Camping with guns

[sodak]

I've never camped without a firearm, and I've been camping for over 30 years. My favorite calibers are .357, .45acp, and .40. I prefer Rugers for revolvers and Glocks for semis. Find what works best for you, and get the proper training and practice, practice, practice.

I'd also recommend knowing the law and staying legal. If you choose to not be legal, be prepared to accept the consequences. I don't agree with a lot of the guns laws, but they are laws...

 

[TWBryan]

I always carry,in the woods or out. Prefer a Ruger Sp101 in .357 magnum. If I was in an area with wolves,or other larger carnivores,I would like a Glock 10mm.

 

[GPB]

Evil people are out there...that is why I carry almost every day and especially when I go camping!!! I carry not from fear, but because I love my family and its MY job as a husband and father to protect them at any and all costs!!!

:thumbup:

Acquire what best suits you, get some qualified instruction, your CCW, a good holster, and practice practice practice. Remember that if it is not on your person, (i.e. in your pack), it is useless for its intended purpose against any predators, 2 or 4 legged. Avoid trouble at all cost, but don't be out in the middle of nowhere with no way to protect yourself and family. Evil is far more prolific today than ever for many reasons.

One of our local campgrounds (read: NOT in the middle of nowhere) had an incident a few years ago where a drug dealer killed one of his com padres and set the car on fire.

Here in the midwest, meth labs popping up anywhere and everywhere are a big problem. Many local businesses have notices from law enforcement advising how big the problem has become, what signs to look for, and that remote rural areas seem to be the typical MO. One of the local hotels not far from the campground above had a band of traveling meth dealers making it in their rooms. Somehow the hotel had no idea and the tip came from a local Wal Mart clerk who reported large purchases of cold medicine.

Then there are the rural home invasions during occupancy that have recently become popular in our area.

Frankly, I can't imagine anyone hiking, camping or backpacking without the means to protect their family these days. In fact, I can't imagine not having your wife do the same if it is a family trip.

 

[desmobob]

I carry not from fear, but because I love my family and its MY job as a husband and father to protect them at any and all costs!!!

:thumbup:


One "threat" that has been on my mind the last year is coyotes. Here in the east, our song dogs are quite large; considerably bigger than their skinny little western brethren. The coyotes in the Northeast apparently have a lot of wolf ancestry: "A study showed that of 100 coyotes collected in Maine, 22 had half or more wolf ancestry, and one was 89 percent wolf. A theory has been proposed that the large eastern coyotes in Canada are actually hybrids of the smaller western coyotes and wolves that met and mated decades ago as the coyotes moved toward New England from their earlier western ranges."

[Eastern Coyotes Are Becoming Coywolves". David Zimmerman. Caledonian record.http://www.caledonianrecord.com/pages/local_news/story/fef373e9d. Retrieved 2007-08-17]


Anyway, I never worried about them until the hiker was killed by a pack up in Cape Breton. Since then, I've read a couple of other news reports about attacks.

There a lots of them in the area I usually camp; I generally hear them every day or night... sometimes very close. In the past, I always thought they were afraid of me and I never worried. After the Cape Breton incident, I think maybe I should be at least a little concerned. I'm also deer hunting about half the time I'm camping so I may have a bit of doe or buck scent on me from my hunting activities or even have a deer carcass hanging, waiting to be packed out and some blood and scent on me from field dressing the deer.

I can't help but think that being eaten alive is one of the worst ways to go, even though it is the fate that Mother Nature provides for a large percentage of her subjects.

Stay sharp (and armed),
desmobob

 

[Fonly]

I Can back up Desmo, being from Nova Scotia, its odd to hear of all the attacks of coyotes back there.

Out here, weapon of choice is a 12g. I carry a few different shell sizes, but a few federal tactical loads, slugs and bird shot for small game hunting. Over all its the best compromise of abilities I have found for a woods gun.

 

[reconranger]

My local hills (these would be "mountains" back east) have coyotes up the ying yang, and I have never seen them be agressive toward a human in any way. But, I did see them chase down and kill a large German Shepard dog, so the potential for them to take down a human certainly exists!

A jogger in Palm Springs was killed a few years ago on the city streets by a pack of ferral dogs, so all kinds of potential danger obviously exists virtually everywhere.....

 

[koyote]

We've had the coyote debate before.

There are places where they are vermin, there are places where they aren't. Here, you shoot on sight- they will take dogs, cats, goats. They (and feral dogs) have killed people in the past.

If I'm out 60 miles from no where in a national forest, I won't bother them.

 

[swamp]

Glock 20 in 10mm.

Buy Double Tap beartooth loads, they will work on people just as well as they will the black bears they were meant for.

The Hot loaded 10mm Glock is the most powerful Glock made. More so than the .45.

 

[quick kill]

I have a ccw,and am unarmed maybe six hour's a day. I even clip my holster to the shower rack lol. So wen I go camping I have ether a glock 23 or a 1911 as well as a ruger supper black hawk (44.mag) and a ar 15 and of course my knives. Since you live in cali you can't really ccw but in your campsite it's your "home" away from home so you can carry whatever you can legally own. So if you own a gun carry what you got, if not get a good used Remington 870 and a used glock 19/9mm-23/.40 and you will be well armed. Good luck and stay safe.

 

[reconranger]

I don't really get the love fest for the 10 mm. For humans, it is a bit much, and for bears it isn't enough. If you look at the energy (ft-lb) on the Hornaday web site ( http://www.hornady.com/ ), at around the 550 range it is in there with the .357 mag, which is marginal for black bears, and a fools caliber for griz.

While I will carry a .357 when I need to travel very light in black bear country, a .44 mag is in the 1000 ft-lb range and probably what one should really be carrying in black bear country. Lots of small handy and ultralight .44 revolvers out there these days, so size and weight aren't really a good excuse not to carry a .44, like in the old days! (I took my own advice, and have had a Ruger Alaskan .44 on order for some months now, but just can't find one. Ruger is supposed to do a run of them sometime this fall. I may at some time in the future, also consider the ultralight S&W's????)

In griz country, the .454 is the minimum. It comes in at around 1,800 ft-lbs which is more than 3X what the 10mm or .357 can crank out and almost 2X the .44, and the .460/.500 come in at around 2,200 ft-lbs.

Also....keep in mind that short barrels eat away at velosity, so that will also eat away at energy calculations....so all these figures are very optomistic!!!

 

[koyote]

I'll keep my .38, thanks.

 

[sambo.]

Proficiency is more important than caliber, muzzle velocity, etc., etc.

quoted for truth.

thankfully in Australia it's just easily scared snakes i have to worry about rather than bears who'll smell all my food from miles away.

a decent machete provides all the peace of mind i crave and a compound bow neatly fills any ranged weapon desires (although i will one day get that damn WWI .303....)

 

[reconranger]

Proficiency is more important than caliber, muzzle velocity, etc., etc.

This statement may have some validity when you are dealing with humans, but concerning any type of dangerous critters, it is absolute stupidity!!!

 

[Mentor]

This statement may have some validity when you are dealing with humans, but concerning any type of dangerous critters, it is absolute stupidity!!!

Please explain why Bernoulli's statement is stupid. He is making an argument for proficiency. This makes good sense to me for two reasons. First, from the perspective of the person using the gun, it means that you are more likely to hit your target. Doesn't do you much good to carry a badass high-calibre boom stick if you aren't familiar with it and can't hit what you're shooting at. Second, from the perspective of people travelling with or around the person using the gun, his or her being proficient with the weapon increases the likelihood that it will be used accurately and responsibly - thereby minimizing the risk of friendly fire, accidental discharge, etc.

I would never go into the woods with somebody who insisted on carrying a powerful weapon but dismissed the importance of being proficient with it.

All the best,

- Mike

 

[koyote]

Proficiency is more important than caliber, muzzle velocity, etc., etc.

This statement may have some validity when you are dealing with humans, but concerning any type of dangerous critters, it is absolute stupidity!!!

Did you really type that?

Okay, I'm willing to shrug and ignore the idea that a .454 casull is in any way necessary in southern California (and I have spent a LOT of time there, way out in the mountains, including the San Gabriels, San Bernadinos, and all the way up along the Sierra through mid-north.

I personally think the .454 is stupid to carry out there, or out here on the eastern side. But I'll ignore it as a personal idiosyncracy.

I'll ignore the idea that someone thinks a .357 is too small, too. I think that's kind of funny, considering how many people have taken
bear, javelina, deer - with that puny little girl gun cartridge.

BUT, when you start saying that your .454 is MORE important than proficiency, then we're gonna get into some strong words.

I don't care what dose of testosterone your doctor has you on, technique is king. It won't make a .22 short into a .38-40, but it will make a .22lr into a poacher's deer rifle and it will make my lowly .38 special with a 6 inch barrel into something more effective than a .44 magnum that misses.

I'll keep my .38, you keep the Alaskan safely in California. preferably on the west side of the sierra.

 

[Mannlicher]

boys, boys, lets regroup. While the discussion is interesting, it just the internet, ya know?

 

[Cpl Punishment]

Actually, in and of themselves both of these statements are foolish:

1.) You need a cannon of such and such a caliber and so and so muzzle velocity and energy (you actually need the momentum, not the energy, but no one calculates that)

2.) You need maximum proficiency.

Why are they, in and of themselves, foolish? Because like all things Internet, people always go to the extreme of one and exclude the other. You'll have one guy arguing that you need a revolver in .45-70 (ever try shooting one?), and the other that wants to take on grizz with a .22LR because he's soooo accurate with one (ever try to stop anything of any real size with a .22LR?).

When in fact, what you need is a gun that is powerful enough, that you are also proficient with.

In reality, last I checked, there's less than 400 grizz in CONUS. I've camped in those places, and seen plenty of sign (front paw prints the size of dinner plates, rear paws that looked like it was wearing wheel rims as shoes), and NEVER saw a grizz. They'd run a commando raid into our camp at night -- waking NO ONE -- see there's no food and move on. Eerie feeling. But I think that grizz learned to fear man in CONUS, after being hunted to near extinction.

In certain arts of Canada and Alaska, such is not the case. They are above you on the food chain and know it. Talking to people who lived in AK, they all said the same thing, the top three guns were a .338 Win Mag rifle, a 12 gauge stoked with Brenneke hard slugs, or a .45-70 all long guns. If you were stuck with only a handgun, a .44 Mag was considered marginal, a .454 much better. It was a simply fact of life that you learned to shoot them well by shooting them, not pussyfooting with light calibers hoping your proficiency would transfer when the bear stuff hit the fan.

So, if you live there, you darn well better get a big lead thrower and you'd better get proficient with it.

Anywhere else, a .357/10mm will do anything you need, unless you want to hunt bears or moose with a handgun, where a .44 Mag would be a good idea.


Wilderness topics really always boil down to one decision making process:

Determine what is needed where you live, and become proficient with it. Doesn't matter if it's knives, axes, guns, shelter, etc.

 

[koyote]

Actually, in and of themselves both of these statements are foolish:

1.) You need a cannon of such and such a caliber and so and so muzzle velocity and energy (you actually need the momentum, not the energy, but no one calculates that)

2.) You need maximum proficiency.

I didn't read bernoulli's statement as "profiency is the ONLY importance", but that it's more important than relatively minor differences in performance or deliberate overkill. When I say relatively, I mean that- as you said in your post- environment matters. among the more common revolver calibers from .32mag through .44 special, proficiency is going to matter much more where I live. In alaska, the .44 through .454 and such large calibers, same deal.

I wouldn't be deciding amongst .32-.38 calibers in alaska, I'd be looking at larger calibers or long guns. (I might opt for a .22 revolver and a shotgun, just because no handgun will beat a decent longarm up there.)

Here, in the eastern Sierra and the high desert, there's a part of me that thinks that anything more than a .22 is really overkill except for the very remote possibility of two legged snakes or a chance shot on a coyote.


Again- bernoulli didn't claim that proficiency is an isolated importance, just more important than calculating foot pounds. (I didn't bring it up before, but there's a lot more than foot pounds involved. I'd rather have a hot loaded 7.62x25 over a fat slug .357 if I was going frontal shots on aggro javelina)

 

[reconranger]

Even a cannon isn't going to do the job if you miss the target, but a lot of calibers (probably actually most handgun calibers) aren't going to do the job even if you DO hit the targer!

I'll accept Bernoulli's statement....only if it is quaified by the assumption that one started out with the most reasonable choice of caliber available for the greatest threat that one is likely to encounter. Trouble is, statements like his make inexperienced folks think they are well armed with some barely adequate calibers.

In the great sceme of things, even the big bore magnum handguns, are quite low powered compared to many rifles, so we aren't exactly talking about superweapons here anyway. When I lived in Alaska, I carried a S&W M29 (started out with a 6" but didn't find it handy enough so switched to a 4"), backing up a slug loaded shotgun. Looking back, we weren't all that well armed in those days.....

 

[Stainz]

Here is my latest selection of woods carry goodies. Forgive the knife collection - perhaps they help with the gun's size. I usually carry two knives - lately, two of the knives shown - the ZT being so new, it hasn't visited the woods yet. I unloaded the gun from urban use, thus the five Gold Dots. For woods use, the first one would likely be a 240gr LSWC for better penetration in thick-skinned 4-leggers. The 296, a 2.5" hammerless 5-shot .44 Special AirLite Ti, was dropped 8+ years ago - the recently available similar, but exposed hammer & heavier (24.2 vs 19.7 oz) 396NG is still around - at an MSRP >$1k! A Charter Arms variant in .44 Special should do as well.

I cannot imagine a threat here in the southeast that a .44 Special wouldn't be sufficient protection for these days. The flashlight , a S-F E2DL LED 'Defender', is a must for me. Urban use generally get's it's little brother - an E1b 'Backup'. The pocket holster is under the revolver.

Stainz