You know you do have the ability to quote posts from other people; that might be helpful in a situation like this where you are trying to dispute statements that you're attributing to others. The problem with your response is that it heavily paraphrases (and simplifies) what I said, and in some points of your response, you've assigned statements to me that I never made in the first place.
So, some of the misconceptions I noted in your previous posts:
- Brown bear encounters with humans are very common. There was even a death in Wyoming this year. So when you say it's rare for a human to encounter a brown bear, that is inaccurate. Within this context, charges are even common, but attacks are very, very rare.
I never said that encounters with brown bear are
rare, though I would like to see you provide some statistics on how many people moving through grizzly country actually get charged.
I said that its highly unlikely for the average hiker/traveler to encounter the type of grizzly that has the temperament, size and drive to soak up a few shots and continue its charge/aggression (which I termed so scientifically as a "BAMF" grizzly). People like to perpetuate this myth that every brown bear out there is fully capable and willing of ignoring warning shots and even direct impacts. The reality is that most bears will evacuate the area simply after hearing the discharge (I provided evidence of this in 2 videos showing hunters involved in bear charges). For those bears that ignore the warning shots, it only takes a few mildly well placed shots for that animal to lose its ability to move and function (I say mild because the chest, head, hips are somewhat big areas on the bear).
- You state that an attack will never be stopped by bear spray. This too is inaccurate. Once a bear has made actual contact, it's hard to evaluate the effectiveness of anything, gun, spray or noise, but many charges and would-be attacks have been assuaged by spray. Happens all the time.
Again, you need to go back to what I said (a quote would have been helpful here). I didn't say bear spray
never works. I said that it
doesn't always work. I know bear spray has a fairly high success rate (and that's actually why I advocate carrying it in bear country, regardless of whether or not you are armed). However I also know that it has been known to fail (I had such an experience with a charging black bear, referred to in a previous post).
- You assert that shooting a bear will cause it to stop an attack. Biology and statistics confirm the opposite. As I said before, brown bears are biologically wired to override signals from injury so they can fight to the death, or close to it. Shooting a bear activates the responses you don't want to activate...heightened aggression. That's not an opinion, that's scientific fact. The experts agree, once a bear has been wounded, it's instinct is not to retreat. This is why many people shoot at the ground and not at the bear. The noise may be a far better deterrent than the hole you poked in the bear with a bullet.
Here you're paraphrasing what I said. I said a firearm is the only way to lethally stop a bear (which is actually confirmed by one of the studies that pirate provided earlier). And I would dispute your "scientific fact" that shooting a bear will only encourage it to attack more for several reasons:
- Can that happen? Yes, for sure. But will it happen with every bear you could possibly encounter? Definitely not. Pain is a big reason animals decide to cease their actions in many situations. In fact, the only reason bear spray even has a chance of deterring a bear is because it causes pain...so if firearms "fail" because the pain they cause will only further enrage a bear, then why does that same logic not apply to bear spray?
- Firearms obviously do work to overcome the bear's size and aggression, otherwise why would DEC, game wardens use them to put down problem bears or why would hunters use them to kill bears?
- You're not simply poking a hole in an animal when you shoot it. That's greatly over simplifying how firearms and bullets work. A firearm sends a bullet into the intended target. Depending on the type and size of the bullet, the bullet will usually do one of 2 things: it will tumble around inside the target, ripping up any organs/tissue/muscle it comes into contact with; or it will carry enough energy to penetrate through the entire animal and any organs, bone, muscle, tissue in its path. The latter bullet type, especially in an expanding hollow point, is extremely effective at pushing through animal's mass and destroying vital organs. The deterrent in using a firearm is not that the bear will shy away from its attack after getting "poked," but rather that it won't be able to continue on its attack when it suffers a sucking chest wound or a shot through the brain/central nervous system, or a shot into its hip/groin area....the bear's "wiring" is not able to cope with those kinds of debilitating shots; it will collapse from those kinds of injuries.
- You say that people have a choice of defense. Okay, I'll give you that, but again, understanding how bears tick, certain "choices" are more sound than others.
Not really. Carrying a firearm for defense against animals, especially apex predators which are fully capable of killing humans, is a perfectly sound choice. If you and others want to rely on statistics and the bear being dissuaded by an irritant, that's fine. A firearm is an extra level of protection that some people prefer, and given the fact that we as humans are simply one of many species in the food chain, there certainly is justification in having that extra protection.
