Which Khukuri is Loaded for Bear?

When I was looking for information on pepper spray (active ingrediant OC), I found one of the manufactures used a synthetic OC. They discovered that bears really liked refined natural OC sprayed onto something. In fact the bears would sniff it, lick it, and roll around in it. Apparently the bears showed no interested in synthetic OC. I suspect a hiker would smell food if you sprayed OC was sprayed on clothing and gear.

A 12GA with slugs, 5 round or greater mag capacity and lots of sporting clay experience might be the way to go. By the way it is easier engage low fast moving targets if you drop to their level (i.e. kneeling). I suppose this would be true for the khukuri too.

Will
 
There were twin brothers in the '50s who were wildlife biologists in Montana that did a great deal of Grizzly research. I think their name was Craighead or something like that. One went back to NY, the other taught at a Montana University until retirement. They did a show on the local PBS station, and the work they did in their research was unbelieveable. They all managed to tag and study bears without killing or being killed - not that they didn't use precautions...

One thing that stood out in my mind from the video is that an adult grizzly can run 50 yards in 3 seconds. That's not a misprint. I don't know about black bears.

Of course, I can outrun one, because, I'll be running on dry ground, and the bear chasing me will be slippin' and slidin' on MY scat!

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I heard about a T shirt design from Northern B.C. or Alaska. It features a bear with a guys arm and a pepper spray can. The caption is "wheres the salt to go with the pepper".

Will
 
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Bill Martino:
No more bear stories?

</font>
Click to expand...

Once Upon a time, in the big forest, lived a little girl named......Nahhhh Heheheh
 
Ok, I'll post a follow-up, but this might get long...

In this video from my previous post, one of the things that these guys tried to do was trap and tranquilize and tag these grizzlies in Montana. Then they would also put on collars and try to track their movements. They wanted to know things like how can grizzlies gain so much weight for hibernation and not die from a heart attack.

Remember, this was vintage 1950's video, the collars and tracking units looked like things from Lost in Space...
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Anyway, they had one very large male (about 800 lbs) that they trapped (humanely, in a big steel drum baited with food), and they tranquilized this guy, pulled him out, and went to work. They got paw prints, blood samples, tooth prints, you name it. Well, this old boy was paralyzed by the drugs, but not out. He was growling the whole time. He was so big, they didn't quite get the dosing right, and he started getting muscle control a little too early. This is where it gets good!

He gets enough muscle control to roll over, and most of the staff had the good sense to start gathering their implements and head for the cars - they drove Ford Falcon station wagons. One of the Craighead brothers (the one with big cajones) said, "No, we have time to tag him." So, he held down the bear's head with a rifle (like THAT's gonna do anything), while the other guy tags the bear's ear. Holy macaroni, Batman. I don't care what ranchers say, that tagging must really hurt! The bear roared (at this point I'm on my knees ready to run for MY door, and this is only the friggin' video!), and rolls over. He is royally pissed, and wants to kill something. Everyone (except for the cameraman - how much did they pay this guy?), runs for the nearest Falcon. The closest thing to the bear's head is a solid steel Sears Craftsman tool box. He bites and shakes it violently, later they show it on the video, now shaped like a bow tie.

Mr. Bear gets up, still groggy, and visually acquires the nearest Falcon. He charges, and slams headfirst into the wagon's passenger side door, leaving a sizeable dent in it. He then staggers to the front of the car, climbs on the hood, and tries to claw through the windshield. There is now a camera man both inside and outside the car filming this. You can hear the people in the car screaming, "Back Up!!" They throw the poor Falcon in reverse, and the bear rolls off the hood, shakes his head, and runs into the forest. Total elapsed time from paralysis to total mobility - about 30 seconds.

Every time I watch this video, I have to go to the bathroom. I know this is waaaaay off topic with black bears and all, but after seeing this video, ain't no @#$% way I'm EVER going to try getting near one of these bad boys! Once I get my other VCR out of storage, I'll dub it for anyone who wants a copy. Anyone who thinks movies are exciting has never seen this PBS documentary.

Sorry for the length.

[This message has been edited by swede79 (edited 05-09-2001).]
 
OK, I'll throw one in.

I was 17 and hitchhiking through California. A pretty girl in a red convertible picked me up. She already had one other scruffy transient riding along. She was going to a rockclimbing class in Yosemite.

We got up to Yosemite towards nightfall. We found an empty parking lot and prepared to spend the night. After a while a police officer pulled up and told us to move along. He suggested a nearby campground.

When we arrived at the campground we saw prominent signs warning about the bears. After a brief conversation we reasoned that the nice policeman would not send us out of a nice safe parking lot to a campground infested with bears. The sign was obviously old or designed to intrigue the tourists, and did not represent a real hazard.

We built a campfire and spent some time socializing until it burned low. Then the other hitchhiker and I rolled out our sleeping bags near the fire, while the lady prepared her bed in the open convertible. I went off to sleep. After a while I was awakened by furtive whispers, but I was sleepy so I grunted and turned over to get some sleep. A while later I was again awakened to gentle kicks and verbal declarations of supposed intimate relations between me and close family members.

When I was awake and my temporary companion became more articulate he explained that a bear had visited us. It was leaning over the convertible checking out the feminine contents when he first became aware of it. He figured she was a goner, and tried to wake me up so we could escape. Unfortunately I didn't cooperate. The bear finally lost interest in the girl and decided to investigate his backpack. Apparently finding it interesting, the bear drug it off into the woods.

We woke the girl up. The other hitchhiker was concerned about his backpack, so we fired up the car, turned on the lights, and pointed them along the route the bear took. We found the pack a short distance off in the woods. Packcloth seems strong, but it was no match for the claws and teeth of that bear. It was pretty amazing to see what he had done to the pack. We found an alternative location to sleep.

That's the story of my close encounter with one of the large land carnivores of North America. I can honestly say that during the encounter, I was not scared one bit.
 
I'm not quite sure this is a bear story because we never did determine exactly what it was, it happened when I was a kid, and is a true story.

My brother, a friend, and myself were out in the woods in East Texas, we had the usual compliment of a couple of .22's and our belt knives. We had been walking for some time in a new area when I thought I heard the sound of someone sawing wood. We kept walking and I sighted a small house off to the right and figured that was where the sound was coming from. On we went, and after a while I noticed the sound was not getting farther away, and started paying real attention to it. Instead of getting fainter and coming from the direction of the house we saw, it had gotten louder and was coming from out to the right of us. It stayed even with us, out where I couldn't see anything, for quite a while. I was getting a very uneasy feeling and told my brother and friend that we had better head back. They had not been paying attention to anything but themselves and not getting stuck in the eye by pine needles, but I managed to convince them when they picked up on how serious I was acting. We started back the way we had come and the sound started coming from behind us. Everybody was paying attention now! It started getting closer, and the closer it got the less it sounded like wood being sawed. It became clear that the sound was the rough breathing of a very large animal. It was quickly decided that we were not moving fast enough. We couldn't quite run becauseof the heavy growth, but went as fast as we could. The sound stayed right behind us, and we could heard branches breaking, but we kept up enough speed to prevent it closing the distance with us. Needless to say, we were SCARED, the .22's and bowies not offering the feeling of security they had a while before. Finally, the sound started to get farther off, meaning we were moving too fast for it. When we got to the edge of a pasture, you could barely hear it, and I told my brother I'd give him five dollars if he would climb a tree and wait to see what it was. His reply would be inappropriate to print here. When we finally got back home, my friend Bill called and told his older brother about this, and he drove over with a M-1 Garand. I hauled out my Lee-Enfield .303 and off we went to see just what this critter was. All we were ever able to find were the broken branches and disturbed pine needles where something large and heavy had been moving through the woods. The best guess we came up with was that it was an old or sick bear, or a
feral hog - people used to run their hogs out in the woods there, and they got BIG and MEAN. I saw bear tracks about eight miles from there some time later. I felt even better about the practice of hauling all that extra weight- guns, big knives, etc. after that.

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"To Know and to Act are One"



[This message has been edited by Finn (edited 05-10-2001).]
 
My roomate from college had an uncle that would go up in the mountains in western PA for hikes in the winter. He liked hiking in the snow. He was walking over a section of ground when it collapsed under him. He fell about up to his waist in a hole and landed on something soft. He heard a groaning coming from under him. He never said for sure that it was a bear. Only that he took of from out of there so fast that he did not think he left any tracks in the snow.
 
I spent yesterday shoveling bear dung off a hiking path. Some of it was relatively fresh. Fortunately, I didn't step in any of it.

Last dear season we found a 355 ml can that was bit by a bear. The front insisors were printed on each end of the can.

Will
 
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