Elsewhere, Luke wrote:
assuming I survive the usa trip
Y'see, he has a little, I'm sure quite irrational, fear of bears it seems
OMG! The BEARS!!!
A little bed time reading for you Luke:
"All bears are agile, cunning and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn't happen often, but - and here's the salient point - once would be enough."
Some advice. If you come between a mother bear and her cubs:
"Nothing worries and antagonises a female bear more than to have people between her and her brood. Furious, she turned and gave chase - despite the bear's lolloping gait it can move at up to 35 miles an hour..." So best not do that
A reiteration of some advice I gave you a while back, just in case you've forgotten:
In bear country, wear small tinkling bells, so that you alert bears to your presence without startling them.
Also carry pepper spray in case you do encounter a bear.
And it's useful to be able to tell black bears and grizzly bears apart by their droppings. Black bear shit tends to contain berries and maybe small squirrels.
Grizzly bear shit contains little tinkling bells and smells of pepper spray....
And another way to be able to tell them apart:
If you see a bear, climb a tree. If it climbs the tree and kills you, it's a black bear. If it knocks the tree down and kills you, it's a grizzly bear.......
So what do you do if you encounter a bear? Run?
"All the books tell you that if a grizzly comes for you, on no account should you run. This is the sort of advice you get from someone who is sitting at a keyboard when he gives it. Take it from me, if you are in an open space with no weapons and a grizzly comes for you, run. You may as well. If nothing else, it will give you something to do with the last seven seconds of your life."
Play dead?
"A grizzly may chew on a limp form for a minute or two, but will generally lose interest and shuffle off."
And a black bear?
"With black bears however, playing dead is futile since they will continue to chew on you until you are considerably past caring."
Shoot it?
"...nothing unnerved the native Indians more than the grizzly (mostly predominant where you're going Luke, i.e., Yellowstone
), and not surprisingly since you could riddle a grizzly with arrows - positively porcupine it - and it would still keep coming. Even Lewis and Clark with their big guns were astounded by the ability of the grizzly to absorb volleys of lead with barely a wobble."
How to ward off an aggressive bear?
"... Herrero (author of "Bear Attacks: Their Causes And Avoidance") suggests making a lot of noise, banging pots and pans together, throwing sticks and rocks and 'running at the bear'. (Yeah, right. You first professor.) On the other hand, he then adds judiciously, these tactics could 'merely provoke the bear'. Well, thanks. Elsewhere he suggests...should consider making noises from time to time - singing a song, say - to alert bears to your presence, since a startled bear is more likely to be an angry bear, but then a few pages later cautions that 'there may be danger in making noise', since that can attract a hungry bear that might otherwise overlook you.
The fact is, no one can tell you what to do. Bears are unpredictable, and what works in one circumstance may not work in another."
But rest assured, bear attacks are rare:
"In the 8 decades to 1980 he found just 23 confirmed black bear killings of humans (about half the number of killings by grizzlies)...adds that most of these injuries were not severe..." (what, death?!
)
" 'The typical black bear inflicted injury', he writes blandly, 'is minor and usually involves only a few scratches and light bites'.
Pardon me, but what exactly is a light bite? Are we talking a playful wrestle and gummy nips? I think not."
But don't worry mate, I'm sure you'll be fine - happy holidays!