[dudley]

I'm in a discussion on another board about "packin'heat" while fishing.
While I'm sure that there are lurkers there that would agree with me, I'm seem to be alone in thinking that it's unnecessary.
I could see it if there was a danger of mountain lions or maybe even brown bear, but these guys carry in defense of "crack-heads and meth-heads"
Personally, in most cases I think that it's some sort of macho paranoia, but there are a few folks who seem level headed about it. ....(the others are down right scary )

So, I though I'd ask here what you all thought about guns, hiking, and the safety or lack there of on the trail.
I know that there's a wacko element almost everywhere you go, but it's not something I let worry me.
What do you think ?

[Ben Smith]

If it's a homicidal wacko or a mountain lion, you'll be dead before you have a chance to even think of your gun. If it's a grizzly you better have a .50 pistol (which is really a hand held cannon), although a bottle of bear grade pepper spray is far more effective (blocks both vision and smell rendering the bear completely incapacitated, and takes a lot less skill to use effectively). For a black bear, just bring an air horn, although in my experience yelling and waving your arms is more than sufficient.

I have met camo wearing whackos dumping out their meth-lab waste on abandoned roads deep in the woods (at least whatever he dumped had the acrid burn of meth lab waste, and he definitely looked drugged out). Although he was surprised to see me, I made it clear I was going to disregard him, and he decided to disregard me. I'm sure if I pulled a gun I would have been dead in no time flat (hard to have faster response times than a coked up whacko ).

In my experience, most of those wanting to haul their favorite revolver into a national forest are fantasizing about pulling it out and scaring the shit out of someone who's looking at them wrong. But, I just keep in mind that these same people often wind up accidentally shooting themselves instead.

Along the same lines, few things irk me more than hearing a bunch of guys talk about how they downed a few 30 packs and then went out hunting. I grew up in rural Maine, and even though we've lived in a neighborhood, we still heard very close gun-fire followed by drunken hooting and hollering. One year our neighbor's prized steer got shot and left to rot in the field next door. I guess some drunk yokels got frustrated and thought it would it would be manly if they shot a tame steer, and left it to rot. Whoever thought alcohol and firearms together was a good idea?!

[3/4 time]

I agree with Dudley and Ben. I've never carried a weapon (gun) when out in the woods and don't see the need. My son and I have spent two to three weeks of the past four summers wandering around in the North Maine Woods by foot and by canoe without a problem. Where we go we seldom run across other people, however, last year we did come across something a little odd. We had driven an overgrown, abandoned logging road to who knows where for about 30 minutes. It was a bit remote. We came across a bear digging at something in an opening in the woods. He stood, sniffed the air and then ran off. We drove our truck over a hill and parked it then walked back to the top of that hill, about 300 yards away from where we had last seen the bear, to see if he'd return. The bear never came back, but while we were sitting there we heard the faint barking of dogs off in the woods. The barking grew closer. It was several dogs and they were pretty excited about something. We headed back to the truck and turned around, retracing our steps, and got out of there. I later asked, on separate occasions, a couple of guys who were Maine Guides that we met what all that commotion might have been. One suggested that it could have been someone training bear dogs. However, in both cases (especially considering our location) they said that in some places there are things going on out there that discourage discovery and use dogs to keep people away. Having a gun would not have made any difference against a pack of dogs or I'm sure whoever was with them. If anything it would probably have inflated the situation. In this case, I think, commonsense proved a better weapon in high-tailing it out of the area.

[Chad]

This is definitely a New England philosophy. Being from someplace else, I have no issue with people carrying guns. I have an issue with irresponsible and/or untrained people carrying guns. You are rarely ever going to even know when a responsible carrier you're coming into contact with has a gun in their pack. It's the drunk idiot waving around his 9mm that is the problem. Really, that guy is just as big of a problem driving around twice the blood alcohol limit on other days as he is carrying a firearm.

[RichNH]

I agree with Chad. I do carry.