On the news: bear attack
Please excuse if this has been posted before: Bear attacks travel trailer with family inside
Forum Discussion
I have to agree with down home, animals are sort of like people. Most are not belligerent unless you appear to be a threat to them somehow. But there are also exceptions that are more malicious.. It reminds me a little of the old belief that the man eating cats of Africa and India were old, infirm, or injured animals that couldn’t hunt their normal game. That’s long since been proven false by the professional hunters that were hired to eliminate them.
In a lifetime of wandering the mountains I’ve never been attacked. I was trailed by a bear once while deer hunting but I think he was just curious. And I once had a lion track alongside me in the brush for some distance periodically screaming. I’m not sure what his motive was but I’m more wary of cats than bear, they’re more stealthy and faster and there are a lot of them in AZ.
I know of one fellow yanked out of his tent by a bear. He was sort of asking for it, though, he cleaned a bunch of fish and didn’t clean up well or change clothes and the bear probably though thought he’d stumbled over the biggest fish he ever saw. His friend saved his butt with a 357.
And a friend and his wife were scouting for deer and he stopped the truck well short of a fence and walked up to open the gate. His wife glanced out to the left and a little ahead and saw a lion crouched in the brush. Being a cat person she recognized the body language of a cat preparing to jump and she hopped in the driver’s seat and practically ran my friend down gunning the truck up between him and the cat. He was lucky she was with him.
About 2 months ago my youngest granddaughter was visiting and wanted to go camping and spot a lion or bear. Good luck with that.:D In the process we ran across a guy living in a cabin in a very remote area along the Blue River. He had some black and tans and puppies he used for lion hunting and while the DW and GD played with the puppies we talked about hunting. He told me if you want bear go up adjacent to the Apache Reservation which is primitive country. He had lived in a cabin near there and said he kept a 30/30 in his living room and shot at least one and sometimes two bears a year that were coming through his window. In that case I suspect they weren’t rogue bears but just smelled food in the cabin.
So I think wandering around the wilds thinking animals won’t bother you if you don’t bother them is sort of naïve at best; you’re counting on not running into that exception. Incidents like described are uncommon but they do happen and one should at least have a plan how they’ll deal with the situation.
In a lifetime of wandering the mountains I’ve never been attacked. I was trailed by a bear once while deer hunting but I think he was just curious. And I once had a lion track alongside me in the brush for some distance periodically screaming. I’m not sure what his motive was but I’m more wary of cats than bear, they’re more stealthy and faster and there are a lot of them in AZ.
I know of one fellow yanked out of his tent by a bear. He was sort of asking for it, though, he cleaned a bunch of fish and didn’t clean up well or change clothes and the bear probably though thought he’d stumbled over the biggest fish he ever saw. His friend saved his butt with a 357.
And a friend and his wife were scouting for deer and he stopped the truck well short of a fence and walked up to open the gate. His wife glanced out to the left and a little ahead and saw a lion crouched in the brush. Being a cat person she recognized the body language of a cat preparing to jump and she hopped in the driver’s seat and practically ran my friend down gunning the truck up between him and the cat. He was lucky she was with him.
About 2 months ago my youngest granddaughter was visiting and wanted to go camping and spot a lion or bear. Good luck with that.:D In the process we ran across a guy living in a cabin in a very remote area along the Blue River. He had some black and tans and puppies he used for lion hunting and while the DW and GD played with the puppies we talked about hunting. He told me if you want bear go up adjacent to the Apache Reservation which is primitive country. He had lived in a cabin near there and said he kept a 30/30 in his living room and shot at least one and sometimes two bears a year that were coming through his window. In that case I suspect they weren’t rogue bears but just smelled food in the cabin.
So I think wandering around the wilds thinking animals won’t bother you if you don’t bother them is sort of naïve at best; you’re counting on not running into that exception. Incidents like described are uncommon but they do happen and one should at least have a plan how they’ll deal with the situation.
