Readers may have noticed I was absent the last several days. It was a good time away. A very good buddy and neighbor of mine, Robert, and I went hunting courtesy of the fine folks with Williams Hunting in South Carolina.
I was shooting a 6mm ARC rifle with a Grendel Hunter upper, Aero Precision lower, Amend2 magazines, Brownells scope mount, Radian Raptor charging handle, Nikon Black scope, and a Viking Tactics sling. I have no complaints about the gun. It's at least a 1 MOA gun…… [read more]
On the evening of September 30, a sow grizzly bear charged an elk hunter in thick timber near Henry’s Lake, Idaho. According to an Idaho Department of Fish & Game (IDFG) press release issued this morning, the hunter yelled to alert his partner about the charging bruin before firing several shots from his sidearm that killed the bear “only a short distance way, before it was able to make contact.”
“The hunter immediately called the Citizens Against Poaching hotline to report the incident,” the press release states. “Idaho Department of Fish and Game responded to the call and conducted a thorough investigation. It was determined that the hunter acted in self-defense during a surprise encounter with the bear from a very close distance.”
This is incomplete reporting because we aren’t informed of the handgun make and caliber. But at least the outcome is clear.
A 73-year-old woman was mauled by a bear while walking with her husband and their dog in Montana near Glacier National Park on Sunday, officials have announced. The woman’s husband used bear spray to get the beast off his wife and they were able to make it back to their vehicle and drive to a location where they could call emergency services at around 3 pm.
Between bear spray and a large bore handgun, you know which one I’d choose.
They’re lucky that sow didn’t claw their eyes out and then rip their hearts out and eat it in front of the cubs as an object lesson.
I await comment by “The Alaskan.”
Three guys springing towards a bear and two cubs; one with some papers and one carrying a child. What exactly was the plan here? pic.twitter.com/VgDmR68CrS
This is an utterly fascinating video, and may be the first of a kind. I spend time finding fascinating things for you that enable learning about nature, and machines and their operation, especially firearms. I hope you appreciate it. This apparently is a recent encounter in Yellowstone.
Believe it or not, the black bear backed down the grizzly, with the grizzly even running from the black bear. For a while. The grizzly eventually came in for the food, with the black bear wandering off (probably when he figured out that there would be a fight and someone would get hurt – which incidentally is probably the reason the grizzly ran from the black bear to begin with). They were both wise bears that day.
It’s difficult for me to tell, but I think this was a black bear.
Next, she said she deployed her bear spray and it was completely ineffective. Yea, I’ll bet.
Retreating, she stumbled backwards and fell down. This is a bad position to be in when the bear jumps on you.
The dog intervened, and was badly mauled, but still lives and looks good. Dogs are man’s best friend. Get yourself one or more. Also, notice that the bear went after her, not the dog. It only went after the dog when the dog intervened.
Finally, she should be carrying a large bore handgun. If I’m out and about in the South, I never go into the bush without a firearm. There are bears, Coyotes, snakes and two-legged threats, as well as feral hogs. This holds doubly true for the Northwest. If you go “walking” or “jogging” in the bush without a big bore handgun, you’re asking for what happens next.
They awoke around 3 a.m. Thursday morning to their dog barking downstairs. When Bolkcom went to check out the commotion, he found a black bear in his living room.
Bolkcom grabbed his gun and shot the bear, chasing it from room to room before it finally collapsed after several shots.
The first thing that struck me is that all of the newscasters have weird foreign accents. Not sure what states they are from but not South Carolina. Also, the reporter said that cubs show up with daddy bears. That’s highly unlikely. Of course, the State blames the homeowner for having modern conveniences like outside trash pickup and nice things like a bird feeder to enjoy. At the end of the video, the state propagandist says she wants bear spray, which is an excellent choice for her; please rely exclusively on it. I’ll carry a large bore handgun.
“It’s terrifying, I’m 75 years old or will be, where in the world would I go? I can’t run from one,” she said. “I used to walk up and check our mail ‘cause it’s up on the road, and I would walk up there and check it and come back. But now I’m too scared to even walk up the driveway during the day.”
In a security video from Chambers’ property, a young bear can be seen coming up to her door, down her porch and leaving behind a big mess.
She said the bears come out at various times of the day, making her scared to go outside, even just to walk her dog.
“I opened the door this morning and my porch, it was torn to pieces,” Chambers said. “My chair was overturned, my bird seed in that can was everywhere, the flowers were knocked over like they were trying to eat them or something, I don’t know. I’m terrified.”
The State is for control, not the security of a free people.
It’s unlikely that you’ll be attacked by a bear in the ocean, but apparently, it’s a possibility.
I have questions.
June 12 (UPI) — Visitors to a Florida beach were in for a surprise when a black bear was spotted swimming side-by-side with their fellow beachgoers.
Multiple visitors to the crowded beach in Destin captured video when the bear emerged from the ocean and swam next to human beachgoers before making its way to shore.
“The bear was out pretty far,” Chris Barron, who recorded footage of the bear, told WTVT-TV. “A lot of people started swimming in. I was worried it was a shark. I walked over and thought it was a dog.”
Barron said the bear was swimming right by his brother and 12-year-old son.
“At this point I realized it was a bear and started videoing. It kept swimming in. He got to shore, shook off, and ran into the brush in the sand dunes,” Barron said. “I think most people were shocked instead of being scared. No one expected to see a bear in the Gulf of Mexico.”
This isn’t good news for ranchers and residents. Of course, the government, either purposefully or through incompetence, was dragging its feet.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will study delisting populations of grizzlies near Yellowstone and Glacier national parks
Idaho’s audacious bid to strip grizzly bears of Endangered Species Act protection was rejected by the Biden administration Friday.
But its neighbors Montana and Wyoming had better luck. Responding to delisting petitions from all three states, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said bear numbers in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems may be strong enough to qualify as distinct populations that can be considered for delisting. The agency will spend the next year collecting data to determine if each of those populations are indeed healthy enough to move from federal to state management.
The service dismissed Idaho’s much more expansive request that grizzly bears across the country be stripped of their threatened and endangered status. The decision came just a day after Idaho Gov. Brad Little threatened to sue the agency for failing to act on the state’s petition, submitted last March, within the required 90 days.
“The response is seven months late, and it took a threat of legal action from the State of Idaho to simply receive a response,” Little said in a prepared statement. “While we continue to evaluate the decision from (the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), this is another example of federal overreach and appears to have a disproportionate impact on North Idaho.”
There are about 1,000 grizzlies each in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, which are centered around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.
[…]
Members of Idaho’s congressional delegation groused about the decision in a joint news release, saying the state is better poised than the federal government to balance the conservation and management of grizzlies with human activities. At times, they implied the state has a more robust bear population than official estimates indicate.
“Given more and more grizzly bear and human encounters in Idaho, it is abundantly clear our state’s grizzly bear population has recovered,” Sen. Jim Risch said.
There’s more at the link. Being closer to the situation, States can manage their own problems better. Both the Griz and federal land should be returned to the States for management. Looks like those “rare” attacks will resume when hibernation is over.
A retired Canadian fish and wildlife agent has voiced concern that black bears are “hunting” humans more frequently in Alberta, but that’s not a big concern in Wyoming, some biologists said.
Veteran wildlife agent Murray Bates says he’s noticed a disturbing shift in the pattern of black bear behavior over the course of his 34-year career.
“Grizzlies were protecting their territory, young and food, but certainly, on occasion, killing a human,” he said. “The key word here is hunt. During my tenure I was starting to notice a shift in black bears attacking humans and grizzlies maintaining traditional patterns of attack or kill.
“The records and experts may state otherwise, but I found myself investigating more complaints of black bears tracking humans as prey, then killing and feeding on them,” Bates added.
[ … ]
“I would still rather encounter a predatory black bear than being involved in a surprise encounter with a grizzly bear at a carcass; time is not on your side in the latter whereas with a proper response a predatory black bear can be deterred (first choice is bear spray, followed by standing your ground and fighting with rocks, sticks, and etc.),” he said.
I’m not surprised. When hunting is discouraged and guns are outlawed, the predators will roam free to do what they want.
Suck it up, Canadians. There’s more to come with the impending laws against basically any firearm, including hunting with bolt action rifles. Get used to it, change your government, or carry non-permissively.
And as for his advice to “stand your ground,” that’s not even done in America without a weapon. The whole notion is legalization of the use of weapons in stand your ground cases rather than having a duty to retreat.
It’s probably not a big concern for Wyoming because they carry guns.
