I grew up in Central New Jersey. Mercer County is the home of the state capital as well as Princeton University. I large chunk of the Route One business corridor runs through it. It’s not bear country. In fact, in the eighteen years that I lived in Princeton, I never once heard of a bear sighting. I don’t think I knew that any bears lived in New Jersey. If you wanted to see one (and you probably didn’t), I figured you needed to head across the river to Pennsylvania or go up to the Catskills or Adirondacks. I was very wrong.
The recently concluded bear hunt in New Jersey netted 607 bears. To me, that seems like a ton of bears. But when I looked at the county by county breakdown, I wasn’t surprised to see that zero bears were killed in Mercer County. There were also zero bears killed in Somerset, the county immediately to the north.
I live in Chester County, Pennsylvania now. I actually live in a cabin in the woods. But this is still not bear country. I’ve never seen a bear here, and I’ve never heard that any of my neighbors have either. However, this year I received a notice from my son’s school that there was a lockdown at one of the district’s elementary schools due to a bear sighting. And articles started cropping up in the local papers about bears roaming around in the area, including one that got caught on closed circuit television moseying around the parking lot of a nearby shopping center at three in the morning.
One gentleman who lives a couple of towns over encountered a bear in his yard when he went outside at 10pm to water his plants before leaving town on a business trip
So, I started thinking about bears a little more than in the past. I’d think about them when rolling my garbage cans down my wooded driveway to the street in the dark. What would I do if I encountered a bear?
If you live in genuine bear country, having a gun around seems like common sense to me. But that’s up to each individual. What doesn’t seem warranted is to make that decision for someone.
I felt the same way when I lived in high crime areas of Philadelphia. Home invasions were common, and the police were overwhelmed and slow to respond. I didn’t own a gun in the city, but I definitely felt that I should retain the right to own one.
I’ve never been a gun control hardliner. I’m appalled at the prevalence of gun crimes and accidents in this country, and I definitely wish we didn’t make military-style weapons readily available to people. I think gun ownership comes with responsibilities, and that we under-regulate in a seemingly suicidal manner.
I can think of many ways that we can assure that people can acquire guns for personal protection that also make it more difficult to quickly get a gun, to get a gun without proper training, or to use a gun without traceability and accountability.
But I also think it’s not quite as ludicrous as many people think it is to talk about the need to have guns to protect yourself from bears.
The more bears there are where you live, the less ludicrous it sounds.
Betsy DeVos is a ridiculous person and a foolish choice for Secretary of Education. And the schools in Wyoming seem to be doing just fine with their bear protection plans without the need to keep a small armory on their campuses.
So, this isn’t a defense of her testimony at her confirmation hearing. It’s just a reminder that there’s a cultural disconnect on issues like this. And bears are no joke.
C’mon. There’s no reason to be afraid of bears.
Tried to post a picture, failed. Probably for the best.
was it a cute funny picture?
Need help posting pictures?
Try <img src="insert url here">
If it’s big picture, include a width tag like inside the brackets, like:
<img src="insert url here" width="500">
I thought it was cute. No need to fear the bears.
post the raw url code and I’ll see what the problem is.
Thanks. It’s really not that important. I can probably dope it out eventually.
http://imgur.com/a/1e1V3
a photo of four bearded men?
Bears, you know, Greenwich Village bears.
Okay, the problem is with where the photo is being hosted. It requires a specific embed code, unlike normal photos on the internet.
Ok. Thanks. I’ll stick to commenting for now, until I brush up on my html skillz.
Grizzlies are not really susceptible to gunshots from a handgun, unless you shoot it in the eye. Methinks she got the guns are the solution not the problem from her brother Erik Prince.
Black bears will generally run away from humans, and a gunshot fired into the air might help them decide to do that. Hell, they will usually run from loud noises, not just guns (I’m no expert but I have had this happen more than once while hiking– Mr./Ms. bear and I stared at one another from 100 paces for a second or so, I yell BOO! and bear scampers away. Fortunately for me, because I don’t hike with any weapons.) They are very strong. They can easily break into cars looking for food, which is a real problem out here when hiking the Sierras. Can’t leave any food in the car, they’ll just push in the windows to get it, and shit in back seat to boot.
Brown bears/grizzlies are another matter entirely, of course.
No, bears are no joke, but Betsy DeVos as head of Education is. There is plenty to go after her with; no need to scoff at her guns vs. bears statement. Once again, the focus on the side issues gets all the chatter.
She is completely unfit for that position. She is unfamiliar with proficiency and growth in the nation’s standardized tests, she has no experience with student loan programs, and she declined to answer questions regarding policies for disabled students. These are all important issues, ones that she would be handling in that position. The fact that she never had a child in a public school is also troubling.
If I’m having heart surgery, I want the guy who knows medical procedures in and out and up and down. I don’t want the guy who parks cars in the hospital garage.
Betsy DeVos is a major funder of the Acton Institute.
Here’s one of their more recent publications:
“The abundant prosperity of the modern age has brought many blessings when it comes to child-rearing and child development, offering kids new opportunities for education, play, and personal development. Yet even as we celebrate our civilizational departure from excessive child labor, we ought to be wary of falling into a different sort of lopsided lifestyle…
…As for the solution to all this, (essayist Jeffrey) Tucker’s imperative is to simply “let the kids work.” This begins, of course, with a change in our attitudes, and such a shift will require diligent and drastic changes across our cultural spheres and institutions, from the ecosystem of each individual family to the powerful bureaucracies that seek control our kids through top-down plans and programs…
…In our policy and governing institutions, what if we put power back in the hands of parents and kids, dismantling the range of excessive legal restrictions, minimum wage fixings, and regulations that lead our children to work less and work later? (This could be something as simple as letting a 14-year-old work a few hours a week at a fast-food restaurant or grocery store.)”
Or a 10-year-old working in a job which could permanently damage their health and their education. Well, as long as the parents sign off on it…
A thought: doesn’t this give employers incentive to pay the parents slave wages with no benefits? Then the parents will need to send their kids out to work out of a pure need to survive. DeVos also funded the many campaigns in Michigan which led to their recent passage of a right-to-work law, so we see the harmonic convergence here.
Oh yeah, I trust this woman to get her Richie Rich hands on our nation’s K-12 students.
If the Republicans end up providing the votes to appoint her, at least the Senators from the Democratic Party will have elicited moments like this:
Kaine: “If confirmed will you insist upon equal accountability in any K-12 school or educational program that receives taxpayer funding whether public, public charter or private?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Equal accountability?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Is that a yes or a no?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Do you not want to answer my question?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Let me ask you this. I think all schools that receive taxpayer funding should be equally accountable. Do you agree?”
DeVos: “Well they don’t, they are not today.”
Kaine: “Well, I think they should. Do you agree with me?
DeVos: “Well no . . . “
Kaine, interrupting her, said: “You don’t agree with me.” And he moved on to another topic.
Oh, and then there’s this:
“…The Acton Institute is described by religious historian Randall Balmer as an example of the merging of corporate interests with advocates of “dominion theology.” Dominionism is the belief that Christians must take control over societal and government institutions. The Acton Institute funds events featuring dominionist leaders including Gary North, who claims that the bible mandates free market capitalism or “Biblical Capitalism.”
Betsy DeVos has served on the board of Acton, which is also funded by Scaife, Bradley and Exxon Mobil. A shared goal of this unlikely group of libertarians and theocrats is their battle against environmental regulation. One of the Acton Institute fellows leads a group of Religious Right organizations called the Cornwall Alliance, which is currently marketing a DVD titled Resisting the Green Dragon. The pseudo-documentary describes global warming as a hoax and claims environmentalism is a cult attacking Christianity. Another shared goal of the free marketers and Christian dominionists is eradicating secular public education.
Gary North explains why getting students out of public schools is key to the Christian dominionist camp. “So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God…”.
Butbutbut Clinton Foundation blah blah DNC emails blah.
The Parties are not the same.
I live in Sacramento. There’s tons of bears in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where – in my youth – I did a lot of backpacking (and still do a lot of hiking) and had several unharmful bear encounters. CA managed to decimate it’s grizzly bear population into extinction some time ago, so we’re talking about black bears (sometimes people mistakenly call them brown bears). For the most part, these bears aren’t dangerous to humans.
One often sees bears around the Tahoe area, as well as around Mammoth Lakes, where there’s a big ski resorts. These are called town bears because they live in a more humanly populated area. Sadly these bears become scavengers and (I think; not sure) sort of lose their motivation (or whatever) to hunt and gather as much in the wild, settling instead for the easy pickings of garbage and the like.
These bears can be pests and very destructive because they are smart and figure out ways to break into cars and homes to forage for food. One learns to never leave food openly lying around in your car and even in moutain homes.
I can imagine feeling fear of a bear in an area where they’re not typically common, but I’m pretty sure that the east coast bears are the same as their western cousins – not that dangerous to humans unless you do something stupid… like people who sleep in tents in Yosemite Nat’l park with chocolate bars (never have any food or even smelly stuff like toothpaste with you in a tent in the wild). Or parents (true story) who put honey on their kid’s hand so they could a photo of a bear licking the child’s hand – definitely not recommended.
IOW – don’t leave food lying around and definitely don’t try to fee a bear by hand. You should be fine. I don’t know what bear precautions are needed for schools, but I’m sure plenty of western states have this angle covered.
Thank you. Sorry BooMan, but your post is dead wrong. As an avid backpacker and hiker who has had numerous encounters with bears (including a grizzly this year while in the Denali backcountry), I am MUCH more afraid of running into some idiot with a gun than I am of anything having to do with bears. And furthermore, the success rate of deterrents such as pepper spray are higher than they are with firearms.
We already have enough people carrying guns for stupid reasons, please don’t try to give them one more stupid reason.
tell me about meeting a grizzly bear at McKinley.
We had seen the mother and cub the day before from a distance (maybe 300 yards). They had seen us too. We changed our path to go further up along the ridge where we could see it, and so that we could circumvent the area where it was. No further run ins that night, we ended up camping about a mile from where we had seen it (and took all relevant precautions, of course).
Next day, we were hiking up the next ridge over (maybe 2 miles from where we spotted them). We were walking along the side of the ridge, and not making enough noise because we thought we could see everything. We were wrong – suddenly the mom appeared about 50-60 feet downhill, charging right at us. We had obviously surprised it (and it us). So we started yelling at it, and got our pepper spray ready. At about 20 feet away it veered off, and the cub (which was still in hiding in a small alcove down the hill) took off after her.
And that was our grizzly encounter.
A high-powered rifle would not have been a bad thing to have.
We would have had to have had it out, loaded, and would have to have been extremely accurate to avoid doing anything other than pissing it off. This entire incident took maybe 8 seconds. Which was plenty of time to have bear spray ready to go – you don’t have to be accurate with bear spray.
I understand that you can find all of the anecdotal evidence that you want to suggesting that a gun would be a good idea to have when you’re in bear country, but those examples are the exceptions. In a general sense, if you’re going to be prepared to deal with bears, there are better options than guns.
If the bear had attacked one of you, the others could have shot it.
I’m not defending guns on hiking trails or whatever, I’m talking about having the right to own a firearm for protections vs. just for some hunting enjoyment.
I support that right.
That’s all.
That’s fine. But what I’m saying is that in this specific discussion, if everyone starts carrying firearms around for protection from bears, more people are going to end up dying from the firearms than they are from the bears that the firearms are supposed to be protecting them from.
By the way, the one and only time I visited Yellowstone, my brother and I awoke to find grizzly tracks through our campsite, and then discovered that this had happened that night in another part of the park. And, of course, we had stored our food high up between two trees and at some distance from our tent.
THIS IS WHY I DON’T GO CAMPING!
You could always just not go camping in bear country if you are truly fearful.
You can also just understand that BooMan had an experience that is outside of normal experience considering the coincidence that he was in the backcountry at the same time as a very rare bear-on-human attack.
I guarantee you that you are safer going camping than you are getting in your car and driving down the road.
I’m from Texas, we had no bears, guns lots of guns though. I was being somewhat sarcastic. I don’t camp because I am not entirely comfortable sleeping outdoors. LOVE hiking.
On the one hand, this happened in 2014
On the other hand, it was the first death by bear in New Jersey in recorded history.
Indeed. the received wisdom re: firearms and bears, if one is attacked by a bear one shoots oneself – less painful than dying from a bear mauling and it’s unlikely one would be carrying anything that would do anything to the bear other than incite it further
As a third generation Californian, I have spent a lot of time hiking and backpacking in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and up until about 25 years ago bear encounters were rare.
As you pointed out, black bears are pretty docile, but they can be a nuisance. (I think of them as 300 pound raccoons, because they are very destructive when they break into your kitchen looking for food. I had one dig a hole through my kitchen wall to get inside.)
Attacks by black bears are very rare — probably no more common than shark attacks. (Which reminds me of a slightly off-topic saying — when you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain.)
Da bears.
link
I actually linked to that story in the piece.
Sorry, missed it.
Oh ffs. The Devos comment about ‘guns in school to protect from grizzlies’ is stupid on it’s face. Grizzlies are not found in Whyoming save in the yesllowstone areea where they’re protected. There are about 600 of them scattered in an area of thousands of square miles of wilderness. Not generally found in human occupied areas
Yes black bears can be a nuisance in wilderness/suburban interface but you know what keeps ’em out of the schools?
A door.
The gunhumpers just want to have everyone remember that they all want their deadly penis substitutes with them at all times because they’re askeered of their own goddamn shadows.
Statistics indicate roughly one fatal bear attack per year in America.
One.
Bingo. This is a non-issue if there ever was one.
Agree. We’ve had bears on our property from time to time. The mom with two cubs was especially cute. I also own a gun. Haven’t fired it in nearly 10 years and it would do nothing against a bear and I wouldn’t think of using it for that purpose.
Keep in mind also that the kind of guns that wingnuts feverishly imagine bringing to schools are more like the weapons given to front line soldiers. The whole picture is utter nuts.
Stephen Colbert did cite Bears as the #1 threat to America
Bears are totally harmless.
Booman, really. I agree with you most of the time, but you are off the rails on this one. According to Backpacker, there were 29 fatalities caused by bears in all of North America in the 2000s, including 15 in Canada, 3 in Alaska, 2 in Tennessee and single fatalities in a few other states, including Pennsylvania. None in New Jersey or Wyoming. That’s an average of 3 fatalities a year, or 1.5 if you exclude Canada. In comparison, 26 people a year are killed by dogs and 90 a year are killed by lightning. Should every dog owner be issued a gun? To keep all this in perspective, how many people go hiking in bear country every year? Millions? So what are the odds, really, and how does this stack up in comparison to the known risks of killing humans with guns?
I live in northern CT less than 15 miles from downtown Hartford and I’ve SEEN bears (admittedly, black bears) in my town in the past few years. My spouse and I both saw a huge black animal crossing a major four-lane highway not far from the area’s airport while driving and then saw it standing still about 50 yards away from the road waiting for its cubs to cross after it. Our town dump had to put up new fencing because the dump operator showed up for work one day and found a mama bear chowing down on the garbage in the dumpster while he scrambled for the telephone to call the police and animal control. If you’ve got any sort of woodland or park preserve in the area, you just might have bears lurking nearby.