Vanagon EuroVan
Previous messageNext messagePrevious in topicNext in topicPrevious by same authorNext by same authorPrevious page (August 2004, week 3)Back to main VANAGON pageJoin or leave VANAGON (or change settings)ReplyPost a new messageSearchProportional fontNon-proportional font
Date:         Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:17:55 -0700
Reply-To:     Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Subject:      Re: bears burgling for food? (way, way longer than long)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> Robert, > Now how did I know you would be the one to "take the bait"? <grin>

Bait. Indeed.

> I just want those darn bears to feel as unwelcome in the campground and > p-king lots as a screaming liberal at a Republican convention. <2nd grin>

Seems to me that it's the Republicans that're doing most of the screaming these days, but that's a matter for another venue.

> Just imagine the enthusiasm from your 12yr old son and his buddies on the > camping trip knowing they can bring their paint ball guns loaded with pepper > balls and night vision goggles and play open season commando with any bears > that step foot in the campground or parking lots looking for food! I would > have loved doing that at 12, heck, even now at 44.

1.) If I found out my son had friends that thought it was good sport to go around torturing animals for no good reason, particularly ones that can and will turn on a person, run 'em down and tear them apart, then he would no longer be hanging out with the sociopathic little bastards.

2.) If my son, at 12 years old, was enough a prick to think such behavior was a good idea himself, he would find the next six years (at least) of his life quite interesting as I assessed my failures as a parent in that area and made damn sure I corrected them.

3.) If suppose if I were inclined to indulge my son in some reckless stupidity that might wind up with him being dinner, I might as well just cut him up and grill him myself.

4.) "I would have loved doing that at 12, heck, even now at 44." Please see #1 and #2 above. Additionally, if you started charging around a campground or parking lot I was in spewing paint balls and pepper balls all around while baiting bears, especially if my family was there, I'm quite sure I would take your damn toys away from you and kick your ass all the way down to the nearest Ranger or Sheriff's station.

BTW, a bear doesn't really know a campground from a clearing in the woods or a parking lot from a tar pit. They do know that food is food. Despite they way they show it in the cartoons, bears can't really read.

> Next time you see a Ranger shoot a bear in the rump with a rubber bullet > (which is standard procedure to save bears) just remind yourself that only > people with "authority" should ever be allowed to do such a thing. We are > just helpless, uncertified, untrained, unread, idiots, who don't know how to > do anything for ourselves.

I note that "to save bears" is a key concept in this debate, at least to my mind.

I also note that you are no longer grinning, and in fact are getting rather heated. As for the above, I don't know you and haven't read your resume so I have no idea what you are trained in or are capable of, and it doesn't matter, because regardless of your own personal capabilities, most people are not, in fact, capable of dealing with wild animals, particularly out in the wild. I will say, however, that your own statements above and in the prior email in this thread do very little to assure me of your good judgment in the matter.

As for "helpless, uncertified, untrained, unread, idiots, who don't know how to do anything", yeah, the world is flush with 'em. Somebody once said that the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. As much as I would prefer it otherwise, I can't much argue with that. I'm busy enough dealing with my own occasional stupidities and I don't care to become a victim of somebody else's, particularly in regards to my family.

>We would probably shoot our eye out.

That's not as uncommon or improbable as it sounds. I can recall several news items I've read in which the well-trained, certified owner of the gun in question popped himself while cleaning the thing, or, while 'answering the phone' under his pillow in the middle of the night. I've had weapons training, some years ago, and perhaps so have you, but many people who have guns have never bothered- I certainly don't have a hell of a lot of faith in the judgment of 12 yr. olds in this regard, never mind some of their parents.

>Surely not chase away a bear with some real authority.

Hopefully not, not with anybody else around. For that matter, it's the bear' s home, not yours. Act accordingly. What's with your hard-on about the bears, anyway? How does using common sense and respect for nature turn into a personal rights issue for you?

>We must always rely on "professionally trained others" to do everything for us, even if >they are nowhere around. That way we are also never have to take any responsibility > for anything we do or don't do, because everybody knows we always rely on > others who know exactly what to do in their trained field.

I said it before- common sense, education, preparation and prevention. These are the keys to this and just about anything, for that matter. They are certainly, to my mind, the hallmark of this 'responsible person' for whom you are getting so agitated. In fact, I tend to be mostly libertarian in my personal philosophy, but I try to be realistic in that, as well as recognizing that we do have some responsibility toward the rest of the world. It ain't all about you- or me.

> Anybody who thinks they know better is a just a drunk red neck, right? > wrong.

You're the one that played the 'redneck' card, my friend. I actually rarely use the term, finding it mostly used in a manner on par with racial slurs, Jeff Foxworthy notwithstanding. I grew up in East Tennessee (Knoxville), and having consumed more beer, moonshine, and etc. than is generally healthy for a person, I know all about drunk redneckedness. I can't tell you how many times I've had somebody give me the Bubba treatment when they found out where I'm from, incidentally. Sometimes I think maybe I know how the brothers feel. Probably not.

In your email, you wrote "We need some good ole red neck hunters that enjoy giving them bears a shot in the rump". If that isn't riffing on the redneck stereotype, than what is it?

> What is this? that if we take a firmer stance and empower the public to be > more pro-active with bears

"The public" has no business messing with bears, and the pro-active approach would be to follow the common-sense guidelines developed from years of experience by those 'experts' (and others) that you so freely disparage.

>it somehow means we are all a bunch of "slobs"? > Geez I was just thinking of being able to leave food in my westy fridge > without feeling like my door is going to be torn off or my vehicle impounded > and suddenly I am a drunk red neck shooting kids with bean bags and leaving > garbage everywhere spoiling national parks. yeah right.

That's the point- apparently you can't leave food in your westy fridge "without feeling like" your "door is going to be torn off or my vehicle impounded", and for good reason. Haven't you ever heard of 'when in Rome'? How 'bout 'the rule of law'?

> The truth is, when I went to the website and looked at the stats on bears > and incidents, the numbers are up!. The bears are getting smarter. They are > smart enough to know who has the shot gun with the thumper rounds and its > not the dumb helpless campers, and the bears know that. You should see them > run like hell when they see the rangers in Yellowstone. They know who has > the stuff.

As I said: A Pavlovian response.

Your mentioning Yellowstone reminds me of something- when I was a kid, my dad took us there. We were eating lunch in the cab of his pickup, watching some bears up the road a bit (like a lot of other people there) when my older brother suddenly started scrunching me across the seat into my dad. Dad, of course, got pissed at me and started pushing me back when we heard my brother start to stammer and we looked over to see what his problem was. A big-ass bear was at his window (she snuck up on us, we thought they were all up ahead) and she was reaching in his window (which was down around four inches) to get his sandwich. For some reason, Dave was trying to keep it. Bologna isn't worth losing an arm over. My dad said "Fer chrissake, give it the sandwich and it'll go away"- he did, and it did. My brother broke the four-inch speed record rolling up his window and my dad slowly eased the truck down the road a bit. I got in trouble for laughing at Dave for nearly sh*tting himself. The bear had two cubs with her- could have been very dangerous. That was my first encounter with a bear, but not my last.

> Yeah, REI has bear spray,

I think this is fine, even necessary, for folks that get themselves in a bind or just as a common-sense preventive measure. If I thought a bear was trying to kill or injure me or my family I wouldn't hesitate to try to kill it (there are ways, good luck) if we couldn't get away. More to the point, I 'd try to be smarter than the bear and avoid the situation in the first place.

Seems like you're losing a little steam at this point..

>let us use thumpers or pepper balls in paint guns, teach the bears to stay away from all >humans and anything to do with humans, give them a bad bad (non lethal) experience, >let it rain on them in, campgrounds, remember its not a poodle, they need a big SWAT >to get the message,

No, let's not and let's don't. If there's any message to get, it's that we should be responsible with what we take into the woods and what we do there. Most wild animals will avoid humans like the plague. It's human sloppiness that encourages them to leave their native food habits and attempt to forage in Westys. Besides, the idea that suburban Joes and Janes should go into the woods and try to 'teach' of bunch of wild animals anything is just plain ridiculous.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of these friends of yours saw me tryin' to take a leak in the dark and mistook me for a bear and put a rubber bullet in my ass.

>Ask the folks who live around them they know.

Exactly- if they've been there long enough, they probably know when and how to leave 'em alone.

>If the park service could get the incidents down to zero they would, the problem is most > "people" and the "general public" has been so "dumbed down" nowadays its > lucky they can still drive a car and tie their shoes. The only folks who > know how to take responsibility, fix anything, use a power tool, kill a > meal, stand up to hostile bikers, ............yup its mostly the red > necks. (sorry)

The public is the public and always has been; while I would agree that specialization and urbanization have eroded what used to be common skills, I don't necessarily buy the idea that 'the public' is any more stupid, violent or degenerate than it has always been. Not that those kind of broad generalizations work very well. Besides, those signs, rules and regulations that you're getting steamed up about are there for just that reason- educating the public.

As for the redneck ethos, it's way overrated. Many of the people I grew up with and around couldn't get out of their own damn way, much less do much else, not that it's any different on this coast. And yes, this country boy once made some Muscadine wine, (well before that song came out) but I never knew anybody else that did. We didn't do a very good job of it, either- not that it stopped my brother from drinking it. I also learned how to drive on a farm tractor, and my current 'office' chair is a cracked green resin lawn chair that's fixed up with about a quarter roll of duct tape. So there.

Aside from that, first you're arguing that the public ought to be able to do as 'it' damn well pleases unfettered, and then you argue that they can't tie their own shoes. What exactly is your position here?

> Yes guns in cockpits, yes empower the people, some of us are still not > helpless. we can carry anti freeze and propane safely,

Better to seal the cockpit; if the bears can't get control of the pilots/plane, they have no reason to hijack it in the first place (and they can't get to the pilots' doughnuts).

> Kill your own meat once in a while instead of having somebody else do it > for you. You will gain a new perspective of life and death.

Hah! Most folks'll get a new perspective on puking their guts out while they 're dropping the guts out. Jeez. I personally think hunting should be limited to knives- let hunters drop out of trees onto the beasts like those badass Indians sometimes did; if you win, it's dinner, if you lose. well, it 's still dinner for somebody. Let Nugent do that and I'll call him a man. shooting something from way the hell over there is for kitties. At least use a damn bow.

I wouldn't even need the knife; I'd probably kill anything smaller than an elephant just by dropping on it- assuming I can still get out on a tree limb.

> Let those who want somebody else to do everything for them stay at home.

Ok, next time you need an a/c compressor for your van, make it yourself in your garage. 'Course you'd have to build the garage first. make the tools. Do y'know what an adze is? But hey! Then you could pave the road away from your house so you could drive yer van.. Grow yer own food.

> Hey its just one mans opinion, cant take the heat stay out of the kitchen.

Can't respect nature, stay out of the woods.

> Doug > > 87 syncro westy conversion > 89 blue star wolfy

So now that you've wasted a bunch of your time and I've wasted way to much of mine and we've both wasted everybody else's, this should go off list if you're inclined to respond. Unless, of course, somebody's entertained by all this blather, in which case I'll be happy to forward any further correspondence on the subject.

Cya,

Robert


Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main VANAGON page

Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!


Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com


The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.

Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.