Black bears are probably more dangerous than grizzlies because people do
take them for granted. I've had them tree me three times but only had to
shoot one. I've never seen a griz while in the back country and usually the
black bears will smell a person and leave. I find that if I'm prepared for
the bad incident it doesn't happen. /jmac
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Wayne Culberson
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 7:15 AM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: What's up with the OM list? It's gone strange and
insular.
jmac wrote
> I'm preparing to go to Peru and Bolivia in the
> spring and the list of warnings about dangerous criminal assault potential
> is quite long.
I've been going to Bolivia on a fairly regular basis for 11 years, and will
probably be going again soon. Things have changed there a lot in the time
I've been going. In the cities, be very cautious. A friend and I had one
serious deliberate attempt on our lives, by a driver of a bus. Just be very
careful in the cities. The most dangerous weapons you'll encounter there
have 4 wheels, seriously! And they don't have to answer for it. The smaller
weapons are also becoming much more common in crime in the cities. But for
the most part, the people are great, and very friendly. And the photography
opportunities are really great!
>As always, you are entitled to your opinion. If you lived
> where grizzly bears or wolves might jump your bones, you might carry a
> weapon too. /jmac
We don't have wolves or grizzly bears, but we do have coyotes and black
bears. I don't think the coyotes here are very dangerous. I put a picture on
my site of a little one I saw yesterday. Black bears, generally speaking,
aren't very dangerous either. However, from someone who has hunted them, and
has been close to quite a few in the wild even when not hunting them, they
are not to be taken for granted. I encountered one in May of 1988 or '89
(can't remember for sure) that weighed a bit over 400 pounds, just out of
hibernation, and I'm quite certain I would have been dead, had I not had a
certain object in my hands with which to defend myself. Thankfully I still
have my head on my shoulders, while his is on the wall. That experience
definitely changed my attitude toward them a bit, as before that I'd always
heard and believed they were always afraid of humans. Well, now I know, "Not
Always". There have been at least two other occasions with black bears that
I'm glad I had the option of self-defense, and one more occasion I was
really wishing I had it, but as is usually the case, it wasn't needed in the
end.
Thankfully, I've never had an experience like our list-mom described.
Wayne
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