Griz Attacks and Kills Bicyclist in Montana

[tomjasz]

In 1978 a story floated around MT regarding the drugs used to capture and move bears was creating mentally whacked bears. In those years idgets were using a drug, PCP, that created psychosis in users.
NYT 1985
"One widely publicized theory supposes that bears used in studies, repeatedly tranquilized with phencyclidine hydrochloride (also known as PCP and angel dust), may have become blindly aggressive, in the manner of humans who sometimes become violent under the influence of that drug."

No other pistol is likely to stop a grizzly attack, and even a Howdah isn't really likely, unless you're very skilled.

Anyone carrying without thousands of rounds of practice and the development of muscle memory will likely never be able to pull off a kill shot. REGARDLESS of the guns used.

 

[tomjasz]

a police officer Jerry Ruth

There you go! Muscle memory form likely years of range time.

We have africanized bees here in the Hill Country of TX.

Horrible! I still have my suit from my Las Vegas years. Swarming they were more manageable, but disturb an established nest with comb and honey, and RUN for your life. Although 1 part Dawn Blue and 9 parts water in a garden sprayer will instantly kill the bastards

 

[JASmith]

Anyone carrying without thousands of rounds of practice and the development of muscle memory will likely never be able to pull off a kill shot. REGARDLESS of the guns used.

Almost anyone of average intelligence can be taught to use a simple semiautomatic passive safety like a Glock within a weekend course. My nephew is 10 and shoots like a champ. Sharp shooting is not required or even recommended in modern training, quantity shooting is what is taught now that you don't even concern yourself with aiming carefully but simply hitting center mass with as many rounds as quickly as you can and modern ammunition is more powerful than ever before. Its one of the reasons most departments are going back to 9mm now as 9mm has become so powerful that larger calibers simply aren't needed. 15-17 round quickly reloaded magazines are also likely a contributor.

The hardest part would just be learning to draw a pistol quickly, which with a decent non-concealment kydex holster isn't rocket science and can be practiced at home, and if anything is likely quicker and easier to master than removing the velcro strap from your bear spray canister, pulling up on the long can, removing the safety valve, verifying the orientation of the spray tip since it doesn't have a normal pistol grip and generally just a small loop, and timing the 7 second spray so that the wall of fog doesn't dissipate by the time the bear charges since you probably won't have a backup can.

Police officers in Texas are only required to show moderate proficiency once a year, and its likely the same in your jurisdiction, and many do no other training beyond that. While numbers are hard to come by, NYPD was subject to a RAND study that investigated all their records and found that police were hitting their target 18% of the time in gunfights and up to 37% if less than 7 yards away and did not fire back, so the idea that the average police officer is a super solider on a level beyond an armed civilian is a myth typically promoted by gun-control advocates.

Again, nothing against bear spray, but people acting like modern firearms are the equivalent of throwing rocks or overly complicated is very wrong.

 

[tomjasz]

Almost anyone of average intelligence can be taught to use a simple semiautomatic passive safety like a Glock within a weekend course.

But you can't teach calmness under high stress. I'm sorry but as a lifelong well-armed well-trained shootist liberal, I would NEVER advise someone to put themselves in a Griz encounter after a weekend of training. Seriously! We see 20 years on job LEO's making fatal errors. Idgets are what bring more control.

 

[st0ut]

That's scary! Only encounter we ever had was seeing a single cub on our path, actually got a picture of it while walking backwards will see if I can find it and upload.

Good point, probably good idea to have both, spray in off-hand, pistol in dominant hand during an encounter. Problem with bear spray is you can end up taking yourself out if its windy, and in this case in particular they were inside a tent when attacked and while

you can shoot through a tent you can't spray through one, and you may only get one good shot vs 15 per magazine.

This is totally irresponsible to pull a trigger on a target that you cannot see.

Good thing with spray if you are upwind or its very calm is that its hard to miss for inexperienced shooters since they make a big fog, but the bad thing is that bear spray is a great deterrent to bears that are curious or rummaging through your stuff and not necessarily one that is aggressively hunting you or protecting its young. That's also the issue with the statistics that has been frequently brought up, is that bear spray is used far more commonly even on bears that are merely being curious or annoying and not remotely aggressive, whereas shootings are typically only a last resort to an actual attacking bear and not all reported since you have to fill out a defense report when killing which will be investigated so some may just leave the scene after and not self-report at all.

In any case, anything is certainly better than nothing, and if they had sprayed in the direction of the bear on the first encounter maybe it would have never come back.

There are far tooo few details to state they needed bear spray let alone a "Glock".

i.e Where was food stored? Where was garbage stored? Did she brush here teeth while on the trail. etc...

IMHO you need to keep your firearm unloaded and locked except for the range. you are far to trigger happy to carry responsibly.

 

[JASmith]

This is totally irresponsible to pull a trigger on a target that you cannot see.

I'm glad you think her death was very responsible, but I'd wager that the growling huge 600 pound creature tearing through the tent and mauling the woman was not the milkman. C'mon now.

But you can't teach calmness under high stress.

You can, but explain to me as you would a child why pointing and shooting a pistol is more difficult under stress than all the steps I described in deploying a canister of bear spray. Sounds kind of dumb when you think about it, right, arguing that the tool that requires more thinking to deploy would be less affected by stress than the tool with less steps, right?

 

[tomjasz]

I'm glad you think her death was very responsible, but I'd wager that the growling huge 600 pound creature tearing through the tent and mauling the woman was not the milkman. C'mon now.

You can, but explain to me as you would a child why pointing and shooting a pistol is more difficult under stress than all the steps I described in deploying a canister of bear spray. Sounds kind of dumb when you think about it, right, arguing that the tool that requires more thinking to deploy would be less affected by stress than the tool with less steps, right?

I'm sorry I am more afraid of the untrained armed idiots than any bear. YEARS of working outdoors in bear country and zero encounters was more than just luck. In the deep woods of N Wisconsin, the local idgets play tag with black bears foraging at the local dump.

Thanks for the sane discussion!

 

[st0ut]

I'm glad you think her death was very responsible, but I'd wager that the growling huge 600 pound creature tearing through the tent and mauling the woman was not the milkman. C'mon now.

That not what I said. This you your attempt to deflect.

That is not what I said or inferred.

Again your over romantizing of how a firearm would be used is great from a TV or story perspective. Or with your expert knowledge and superior skill you would fair better dumping a full mag blindly into the night.

The next time you are in the wild make sure to keep all your food and garbage near your tent and brush your tent that way you can test your theory.

 

[Mulezen]

Edward Abbey has a fine essay (all of his are fine) about being a fire lookout in Montana and hiking back one evening with groceries and beer when he spotted, fleetingly, a Grizzly. It seemed to be moving through the underbrush in parallel with him. For 20 minutes, heart racing, he worried. He says animals such as bears are what is keeping the ’wild’ in wilderness, and respect too. Besides bears help keep the deer down, and deer are prolific killers of man. Like sharks we hear these reports because they are so infrequent.
I try to live like the old English aristocrat camping in the Canadian wilderness. He was awoke by his friend citing the howling of wolves. He turned back over saying “I fear only the rogue elephant.”

 

[JASmith]

I'm sorry I am more afraid of the untrained armed idiots than any bear.

Good for you to admitting to irrational fears. Hopefully this bit of interaction with me can slowly habituate you and help you overcome your phobia that we're out to getcha. Has anyone written any books about how to spot a Republican on the trails and how to behave to stay safe? Play CNN from a handheld radio so as not to startle them? Do you make yourself big and shout until they go away or play dead?

 

[EMGX]

Good for you to admitting to irrational fears. Hopefully this bit of interaction with me can slowly habituate you and help you overcome your phobia that we're out to getcha. Has anyone written any books about how to spot a Republican on the trails and how to behave to stay safe? Play CNN from a handheld radio so as not to startle them? Do you make yourself big and shout until they go away or play dead?

I might not agree with everything you say but you are a breath of fresh air here. If you haven't noticed there are several posters on this forum who are self congratulatory opinionated curmudgeons. Don't feed the trolls, unless you find their ignorant rants entertaining.

 

[tomjasz]

Good for you to admitting to irrational fears.

Oh FFS. You just had to devolve and insult another poster. Congratulations.

 

[JASmith]

Oh FFS. You just had to devolve and insult another poster. Congratulations.

Oh, were you not being sarcastic with the "thanks for the sane discussion" implying I'm insane? Maybe I read that wrong, my bad. It can be difficult to detect sarcasm. I do know Stout basically told me to go kill myself by intentionally attracting bears, lol!

 

[BrianK]

Then again, how often do any of us encounter cows while outdoors?

Or even worse, while in a bathtub?!

;-)

 

[BrianK]

Oh, were you not being sarcastic with the "thanks for the sane discussion" implying I'm insane? Maybe I read that wrong, my bad. It can be difficult to detect sarcasm. I do know Stout basically told me to go kill myself by intentionally attracting bears, lol!

Kudos. You’ve done an excellent job rationally debating some here who are a bit … irrational, regarding a third rail issue like armed self defense.

 

[tomjasz]

Oh, were you not being sarcastic with the "thanks for the sane discussion" implying I'm insane? Maybe I read that wrong, my bad. It can be difficult to detect sarcasm. I do know Stout basically told me to go kill myself by intentionally attracting bears, lol!

Yes you’re wrong. You didn’t devolve until you responded again. I was truly appreciative of you comments until the insult. A vast majority of my pals are clueless when it comes to gun discussions. I just typically don’t engage. Lot’s of us on the left are veterans and support safe and sane gun management. I’ve just seen to many bozos that I find dangerous on the ranges I frequented. 55 years ago 14 year old Minnesotans needed to attend gun school. A shame it’s not happening today.

 

[Dave Rocks]

I'm going riding in Grizzly territory, I'll lead. Who's joining me?

 

[Kayakguy]

Most of my wilderness outings the last 20 years have been kayak/beach camping, most often on Vancouver Island. There are no grizzlies on the island, (so I've been told), but we do see black bears from time to time. They always retreat as soon as they see us, as the ones on the wild west coast are not habituated to people. That's how I like my bears--shy and retiring.

We've always made it a point to hang our food, where possible. When not possible, it goes into the hatches, where the mice can't get at it. Any bear who wanted could easily tear a kayak apart to get at the food, but we've never had a problem. In Haida Gwai (Queen Charlottes), there are only black bears, reputedly very large ones, but on a 3 week trip there in '98, we may have seen one, who quietly vanished. Almost all of the good camps there had been well established by the Haida long ago, and all featured excellent hanging trees, which we used.

I recall feeling somewhat apprehensive during a trip in the Kenai Fjords, out of Homer, Alaska, but we never had any confrontations. But a couple of the National Parks cabins we stayed in had suffered bear assault against the oil lines that fed the cabin heaters. Why would a bear chew something as nasty tasting as a copper oil line?

 

[Art Deco]

I'm going riding in Grizzly territory, I'll lead. Who's joining me?

Don't forget your full body armor and upgraded speed delimiter.
Eco
Sport
Turbo
Grizzly

 

[Luto]

Most of my wilderness outings the last 20 years have been kayak/beach camping, most often on Vancouver Island. There are no grizzlies on the island, (so I've been told), but we do see black bears from time to time. They always retreat as soon as they see us, as the ones on the wild west coast are not habituated to people. That's how I like my bears--shy and retiring.

Did you hear about the bear last summer that swam from (islands) Whidbey, to Orcas, to San Juan, then back to Orcas, and back to Whidbey? For those not local, that is across a strait where tankers travel, and about 25-30 miles round trip. And the currents are pretty darn strong at times in the San Juan Islands. What was (s)he doing????