Mustangs Rule
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
- Messages
- 918
Bear Guns versus Bear Spray
My father was drafted into the U.S. Army late in 1942 when he was in his early 30’s and almost ten years older than the vast majority of GI’s.
When asked to name his occupation, he wrote down “gambler”. After he took his basic military aptitude test, he scored very high in integrating numbers and symbols and seeing patterns. Also he spoke two languages and understood two more.
He was tested further and assigned to Cryptologists (codebreakers) school.
When WW2 ended, they kept him in the service for almost another year.
Along with other WW2 era memorabilia on my wall, I am looking at his Sergeant stripes as I write.
After basic training he never held a rifle, but men like him saved so many lives.
That last period year in the Army he did not do much, mostly he spent his time in the Rec room playing cards.
He often told me how the day after payday, all tables there were filled with soldiers plying cards, and the day before payday all that money had moved to one table were the skilled gamblers like himself had collected it.
Two years later he was married to my mom, I was born and he supported us by being an honest hard-working gambler.
His mind was like a computer, with each pass, each play, with each roll of the dice or hand dealt out, the odds were being run through his head. He never drank while gambling, he liked long games, two or three days, so that the odds he counted on would have a chance to work out for him.
He never bet on long odds, was always making small reasonable bets when the odds were in his favor the most. He never made passion luck-based bets. Men who did that were ones he made his money off of.
He used to say, on a bad day, a good gambler breaks even.
I never took up gambling but have always applied his rules of chance and followed the odds in my endeavors.
Regarding bear spray, in Alaska 98% of people who use bear spray in a close-up bear encounter, go away unhurt. If you look at the entire continent, including black bears which for unknown reasons are a bit more resistant to beat spray. the % average of people going away unhurt drops lower 90’s.
Now when it comes to people actually using guns, firing them in a bear encounter, somewhere between only 56 to maybe 63% of those people using firearms go way unhurt.
These figures are the very best that can be obtained and includ factors like wind and distance away.
The very worst information about the effectiveness of bear spray was coming out of the hunting/gun lobby when bear spray came on the scene.
Basically, the pro-gun groups kept and keep saying you cannot beat a gun and have supported this false position by collecting and telling a bunch of silly old unverified stories some more than 100 years old.
By comparison the bear spray/bear conflict data collected by current and recent field biologists is a good as it gets.
I have had two wonderful live off the land trips to Alaska, and for years I lived right on the edge of grizzly country and was always hunting right in the thick of it in Wyoming’s Wind River Range.
I value a gun, always have one with me, at the minimum a S and W 429, (which equals a 30-30 but is harder to use ) but bear spray absolutely always comes first.
And if it came to taking just one, I would leave the gun and take the spray
My father was drafted into the U.S. Army late in 1942 when he was in his early 30’s and almost ten years older than the vast majority of GI’s.
When asked to name his occupation, he wrote down “gambler”. After he took his basic military aptitude test, he scored very high in integrating numbers and symbols and seeing patterns. Also he spoke two languages and understood two more.
He was tested further and assigned to Cryptologists (codebreakers) school.
When WW2 ended, they kept him in the service for almost another year.
Along with other WW2 era memorabilia on my wall, I am looking at his Sergeant stripes as I write.
After basic training he never held a rifle, but men like him saved so many lives.
That last period year in the Army he did not do much, mostly he spent his time in the Rec room playing cards.
He often told me how the day after payday, all tables there were filled with soldiers plying cards, and the day before payday all that money had moved to one table were the skilled gamblers like himself had collected it.
Two years later he was married to my mom, I was born and he supported us by being an honest hard-working gambler.
His mind was like a computer, with each pass, each play, with each roll of the dice or hand dealt out, the odds were being run through his head. He never drank while gambling, he liked long games, two or three days, so that the odds he counted on would have a chance to work out for him.
He never bet on long odds, was always making small reasonable bets when the odds were in his favor the most. He never made passion luck-based bets. Men who did that were ones he made his money off of.
He used to say, on a bad day, a good gambler breaks even.
I never took up gambling but have always applied his rules of chance and followed the odds in my endeavors.
Regarding bear spray, in Alaska 98% of people who use bear spray in a close-up bear encounter, go away unhurt. If you look at the entire continent, including black bears which for unknown reasons are a bit more resistant to beat spray. the % average of people going away unhurt drops lower 90’s.
Now when it comes to people actually using guns, firing them in a bear encounter, somewhere between only 56 to maybe 63% of those people using firearms go way unhurt.
These figures are the very best that can be obtained and includ factors like wind and distance away.
The very worst information about the effectiveness of bear spray was coming out of the hunting/gun lobby when bear spray came on the scene.
Basically, the pro-gun groups kept and keep saying you cannot beat a gun and have supported this false position by collecting and telling a bunch of silly old unverified stories some more than 100 years old.
By comparison the bear spray/bear conflict data collected by current and recent field biologists is a good as it gets.
I have had two wonderful live off the land trips to Alaska, and for years I lived right on the edge of grizzly country and was always hunting right in the thick of it in Wyoming’s Wind River Range.
I value a gun, always have one with me, at the minimum a S and W 429, (which equals a 30-30 but is harder to use ) but bear spray absolutely always comes first.
And if it came to taking just one, I would leave the gun and take the spray
