Preparations for large animal attacks hold a place somewhere between preparations for lightning strikes, I keep meaning to mount that lightning rod on my boonie hat but haven't gotten around to it, and preparation for alien abduction, where not changing my underwear for a month might just turn the trick.

I'm not going to hump around five to eight pounds of iron to protect me from the one in a couple of million chance I might catch the eye of some large animal. Particularly when other methods, like staying aware of your surroundings, looking big, and making noise, are effective and shooting at a charging bear is a low odds game.

Those in Alaska and some wilderness areas of the west may face a somewhat higher risk. Even in those locations there are literally thousands of people who go into the woods without any practical means of inflicting lethal force against a bear and the vast majority of them emerge from the wilderness areas unmolested by potentially dangerous animals.