I’d also prefer not to be charged double for an under-performing round that is extremely limited in its usefulness. Personally I’d prefer to live and let live, and let the snake go about his business. It’s hard to read an article about a “trail-gun,” “kit gun,” or general-purpose revolver without pistol-caliber shotshells being mentioned as a means to “deal with snakes.” There seems to be an fascination with shooting snakes and outfitting guns specifically for the purpose. You wouldn’t think this is the case from reading gun magazines, though. When I see a snake – even a venomous snake – it almost always wants to get away from me as quickly as possible. It’s usually pretty cool when I do, and 90% of the ones I have encountered are totally harmless. I encounter snakes of any kind only infrequently. I have spent tens of thousands of hours and hundreds of nights in the outdoors. I will mention snakes, but only to say that they don’t really concern me a whole lot. Generally this article will focus on defending yourself from bear and lion attacks, with some consideration given to human predators here and there. Mountain lion, photo courtesy CindyLouPhotos, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Long story, but turns out it wasn’t and it wasn’t any big deal… but I’d sure hate to run into an armed someone in the middle of committing a crime like poaching or drug tending. They certainly do exist in the wild, and I began thinking about them more strongly after our most recent hike, when I thought we were about to encounter a poacher on a low-traffic trail in a wilderness area. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention human threats. Tobler, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Likewise wolves certainly have the capability but are still pretty damn rare outside of carefully managed areas (and are totally absent from most of the United States). Coyotes have been known to attack people, though pretty rarely. There are a few other assorted threats that I’ll briefly mention, though. Black bear, photo courtesy cs:User:DaBler, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commonsīlack and brown bears represent the biggest threats to hikers, hunters, and other outdoorspeople in the lower 48. Currently though, our biggest four-legged threat by a huge margin is the regular ol’ black bear by a long shot. Occasionally – while traveling – we’ll hike in lion or grizzly territory and I have a wealth of historical hiking in these areas. Though we’ve yet to run into a bear while hiking here, we routinely see tracks and scat. Our hikes are in well-populated black bear country. I’m not telling you what to do, just telling you what I do and giving you some things to think about. A lot of this information has been gathered from other sources (including my own interview with grizzly attack survivor Todd Orr), some from experience (I’ve had some bear encounters) and some of it is just my own opinion. I’m just a dude that loves spending time outside and writing about stuff. To be clear I’m not a wildlife biologist or anything like that. I thought this would be a good way to combine the two topics. This has come at the expense of some of the other stuff my audience enjoys, like firearms-related content. I have been writing about wilderness survival a lot lately. This article will cover some general principles regardless of what predators you may encounter, as well as a little specific advice here and there. On our last hike I was thinking about wilderness predator defense. I am always interested in what we can do to improve our chances of survival if something were to go wrong. My girlfriend and I have been doing a good bit of hiking lately.
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