had to be on guard. The closest I came to being killed was by a hippo and in fact found the lions sleeping ootside my tent at night a comfort. While on the Savuti, (dry riverbed), I had a pride of lions outside my tent every night - some only separated by the thickness of my tent. I was camped underneath an ironwood tree which was the only tree for several hundred yards. The baboons used it for safety, (they crapped on my tent all night) and the lions used it as a launching point for attacks on the animals below in the dry riverbed.

I had a few tense moments - especially on foot in Africa, but generally felt safe amongst the animals. I likely would have felt a tad safer with a revolver on my waist, or a .45-70 on my shoulder, but would do it again in an eye-blink... ;)
 
Right, so the last image is a reason folks should NOT be carrying guns because they can hurt themselves, but that image is now removed as it does not support the claim about the need to be armed in the woods, does it?

If you check the stats, I think you will find that more people are killed in hunting "accidental shootings" than by bear, wolf, and mountain lion attacks in the USA. Similarly, more people are killed by dogs than by mountain lions.
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I'm sure that lots here have more experience than I but I have enough to have an opinion.... :).

So far, bad incidents in this country of any given type are a bit uncommon. Yes, it is true, you are pretty unlikely to be attacked by a wild animal while camping or even hiking. Trouble is, if you ignore risks of all types (or most types) in you daily life, the chance that one or the other of these adverse events, which occur to someone everday will eventually happen to you. Liberals simply choose different things to be concerned about.

Now I have been driving a car for some 30 almost 40 years.....EVERYDAY...in all types of terrain and all types of weather on all types of road surfaces. I have never suffered a single scratch. Not one scratch!! Yet, supposed reasonable people think it reasonable that I wear a seat belt and children ride in car seats to prevent injury in case of an accident.

Everyday, in numerous ways, we do things to prevent the unlikely......but possible.

If a close encounter with a vicious animal was likely, I simply would not go into the woods at all. I am not looking for trouble. I believe that such an encounter is unlikely!

Never-the-less, and for the same reason that I take lots of other precautions, I think it prudent to carry a firearm for defense. Of course I hope that I will never need it. I expect not to need it. But I will have it for the same reason that I will have a life preserver in rough water or a seat belt in my car etc.

Whether a person is trained properly in the safe use of firearms is another matter. If not, perhaps they should not venture out until they are prepared......including the safe and useful use of self defense with a firearm.

PigPen
 
Here in Scenic Idaho, I can carry just about anywhere I damned well please.
(save for a national park but NATIONAL FORRESTS are fair game).

I ALWAYS carry my S&W 629 5" loaded with 240 gr JSPs behind a stout charge of 2400 within imediate reach whenever i am hiking, camping or hunting in the mountains here. Better to have it and not need it then to get jumped by a mountain lion and be eaten miles from nowhere.
 
So far, bad incidents in this country of any given type are a bit uncommon. Yes, it is true, you are pretty unlikely to be attacked by a wild animal while camping or even hiking. Trouble is, if you ignore risks of all types (or most types) in you daily life, the chance that one or the other of these adverse events, which occur to someone everday will eventually happen to you. Liberals simply choose different things to be concerned about.

Now I have been driving a car for some 30 almost 40 years.....EVERYDAY...in all types of terrain and all types of weather on all types of road surfaces. I have never suffered a single scratch. Not one scratch!! Yet, supposed reasonable people think it reasonable that I wear a seat belt and children ride in car seats to prevent injury in case of an accident.

Everyday, in numerous ways, we do things to prevent the unlikely......but possible.

If a close encounter with a vicious animal was likely, I simply would not go into the woods at all. I am not looking for trouble. I believe that such an encounter is unlikely!

Never-the-less, and for the same reason that I take lots of other precautions, I think it prudent to carry a firearm for defense. Of course I hope that I will never need it. I expect not to need it. But I will have it for the same reason that I will have a life preserver in rough water or a seat belt in my car etc.

Whether a person is trained properly in the safe use of firearms is another matter. If not, perhaps they should not venture out until they are prepared......including the safe and useful use of self defense with a firearm.
Click to expand...

Pig Pen, I think you missed the point. The point isn't that you should be unarmed or unprepared. The point was that if one could post a few pics of supposed injuries of people unarmed in the wilderness who have been attacked by bears to justify the horrible dangers posed by animals in the wilderness, then it could be equally justified that having a gun in the wilderness, such as while hunting, is even more dangerous based on the yearly reports of hunters shooting themselves or others while hunting. This is a form of like argument reasoning, only the data are even more condemning for unintentional shootings than for animal attacks.

With that said, both arguments are specious at best in that the examples don't actually offer justification to the real problem at hand. All of these problems could have been mitigated or avoided had the people involved not acted in stupid or naive manners. You don't attack a bear with a stick. You don't have everyone go to sleep in their tents like seals in polar bear country. You keep your finger off the trigger until you have a known target and you know what it behind the target.

We all know that animals can be dangerous. We all know that guns can be dangerous. In fact, it is the proper application of the dangerous aspect of guns that makes them useful for such things as self defense and hunting. The problems here are not that animals are dangerous or that guns are dangerous. The problems here are that humans often act in stupid, naive, or ignorant manners when dealing with items and situations that have danger involved and when they act in such a manner, they often get hurt or get somebody else hurt.
 
Would it be legal to bring pre-1898 guns or blackpowder guns into the parks with the no guns law?guns that don't require a license.
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Uh no..

The liberals would rather you be eaten.
It must be because a human life is worth less than that of an animal or a criminal to them.
 
hagar said:
I grew up in South Africa. Do you know what we called US Peace Corps volunteers that came to Africa? Crocodile food. These naive, save the world and the animals types, more often than not met an untimely demise, and went home in a body bag.
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I'd like to know more about these attacks. When I was in Peace Corps, the most common cause of fatality was traffic accidents. The second most common was drowning - largely in the Pacific/Oceana region.

I'd be very interested in knowing the stats on PCVs killed by wild animals. Do you have a source?

The only source I found lists 2 crocodile attack (Ethiopia 1966, Zaire 1973), 1 elephant attack (Tanzania 2001), 1 honey bee attack (Togo 1988), and one shark attack (Samoa 1972) in over 45 years, with a couple of hundred thousand PCVs serving in that time.

Given that many volunteers are serving at an age where risky behavior is common (early to mid 20's), the safety record looks pretty good. A depressing number of the accidents/drownings are label ETOH (ehtyl alcohol), which is not unexpected given the age of the folks involved.

http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/2018358.html

I am not sure what good any reasonable handgun serves against honey bee or shark attacks. But it looks to me like very few Peace Corps volunteers go home in a body bag, and of those that do, very, very do so because of wild animal attacks that could be prevented with a weapon.

Do you have some different stats?

I gather that you disapprove of what you perceive to be the politics of Peace Corps.

Mike
RPCV Yemen 1984-86
 
Its my second favorite topic , and some thing that tourists typically do not think about when traveling in Alaska.
Its some what unusual for Bears to attack people, they get shot at enough during hunting season that most are shy, But every so ofter they attack some one.
About 15 years ago a bear ate one tourist and maimed another, in Glacier bay national park. The park rangers called the Alaska State troupers to assist , but wouldn't let them bring their firearms , the Troupers politely declined , the Park rangers called again , the troupers declined again. The Park Ranges gave in and allowed the Troupers to bring rifles and retrieve the body and dispatch the bear.
The anti gun sentiment is not a rational faction and their is a disconnect between what is necessary and prudent and their naive Walt Disney view of the world and reality .
 
This has little to do with revolvers.
It might have something to do with hunting, so I am moving the thread to the hunting forum.
 
this is a topic that deals with self protection that is often addressed by carrying A MAGNUM REVOLVER...it could have been quite at home in the revolver section; what if someone was contemplating the purchase of a high powered revolver for such a purpose and the person doesn't hunt...now they won't know where to find this thread...please put it back where it was located

thank you,

the peanut gallery :D
 
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