Apparently this group of schoolkids was on a school-sponsored walk, when a rather unwelcome companion joined them:
A grizzly bear attacked a group of elementary school students and teachers in Canada, leaving 11 people injured. Two were critically injured and two seriously hurt following the attack while a class was out on a walk in Bella Coola, northwest of Vancouver.
Veronica Schooner said her ten-year-old son Alvarez, who was in the Year 4-5 group, was so close to the animal ‘he even felt its fur. He was running for his life,’ she told local media. Ms Schooner said several people attempted to halt the attack but one male teacher ‘got the whole brunt of it’ and was among the people taken by helicopter from the scene.
Guess that school-issued bear spray didn’t work too well, huh?
Some time ago I watched one of TV shows where realtors took people to find their dream off-the-grid cabins in Alaska. This generally involved a long trek by road, a trip upriver in a boat, or even getting ferried in by float plane.
Here’s the interesting part: every single realtor, male or female, was packing what looked like a serious gun — mostly large-framed revolvers, but on at least two occasions, the realtors had a rifle slung over their shoulder.
This is what used to be known as “common sense”: when you’re in bear country, take a frigging gun with you so that when Ol’ Smokey Tha Bahr is looking for a meal item, you can either disabuse him of the urge or else make it his last trip to the human buffet table.
And if realtors can do it, why not the teachers who are nominally responsible for the safety of pupils under their charge?
Oooh I know, guns are icky and you’re twice as likely to be shot by someone you know (Gun Wussies Bible, Chapter One Verses #3 and #4), but ignoring that lunacy, let’s at least acknowledge that pretty much the whole of northwestern America has a decent population of bears of the several varieties, all of which have no problem with munching on the occasional human if sufficiently hungry.
But lest we forget: we humans and not the bears are at the top of the food chain — unless, that is, we don’t avail ourselves of the implements that put us there.
And as long as we indulge ourselves in this foolishness, there will be more casualties because bears are not like Baloo in the Jungle Book, no matter how much we tell ourselves they are.
There are numerous videos of extremely over the top bear “incidents” that should be shown to ALL school kids that live in areas where bears have been observed.
As retarded as it may be, there are entire generations of people running around out there oblivious to the danger that accompanies wild assed animals.
Or, let the retards alone to their own devices and allow Darwin to filter the gene pool. shrug
That’s completely irresponsible of the teachers, school officials and the chaperones on that trip.
In the US, teachers act in loco parentis, in the absence of parents when they have children under their care. Among their responsibilities is keeping the children safe. Teachers now want all the perks of a big pay check but none of the responsibilities.
You’re in Yogi’s neighborhood so you’re going to play by their rules whether you like it or not. In the wilds, might makes right. It’s your job to be the mightiest of the creatures in the forest. Or you can choose to be dinner for a more deserving animal. Up to you
Let’s talk alligators. At some point in the distant past, alligators were pretty much hunted to extinction level because no one who lives near a body of water wants a fucking prehistoric dinosaur nearby. Then the fucking bleeding hearts took over, made alligators a protected species and outlawed any hunting or killing of nuisance animals. Now there’s more alligators than ever. Every single body of water in the coastal region of Texas (and pretty much all of Florida) contains one or more of those beasts. We have a limited hunting season, but not nearly enough to control the population. And it’s only getting worse. The pendulum has swung too hard in the wrong direction.
I’d say the same thing about bears. Protected species, no or only limited hunting, no natural predators, and now we’re edging on over-population and bear attacks are becoming more common. Fucking idiots in charge are idiots.
Living here in NW Wyoming we have grizzly bears in the immediate area…last month a small griz got kicked out by its mom and wandered down the valley to a small gulch, and then up into our little development here in TinyTown™. Just about everybody with a siren and lights were called, and the WY Game and Fish sent a guy with a trank gun to knock it out. One shot, and 10 minutes later that bear was snoozing on our neighbor’s front lawn four doors down. It wasn’t very big, and in really poor shape (kind of starved actually) and they ended up putting it down because they didn’t figure it would survive a transplant to an area with big adult bears.
I’ve got an old “Coast-to-Coast” brand Mossberg 500 12-gauge (plug removed for 5 round capability) whose receiver survived an apartment fire (the wooden stock got moldy and the barrel pitted) with a 20″ barrel with sights (but not rifled) and a folding stock. It sits in a gun locker with 5 loose shells of 1-ounce slugs and a stretchy bandolier of 20 more slug shells. That’s what I grabbed when I saw the bear wandering around, stuffed 5 into the tube and chambered one, put it on safe, and stood on the front deck to keep an eye on it while G&F did their job. Once done I unloaded, and walked over to one of the deputy sheriffs to see what they were going to do. This being Wyoming he simply noted the shotgun and said how glad they were nobody had to use a firearm to put it down.
I’d trust a 12-gauge slug to put even a grizzly down faster than anything but a magnum rifle round, and having 4 more rounds in a pump shotgun makes follow-up shots faster than a bolt-action. And it’s my understanding that most shotguns are still legal even in Canada.
The fact that these Canuckistan twits didn’t have at least ONE of the teachers armed with a 12-gauge should make them legally culpable for any injuries.
Walt, I’m sorry but you started this with a film that FAR too many people thought
was a documentary !!
Namely, ta-da Bambi ! Followed by far too many other movies of happy, friendly, HARMLESS woodland creatures !
Out-run a bear ?? You’re kidding right ? You haven’t got a chance ! Even if you try going up a tree, they are stronger, FASTER, COMPLETELY unpredictable, and playing dead
is your ONLY very slim chance of MAYBE surviving !!
I’m guessing here but the ignorant, and I suspect young individual(s) who thought up
this ‘hike’ should be put on display under the title ‘Don’t Let This Happen To You !’
You don’t have to outrun the bear, you only have to outrun your hiking companion!!
It being a short week here and also I’m bored at work so let’s start a cartridge war.
What’s an appropriate Grizz cartridge and firearm to deliver it from? We’ve already got one entry, Blackwing1 with the 1oz 12 ga.
Go!
I’d be partial to the Marlin 1895 Guide series in .45-70. A proven big thumper in a reliable, handy form factor.
I can’t say from experience but, supposedly my Winchester model 71 in .348 caliber will take out any land animal in North America. They even show a bear on the ammo box.
https://images.proxibid.com/AuctionImages/10712/223571/16-1.jpg
It’s a 1957 lever gun and hold 5 rounds. It was my Pappy’s Pennsylvania deer rifle and I inherited it in the mid 80’s.
Anything above .35x will do the trick (rifle cartridges, not handgun).
As for handguns, I’d only go with .454 Casull, or MAYBE a heavy Buffalo Bore .44 Mag, but like the .500 S&W, it kicks so hard that your followup shots will be seriously slow.
How about single-shot .22 LR? Back in 1953, a little old Cree Indian lady named Bella Twin took a world record grizzly with one. Mind you, she was a veteran hunter and trapper, and of course a dead shot.
I have a good friend who traveled to Barrow, Alaska, where there are polar bears. He wanted to operate ham radio above the arctic circle.
He bought a 10mm pistol for the trip. Even at that, I think it was more to persuade the bears to leave him alone, rather than kill them.
Interesting side note. Part of the briefing tourists get is that no one locks their front doors. If you are walking down a street and see a bear, you go into the nearest house and shut the door behind you. People there are used to that kind of thing.
You have to understand. This happened in B.C. ( Blatantly Confused). Grizzly bears are a protected species, so even if a teacher were to be able to chop through the dense thickets of officialdom and get a Federal firearms licence, he would not be eligible to get a hunting licence for grizzly (although possible, BUT NOT AT THIS TIME OF YEAR for hunting black bear, and the student walk likely took place in a ‘Wildlife Management Area’ or Federal./Provincial park, where hunting (and therefore even carrying a gun) is forbidden.
Once upon a time, long ago, circa 1970, certain professions were allowed to obtain a ‘bush carry licence’ (I don’t remember the proper designation). As a geologist (actually still a student) I was allowed to, and did, legally carry a S&W 357 on my hip all summer. There were restrictions, but the northern Saskatchewan bush qualified. (Saw a couple of bears, closeup, but banging on a tree scared them off, and I never had to fire.) All of that framework, and the actual reality and necessity of self defence has disappeared, such that actual self defence is a shaky concept in Canada. Sic transit gloria mundi.
So “Canada’s experts” have made it impossible for a teacher taking children into a dangerous environment, so properly protect them from the dangers of that environment.
Instead of saying ‘You can carry a shotgun, to use in emergency’ the “experts” say, ‘Carrying a shotgun is a crime, whether or not you have any intent, and whether or not you have actually used it.’
Please note that ‘expert’ is the new leftie woke word for ‘retarded’.
And BTW you need permission (an Authorization to Transport) to move a ‘Restricted Weapon’ eg a pistol, from your home to anywhere else, presumably including the range. I am not sure, but I think that that is *every* time… As I said, retarded.
This seems weird. Bella Coola is a hamlet of about 2,200 people in the middle of a vast wilderness area about 500 km from Vancouver. IOW, the sort of place where people know bears are around and are dangerous.
It seems possible that this bear intrusion was extremely unusual, which would explain the lack of protection.
This reminds me of a quote from the diary of Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark Expedition fame):
“I find that the curiossity of our party is pretty well satisfied with rispect to this anamal, the formidable appearance of the male bear killed on the 5th added to the difficulty with which they die when even shot through the vital parts, has staggered the resolution of several of them, others however seem keen for action with the bear; I expect these gentlemen will give us some amusement sho[r]tly as they soon begin now to coppolate.”
At least one of the grizzlies that they encountered took nine balls from their guns before it died.
When I was up in serious bear country, I was told that if I carried a 357, to make sure I filed the front sight off so it wouldn’t hurt so much when the bear shoved it down my throat.
I prefer a 45-70 carried port arms … good for the mosquitos up there as well.