Wisconsin Tacomas and bad financial advice

I text my kid in his bedroom from the kitchen.

Haha! Perfect!

 

Seems they have good taste-they are in the places I like to go!!

 

I've only had 1 bear encounter. It was years ago while bowhunting. One cougar encounter, it crossed the the camp road when we were heading into town. We thought if we said anything people would ask if we were drinking. It was only 10am. But back then I did drink quite a bit more than now. Both encounters in the U.P.

As for bear protection lots of good advice. Don't forget a clean pair of underwear.

 

Speaking of bears, my late brother lived in Kodiak Island. He told my about this idiot that claimed bears were misunderstood. He had a bush pilot take him to the remote areas so he could commune with the bears with instructions to pick him and his girlfriend up later. When they came back for him, well, it wasn't pretty.

"The next day, October 6, Willy Fulton, a Kodiak air taxi pilot, arrived at Treadwell's and Huguenard's campsite to pick them up but found the area abandoned, except for a bear, and contacted the local park rangers. The couple's mangled remains were discovered quickly upon investigation. Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine and right forearm and hand, with his wristwatch still on, were recovered a short distance from the camp. Huguenard's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and soil."

"A video camera recovered at the site proved to have been operating during the attack, but police said that the six-minute tape contained only voices and cries as a brown bear mauled Treadwell to death. The tape begins with Treadwell yelling that he is being attacked. "Come out here; I'm being killed out here," he screams.[16] The fact that the tape contained only sound led troopers to believe the attack might have happened while the camera was stuffed in a duffel bag or during the dark of night. In Grizzly Man,[4] filmmaker Herzog claims that the lens cap of the camera was left on, suggesting that Treadwell and Huguenard were in the process of setting up for another video sequence when the attack happened. The camera had been turned on just before the attack but recorded only six minutes of audio before running out of tape. This, however, was enough time to record the bear's initial attack on Treadwell and his agonized screams, its retreat after Huguenard tells Treadwell to play dead and when she attacked it, and its return to carry Treadwell off into the forest."

An on-site necropsy of Bear 141 revealed human body parts, such as fingers and limbs.

 

There's no 'poor Doris', she deserved to be punted!

 

'Poor Doris' reminds me of the trip to Yellowstone in '06. We returned to the truck after checking some sight out and across the parking area, there's a group gathered...and a bull moose lying there. Dopes are standing about 10-15' from the moose taking pictures. My son wants to get a better look, but I tell him that that's a 1k lb wild animal that is pretty quick. If it decides that it's had enough of those people, some may end up in the hospital.

 

If they are lucky.
They like to knock over their prey then just stomp the living shit out of them till they are dead.
Our guide at Denali was far more wary of moose than grizzlys

 

She'll be poor after the hospital bill. If she survives

 

A good friend of mine went to Alaska for an internship of some sort, while studying natural resources at UWSP.

A guy in another group, that was out there was mauled by a Grizzly.
F'd up his arm and lost an eye.

My friend said there were big stumps along the banks for cutting blocks, so you could clean your fish right by the river and leave all the guts, so you weren't bringing it back to camp.

That other guy brought fish waste back to camp.

 

Yeah moose will stomp you into a pulp for fun

 

1000 lbs on the light end lol full grown can be 1200-1800

it’s always amazing the people that will stop traffic and get out of their cars for pictures. People don’t think about the consequences

 

FTFY

 

Or they just don't know.
Like @CygnusX191 said, they think it's a Disney movie or a petting zoo and you can just walk up to them.

Remember the lady that jumped the fence at some zoo, to get a better pic of a tiger. Didn't end well.

When I mentioned about not worrying about bear because I grew up here. I wasn't trying to talk tough. It's regional ya know.
Go drop me in the shark infested ocean, full of jellyfish, sting rays and whales that will swallow you....No thanks!
James or someone else in Florida wouldn't think twice about it. lol

 

At Smoky Mtn National park, they have signs everywhere telling people how to deal with the bears, but they ignore it all. People in general are pretty stupid.

 

Poor tiger. Could've gotten sick

Amen to that.

Hey that's a flashing red light. At an intersection. In front of a school. With a work crew. With all of their amber lights on. Maybe I should just blast through it at 45 mph. That sounds like a smart thing to do

 

Our city crew started adding green lights, like the color of Rich's chase light, to go with the amber.

Time for some work truck mods.

 

“There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”

People are smart, but they’re impatient and unwilling to spend a lot of time solving the problem. Bears are dumb, but they’re tenacious and are willing to spend hours solving the problem. Given those two constraints, creating a trash can that can both work for people and not work for bears is not easy.

 

I have bears in my yard all year. Used to have to make sure they were out of the yard so the girls could go play on the swing set. Its just part of life up here.

 

Good stuff man, look forward to hearing all about your trip at some future point. Definitely looks like fun but also a bit nerve-wracking even compared to all the stressful traveling I have done. Figured you'd have some sections where you are seeking out "trouble" (read: fun); my other assumption was that it wasn't all the patented Pat-style trails or your wife wouldn't be happy lol. Someday I aspire to visit those areas but have never made it to Montana, Washington, or Oregon yet...mostly because I think I probably wouldn't want to leave.

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In response to all the side discussions about bears, just wanted to expand that black bears were not my concern and yes most people getting into trouble with wildlife probably had it coming for being idiots. Until I visited Yellowstone I never believed people could be so dumb but here we are. I'm a fairly active hunter and hiker, and I've encountered several black bears in the wild while hiking and hunting. Luckily I kind of look like one so they don't give me much grief. I've stood within spitting distance of bull elk and whitetail. Moose are scary but they won't eat you or hunt you just because of your scent.

Brown bears are different and the prospect of becoming the lunch of a grizzly is always concerning to me. Bear spray is a minimum in brown bear territory. Pump action 12ga would 100% be part of my load out because usually I am solo but to each their own. I wouldn't advocate for arming up just to larp being super-duper-prepper-man, I would choose to carry such tools because that's what those guides in Alaska and Canada do. Polar bears are the only thing more scary but in a way kind of not scary because you'll probably just be dead from those. Same for mountain lions.

 

I'd be afraid of a mt. lion.
They can jump up to 15 ft into a tree and leap up to 50 ft in one bound.
Must stay 51 ft away from mt. lion.