Alaska Glacier Water !

Just remember that all the water we drink, even Alaska Glacier Water,is essentially recycled dinosaur [censored] (and who knows what else!)

I have a range membership at the LGS. Generally I try to shoot every week (it's an indoor range just a few miles from my house) but realistically I'm lucky to get there every other, and sometimes it's every third. When I get especially busy and hit the range after a longer absence it's always disconcerting how much the "rust" shows. Pistol shooting is a peculiarly perishable skill and it quickly degrades without regular practice.

I have to maintain my certification and would prefer punching big, deep holes in a bear instead of merely annoying it worse with spray. The simple fact is if you have time to draw a cannister and discharge it, you have time to draw a hefty revolver. If a bear is after me I;m not going to be concerned with him surviving the encounter instead of myself.

the August issue of Outside magazine has a good story about an American expedition into the Arctic Ocean in late 1880's
to make a long story short the writer talks about following the story to Wrangel Island off the Russian coast.
he meets the Russian ranger who lives on the island,just one of four along with lots and lots of Polar bears.the preserve ranger just has a can of pepper spray and a flare gun on is belt,no AK47.
so that sort of gives me the impression that the spray and a good bam from a flare gun is enough to drive off a bear,a big nasty one!

It would be a heck of a trick to have an AK47 in the 1880's! It wasn't invented for another lifetime or so. Do you mean 1980's?

opps..i ment to say the present day writer who returned to the island just in the last year to research the 1880's expedition was met by a unarmed Russian reserve ranger.

Ah, that makes more sense! If I was in big bear country I'd want a gun but I would also want spray.

Agreed. I just started to read a couple of the articles and one item that jumped out to me.

Dave Smith - the Bear Attack Examiner, states "Instead of offering a meaningful explanation for major differences between the two studies on firearms vs bears, Smith and Herrero claimed there were no previous studies on firearms vs. bears." That is not a truthful statement itself since the very research article (T. Smith and S. Herrero) that Dave Smith is disparaging actually quotes the 1999 study by Miller and Tutterrow that supposedly they denied existed. So when I see a blatantly contradictory statement like that, my eyes get a little buggy and I am skeptical about the rest of his article from examiner.com He goes on with his inflammatory language - "It appears that Smith & Herrero cherry-picked their data." and "Bear spray is the answer for people who don't like firearms, don't own a firearm capable of stopping a bear, or simply can't stomach the idea of killing a bear in defense of life or property. Bear spray has a cult following." What I didn't see in the article was a rational or calm objective argument or a comparison of the various studies. The writer definitely has a major chip on his shoulder.

I think the jury is still out on whether guns or bear spray is a better defence and only time and many more incidents will prove a statistical statement. Jeremy Bruskotter's assertion in his article in Wildlife News that "bear spray is the clear winner by any criteria" is also just too slanted and too much opinion with little research to back up his claim.

I do agree with one assertion by Dave Smith, "Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska, which examined 72 incidents. Smith's 2008 study included 31 incidents from Herrero's 1999 study. We're looking at a total of 107 bear spray incidents. That's too small a sample size to draw firm conclusions."

Agreed, Smith comes off as biased and not even close to being objective.

However, regarding this from Smith:

"Bear spray is the answer for people who don't like firearms, don't own a firearm capable of stopping a bear, or simply can't stomach the idea of killing a bear in defense of life or property. Bear spray has a cult following."

The funny thing is, despite all of Smith's clear shortcomings, this statement is true. I have run across this many times among the treehugging crowd. They are so in love with Gaia and it's beautiful creatures that they literally cringe at the concept of gunning one of them down. Guns scare them and represent individual empowerment at a level that is unacceptable to those who put their faith in Ivy League overseers. So they construct this gauzy alternate universe where a simple, cheap, easily accessible tool requiring little training or skill is the answer to all their furry, claw-laden problems.

[Political commentary deleted]

Me? I'm a belt AND suspenders guy when it comes to bears. I've got the spray, and I've got the high velocity projectile delivery system on my person in bear country.