Firearms when Backpacking

“shooting bears in SEKI…” wow, I’m not carrying a shotgun in the Sierra, that’s for sure.

I’ve hiked since practically the dawn of time throughout the Sierra (well, almost 30 years.) So have millions of others. You simply don’t need a gun for bear protection. I don’t carry pepper spray either. The notion that bears in the Sierra are lurking just beyond rock throwing distance waiting to devour you is ridiculous.

I’ve encountered innumerable bears there. they are often habituated to people, which is bad. Still,I’ve never had an incident, other than bears going after my food in extremely clever ways. There are so many hikers, they come looking for poorly stored food and assess the situation in your camp; then move on if there’s nothing to be had. More often they simply assess the situation from hiding and you never see them. they know better pickings are just down the way.

This is a genuine question from a position of ignorance. (We don’t have big bears in Oz.)

Suppose you got to your camp site, put your tent up, and then walked some distance (say 50′) to the East, tapped your bear spray can into the bushed (1/4 sec pulse?), then repeated this to the N, E & S. Would the smell of the spray deter the bears from approaching?

Cheers

Probably would have the opposite effect Roger. Smells foreign, needs investigation.

Very possible, unless the bears have met the spray before and didn’t like it?
I just don’t know.

Cheers

I can’t say I know, but I’ve always heard that used in such a way it would actually attract bears.

Roger, are dingoes a real problem in Oz to such an extent to use a small caliber sidearm to fend them off?

Dingoes?
Very few left, the dogs seen are mostly cross-breds.
But to answer your Q, no, never. Dogs will always run away here.
NO-ONE carries here.

Cheers

Roger

We should note that bear spray is illegal in the national parks in California.  So is discharging any type of firearm.

Suppose you got to your camp site, put your tent up, and then walked some distance (say 50′) to the East, tapped your bear spray can into the bushed (1/4 sec pulse?), then repeated this to the N, E & S. Would the smell of the spray deter the bears from approaching?

Bear spray is NOT repellent.  It’s made from peppers, mind you, like seasoning you’d put on a nice steak.  Most of us love jalapenos, we just don’t like them sprayed in our eyes and up our noses.  Don’t waste your spray on the bushes; you want it all for when you need it.

There are bears in the U.S. Pacific Northwest all the way through the Sierra in California. I’ve hiked a lot in Wa. state and here in the Sierra. I’ve crossed paths with lots of bears. It’s just not an issue. I’m far more concerned with rattlesnakes in the spring. there are no grizzlies here, and the kind or rare predatory brown bear that one hears about in Canada and Alaska don’t exist here. sure, there may have been an incident–I haven’t heard of one. Wait, except for bears going after poorly hung or otherwise stored food, or food being in a tent–that sort of thing. Common sense food management has always kept me sympatico with bears here on the West Coast.

Thank you all for the feedback.

Paul: so what do you do in CA?

Cheers

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Keep food in bear proof containers.  Since implementing that policy in Yosemite, bear incidents in Yosemite have decreased by 99%.  Black bears don’t want you–they want your food.</p>
Use good food storage techniques and the bear problems simply disappear.

Offer not valid where grizzly bears live.

“Use good food storage techniques and the bear problems simply disappear.”

Yes.

If I were to spend time in an area where there are grizzlies, I would take nothing less than a 44 magnum with hollow point cartridges. :-)

Tech quibble. Off topic but perhaps notable to forum admins seeing as I just wasted 45 minutes trying to post to this conversation so here goes: I have a huge amount of issues on Chrome mobile using BPL with word stacking and word doubling.  It’s almost unusable, not sure what system BPL uses but the forum usability is terrible. This is a paid website for some of us and the forum needs a revision bad. Man o man I also wish the quote function worked on this site. See: Expedition portal for a functional reference. Not trying to be rude but I just had a whole post mangled on my android that had to be put to sleep. More on guns and packing below.

Karen: Duly noted on over all hunting  numbers, but ultralight hunting is exploding in popularity. I have a bunch of backcountry guide friends and those that are engaging seems to be going deeper into the wilds to do it. Hence the popularity of canoe and packraft hunting in Alaska and deep woods guides in the lower 48. Also see the success of companies like Seek Outside etc.

Roger: I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been advocating for a backpacker tax for a decade. Fishing and Hunting have been carrying the conservation load for far to long.

I have a huge amount of issues on Chrome mobile using BPL with word stacking and word doubling.
You should log this on the bug report channel.
Cheers

I’ve seen lots of bears. They run away. In grizz country I wore bear spray on my chest strap and called out “hey bear” whenever I was somewhere in tall, berry-laden bushes where I might surprise a bear. I never saw a grizz. I’ve used a bear canister in grizz country because I can never hang a bear hang.

I’ve moved from Europe to the US as an adult, and I still have a eurocentric view of the relationship between Americans and guns – I find it bizarre and have a hard time making sense of it.

But I have only positive things to say about people who choose to carry in the wilderness. I view carrying as a skill separate from shooting, and I can’t think of a better place to practice carrying than the wilderness: it’s a place where a gun is undeniably useful (no matter how rarely, or how much better other tools might be, a gun gives you more options than no gun); and also one where the cost of mistakes is relatively low, because when people are scarce things are much less likely to escalate out of control.

In a sense, the fact that bears can usually be handled without guns is a good reason to bring a gun: if you fail to draw at the right time you still have a good chance of surviving and you don’t have to worry about a lawsuit or worse. It’s not harmless, and failure can still be very costly, but you are taking complete responsibility and minimizing the impact your potential mistakes can have on others. I think it’s laudable.

I don’t carry and I don’t know that I ever will, but if I were to start I’d certainly bring a gun backpacking long before I thought about bringing one to the supermarket.

Roger: The bear spray instructions repeatedly say it is not a repellent (like DEET) and there are humorous stories, likely apocryphal, of tourists being dropped off by their pilot, then screaming and jumping around after applying bear spray to themselves.   I could imagine some negative conditioning in play if the bear had been sprayed before, but, like firearms, such incidents are very rare.  A handful each year in Alaska, perhaps, versus 30,000 grizzlies and 100,000 black bears in the state.  Only 1/10,000 bears have been sprayed (although those sprayed bears are clearly near humans, so call it 1/1,000 of here bears one might encounter.

DanY: A .44 with hollow points is devastating to a human or small black bear with good shot placement but when the critter is 400-800 pounds, pissed, and charging at you, that hollow point may not penetrate deeply enough to immediately disabling.  There’s a movement towards 10mm Glocks with hard-cast bullets that stay together and therefore go deeper.  And you get 15+1 shots.  The concept being to get multiple rounds in deeply.  And an unloaded Glock 20 is 27.5 ounces while an unloaded S&W Model 29 revolver in .44 is 45 ounces.  At only 700 ft-lbs of energy for the 10mm and 1,000 for the .44, it’s going to take multiple hits.  I’ve seen smaller bears soak up aimed shots from a .308 rifle round (3,500 ft-lbs) and, another time, a .300 Win Mag (5,000 ft-lbs) and keep running.

And you get 15+1 shots.

Round in the chamber? Be careful.

Definitely not how to leave a gun at home or in a vehicle, but if the reason you’re carrying it is that you might need it instantaneously (and maybe one-handed), there does seem to be a movement among CCW types to carry in “Condition 1”.  Versus, “Oh, a bear is charging me, I’ll drop both my trekking poles, draw my gun, rack the slide, safety to off, aim, squeeze, repeat.”  The bears don’t watch as many action movies, so they don’t realize that the sound of racking the slide means things are getting serious.

This may be a mostly American perspective and hinges in part on stressing trigger discipline more than Europeans do, perhaps because many more Americans store their firearms loaded.

That problem is largely solved be keeping it in a plastic clip in holster.

As an aside I love the action movies where a character racks the slide of his pistol or worse loads it up immediately  before a gunfight. Really? A soldier or secret agent is running around with an unloaded gun in hostile country?

The bear spray instructions repeatedly say it is not a repellent (like DEET)
Shows how much I know, doesn’t it?

Perhaps you could wear a T-shirt with Trump on the front? That would scare most people, and maybe it would work on bears too?

Cheers

Thing is I don’t want to kill a bear. I just want it to go elsewhere. Time for another choice.