rgano
Guru
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2007
- Messages
- 5,181
- Location
- Panama City area
- Vessel Name
- FROLIC
- Vessel Make
- Mainship 30 Pilot II since 2015. GB-42 1986-2015. Former Unlimited Tonnage Master
In 1972 I took my Winchester 30 -30 lever action model 1894 with me on a Jeep-camping trip through Canada to Alaska. One day I arrived at the entrance to a camping site in Yukon Territory to find what looked like a family of campers or tourists (not sure which) including mom, dad, and kids all looking off the one side and making motions with food in their hands toward a black bear maybe 30-40 feet from them and facing them. I was 50 yards or so from them and was not noticed. I shut the Jeep down as I grabbed the rifle levering a round out of the magazine into the chamber. I layed it acorss my hood aiming at the bear hoping it would not charge the family and hoping if it did that I could get at least one round into it before it got the first kid. Showing far more sense that the humans, the bear eventually backed away. Nobody noticed me in the over watch position, and I decided that this was no place for my tent that night and moved on. Bear spray in that paticular situation would not have been any good. Maybe it would have been better if I had just driven the Jeep right at the bear getting between it and the family and shooing it off, but that's hindsight. Just about all the recent bear attacks I have read about were complete surprises to the maulee, almost, but not quite, like ambushes. The common theme, as mentioned before, seems to have been a surprised back or brown bear. Make noise!