Bring Enough Gun

I'd still bring the 22.. but would throw my AR pistol over the shoulder..Rock-n-roll ;)

I debated that option.

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Then in the not to distant past, I had a run in with a predatory black bear up in Maine while kayaking / camping. Just so happened to be carrying a 1911 with hardball that day, and a head shot at about 15 foot ended it.

I have a friend who is a professional hunter. He has always been a bowhunter at heart, starting out bowhunting in Michigan at a young age. But as the editor of a German hunting magazine focused on international big game hunters, he usually hunts with a .308 Mauser these days. When I asked him if he carries a sidearm, he said he has a 1911 that he got a good deal on. Considering that he is often in brown bear country and also frequently has to look out for black bear, mountain lions, moose, etc., or somewhere in Africa... I told him he was nuts to stake his life on any semi-auto cartridge in the field.

Personally, I would prefer a revolver in a similar cartridge over any semi-auto (357 over 9mm, 45 Colt or 44 magnum over 45 ACP) due to the extra powder capacity and therefore the ability to shoot heavier bullets with greater energy downrange. But he his not really a "gun guy", so the argument is lost on him. I'm not sure what he loads his 1911 with, but it's nice to know it provides better protection than a brick (and is probably a few ounces lighter, too).
 
I walked about 1/2 mile and shot at a few snapping turtles and whatnot. I was creeping around a small pond to catch some snappers slipping on logs in a slough.
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Sounds like a good time, but I was just thinking how different forums attract different crowds. Just a week ago or so, a poster on an AK related forum mentioned shooting snapping turtles with his AK and was flamed by a number of folks with "what did the turtles ever do to you", "someone should run over you with a car", etc. I was amazed to read this on a firearms forum.

But to get back to the subject at hand. It didn't happen to me, but a good friend of mine was hunting squirrels with his flintlock rifle when he was harassed by a pack of feral dogs. I believe he ended up finding a large rock he could climb up on. He was afraid to shoot his one round then get attacked by the remaining dogs, so he just waited them out. Eventually they figured he wasn't worth the trouble and ran off, but he always carries a handgun while hunting with his flintlocks now.
 
Several years ago, I was hiking with my young daughter on a mountain trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At the time, I had a Keltec P3AT in my pocket as my usual walk around gun.

After hiking a couple of miles up alongside a stream, we stopped for a bite to eat. Just as we were getting the food out, I heard a noise about 30 feet away - looking to the other side of the stream, I see a good size black bear at the base of a tree - looking up, I see her two cubs.... I gotta tell ya, that 380 felt REALLY TINY in my pocket!

The good news is Momma Bear just wanted us to move on, and we quickly did so.

From that point I went to a 3" S&W 657 41 Mag as my woods walking gun...

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After a few years of that, I switched to a Glock G20 10mm with Underwood ammo, as I'm just as likely to find a pack of wild dogs or walk up on a open air meth lab.

Carry on,
Bob S.
 
Back towards the beginning my accumulating firearms, I had a 32 Kel Tec for a while that I would sometimes carry in a pocket. I would say I felt under gunned.

Nowadays I depend on a CZ PCR with light weight alloy frame and 14 Federal HST 9mm. I've also considered a model 66 for daily activities.

"Woods Walk" I take a Glock 20 10mm. 15 rounds of Underwood with Gold Dots or Underwood Hard Cast. I would also consider my 19-3, but I don't care to holster pretty blued guns too much. With the 19 there would be no possibility of a slide getting pushed slightly out of battery during a 'wrestling match'.
 
Years ago when the wild hogs were rooting in my yard at night I would gut shoot them with my .280 so they would run off somewhere else to die. That didn't stop them. One night I eased outside and hosed them down with 7 rds of 00B from my A5. Only thing that finally stopped them was a 2 strand electric fence around my yard. Set a trap. Caught 27. Killed and dragged them off. I hate them! I don't care how they die as long as they are gone. I'd shoot one with a .22 in a heartbeat.
 
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When the USAF issued that weak FMJ .38 round they called the M-41, I felt undergunned and often drew a .45 auto as a duty weapon when there was a choice.
 
I've been known to carry two sidearms for woods walking if the possibility of needing to shoot something large was there - my Charter Arms SS Pathfinder .22 for plinking and small stuff and something like my Ruger flattop .44 special (a converted flattop .357).
 
Years ago when the wild hogs were rooting in my yard at night I would gut shoot them with my .280 so they would run off somewhere else to die. That didn't stop them. One night I eased outside and hosed them down with 7 rds of 00B from my A5. Only thing that finally stopped them was a 2 strand electric fence around my yard. Set a trap. Caught 27. Killed and dragged them off. I hate them! I don't care how they die as long as they are gone. I'd shoot one with a .22 in a heartbeat.

No pork bbq?
 
Yep.
Parked the bike by a stream to have a smoke. Carrying a Kel Tec 32. 4 other bikers pulled up but not the clean cut type. They turned out to be nice guys but the 32 has been in the safe ever since (I'm thinking it's been 25 years).
 
I have a friend who is a professional hunter. He has always been a bowhunter at heart, starting out bowhunting in Michigan at a young age. But as the editor of a German hunting magazine focused on international big game hunters, he usually hunts with a .308 Mauser these days. When I asked him if he carries a sidearm, he said he has a 1911 that he got a good deal on. Considering that he is often in brown bear country and also frequently has to look out for black bear, mountain lions, moose, etc., or somewhere in Africa... I told him he was nuts to stake his life on any semi-auto cartridge in the field.

Personally, I would prefer a revolver in a similar cartridge over any semi-auto (357 over 9mm, 45 Colt or 44 magnum over 45 ACP) due to the extra powder capacity and therefore the ability to shoot heavier bullets with greater energy downrange. But he his not really a "gun guy", so the argument is lost on him. I'm not sure what he loads his 1911 with, but it's nice to know it provides better protection than a brick (and is probably a few ounces lighter, too).

I tend to agree: semi-auto's can present a bit more complexity for wilderness defense. There are certainly some very good designs out there, but the big issue is reliability of recoil and extraction/feeding. 10mm has become all the rage with a lot of self-proclaimed outdoorsy types (truthfully most of them stand a better chance of getting struck by lightning than ever running into a predator that would warrant 10mm). It's a great cartridge, but it also has a huge spectrum of loadings. Some 10mm semi-auto's seem very reliable across that spectrum, others not so much.

A revolver, though old-fashioned and limited in capacity, is simple: pull the trigger, pistol goes boom, new round rotates into place. Except for crimp jump (which is only relevant to the very lightest of snub-nosed revolvers), there isn't much that can go wrong on a revolver. And excepting 10mm and few oddball cartridges, there isn't much in the semi-auto world that can really compare to the traditional magnum revolver cartridges.
 
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