More reason to carry a gun Tom Smith
Another angle on the Tennessee bear story is that the mother had to try to fend off the bear with a stick. (via Instapundit) A .45 works better. Bears are dangerous animals without a doubt, and they are even more dangerous if your only defense is to feel one with the bearness of the wilderness or whatever. At least in Alaska in 1984 there was a lot of talk among backpacker types that if you were pure of heart, you would not get eaten by a bear. It drove me nuts. If you picture a large hamburger, with two arms and two legs, that speaks an incomprehensible tongue, you get a pretty good idea of how bears see us.
My lovely wife Jeanne and I have had a number of close encounters with bears, though only of the grizzly, not black, kind. Opinions vary as to which are more dangerous. The former are more ferocious, but there are many more of the latter, and perhaps black bears are more likely to hang out around people and cause problems. I have related bear stories on this blog before, so I will only repeat one now, at the request of middle son no.1, Patrick. I was hiking in the Absorki (misspelled) mountains of Montana, just north of the Yellowstone Park, with my future brother in law. This was an area where grizzly definitely roamed, and precautions were in order. I managed to get us off the trail, which was easy to do as it was poorly marked. We bushwhacked along, a difficult and tedious process at best. I was pushing through some brush when immediately ahead of me I saw what appeared to be a patch of golden brown fur beyond some branches. When your in griz country, and you suddenly find yourself maybe five feet away from a patch of brown fur, it is a very bad feeling, approximating “I am prey and I am going to die.” I backed up nice and slow, peering intently at the brown patch, telling my self, maybe it’s not fur; maybe it’s a trick of the light; maybe it’s moss on a tree trunk, etc. etc. As I backed up, the brown fur came closer. It pushed through the brush, and revealed itself indeed as the brown fur of a large animal. My thought processes could be summarized as “BEAR!!!!” I took a few more steps back, the brown mass pushed through the rest of the brush, and out emerged the very large, very brown, very furry butt of a female moose. As I have said, it was the most beautiful butt I had ever seen in my life. Some people commented later it is dangerous to be that close to a moose, and probably it is. But it is far, far more dangerous to be that close to grizzly bear. I apologize to those who have heard this story. Professors recycle anecdotes. It’s part of what we do.