Canada's Best Kept Secret: 500km from the nearest paved road, solo in Northern BC.

[Gale B.T.]

Way to go Ben, some river trip, glad all went well. My wife had some eye sight very similar to what you were blessed with and bike riding, xc skiing, alpine skiing ,etc all were a challenge with the contacts.

Lasik eye surgery to the rescue, each eye was maybe 20 minutes to prep and 10 seconds for the true surgery. Today I will bet she can see the nit on a black fly's a&& at 200 yards Great success and she could not be happier with her eyesight and lack of problems.

Hope you get the same!!

Keep this RR coming, we are all enjoying.
gale

[Mercenary]

I'm encouraged to see so many success stories about laser eye surgery. My wife will be getting this done in October. I know there are risks in any surgery but eye surgery just makes me a bit more leery.....

Ben: I'm curious....which river are you running there in your vid?

[Platypus-3in1]

Originally Posted by Crooked Creek

That is a good question, and your assessment is correct. Well, not as much as "survival"

You made that sound so simple ...

Two days later it finally dawned on me how ...


When you know what you are doing; what you are doing is just another day!


Its taken a while ... It started way back where I read about you camping out solo with bears walking around your tent .... How Can He Do That? ... Is he crazy? ... He dosent sound crazy! ... But thats just crazy!


Now I get it ... People do the same thing to me! ... I always take the KLR on all of these Tennessee backroads to go give my construction bids (makes the work day that much more rewarding)

Many times people would say to me: "You be careful on that motorcycle, those things are REALLY dangerous!"

Kind of the same: Now Crooked Creek You be careful out there sleeping with the bears, those things are REALLY dangerous.

[Crooked Creek]

Originally Posted by Mercenary

Ben: I'm curious....which river are you running there in your vid?

That's Sheep Creek, near Grande Cache, AB.

Originally Posted by Platypus-3in1

Now Crooked Creek You be careful out there sleeping with the bears, those things are REALLY dangerous.

I promise to get back on the RR Monday, but speaking of bears, guess what was on my deck this morning... He's been around for a few days: tipped the BBQ over, carried off a 100lb bag of diapers, got into the recycling, tore up our living room window screen to name a few. He got his final warning today.

I don't take the same chances with my kids playing outside.




WARNING, THE FOLLOWING PICS ARE NOT FOR THOSE WHO DON'T LIKE TO SEE DEAD ANIMALS!


















He didn't suffer.






Our little girl was the one who saw him this morning.




My new laser eyes seem to work pretty good.

[Gale B.T.]

Good looking black , hope you get to keep the hide for the foot warmer in front of the air tight!!

Had exactly the same thing at Tete Jaune CAche, true garbage bear, on the deck, knocking thing over, never did have any garbage out side but this bear did not understand that. Bounced a stick of stove wood off his snout, chased him off with the final plea," leave for I am coming back with the 06 to let some air out of you", well had that nice rug for 15 years!

Glad you /family are ok, right now here in Pagosa we have a small one with 3 or 4 tags already in it's ear, will not last long if he does not smarten up.

keep us smiling, great RR.

gale

[hardwaregrrl]

Wow! That's a big bear.! Educate a city girl....is that legal to do in off season? I mean, you're not gonna get a fine or anything? And don't forget about the story of the murderer you met....m'kay!

[Mercenary]

Unfortunately once bears get a taste for garbage and have a reasonably easy time of accessing it, they are EXTREMELY difficult to get rid of. Even relocating the animal doesn't help in some cases as they will actually return to the source eventually.

With 4 little ones running around the house, I wouldn't hesitate to 'ventilate' a problem bear.

[Crooked Creek]

Originally Posted by hardwaregrrl

Wow! That's a big bear.! Educate a city girl....is that legal to do in off season? I mean, you're not gonna get a fine or anything? And don't forget about the story of the murderer you met....m'kay!

Actually, it's a pretty small one by my standards (a two and half year old, about 250lbs) but still strong enough to take any human. It's the adolescent males like this one (out trying to find themselves a territory and prove their manhood) that tend to get into this kind of trouble. Sound familiar ?

Don't worry, there are still a half a million black bears left in Canada, and In Alberta:

Any person who is (a) the owner or occupant of privately owned land, or (b) authorized to keep livestock on public land, or (c) a resident authorized by a person described in (a) or a resident authorized in writing by a person described in (b) may, without a licence, hunt (but not trap) black bear or coyote on such lands, at all times of the year.

Same is true for coyote, wolf, and cougar, but cougar have to be turned in.

[Crooked Creek]

Originally Posted by Mercenary

Unfortunately once bears get a taste for garbage and have a reasonably easy time of accessing it, they are EXTREMELY difficult to get rid of. Even relocating the animal doesn't help in some cases as they will actually return to the source eventually..

That is my experience as well. Even if they can't get at garbage or food they will keep trying if they can smell something or if they have had success at camp robbing somewhere else. From what I understand, FIsh and Wildlife here will not even bother to relocate black bears as they will usually just come right back. Black bears (unlike grizzlies) have a very small home range. (When I was guiding, we would have stands less than a mile apart that didn't see any overlap of bears.) So relocation messes with the territories bears have established and can result in a young bear starving or being killed by the dominant male in the new territory.

A bears sense of smell is 2000 times better than a human's (20 times better than dogs) and they have a good memory, so they'll find what they're looking for. In my area there are more black bears than there have ever been (because agriculture has given them more food than ever) but once they learn to mooch off people, they don't unlearn it. Fortunately, it's mostly young males that get shot, so it doesn't affect the population hardly at all and it helps to educate the remaining ones.

[manfromthestix]

A 100 pound bag of DIAPERS??? Really? And he ate your car keys and you had to dig them out of a poop?

Yeah, you can't have that guy rooting around with little kids playing outside. Are you going to eat it?

We have LOTS of black bears here in Virginia but even the biggest ones I've seen are significantly smaller than your bear. I noticed when I first moved here that ALL the animals are significantly smaller, everything from squirrels to bears (only blacks here) to deer (only white tails here) than they are in Wyoming. I was used to huge elk, mule deer, bears (both), bison, etc. I thought WTF, the habitat in Virginia is fantastically richer than the habitats in Wyo, so why aren't the critters BIGGER? Several people have told me it's because we have such mild Winters here, the critters don't need as much body mass to survive the extreme cold like they do in colder climates. It makes sense, but it still seems odd; look at us humans, give us more food and we blossom! Lots of that around here too, sadly.

It could be also that anything that moves is hunted relentlessly here so they never get a chance to grow to trophy size. It's part of the Red Neck culture, like NASCAR which was actually started just about 100 miles from where I live when the moonshiners were running from the revenuers. We have zillions of tiny white tailed deer and they are the single biggest hazard to motorcycling out here, in my mind, far more dangerous than idiot drivers (which are also plentiful). On a general hunting license you can bag seven (7) deer and you can buy extra tags. It takes at least seven deer to make it worth hunting the tiny things, can't be more than 50 pounds of meat on them.

Cool news about your laser eyes!!

Doug

[Crooked Creek]

Originally Posted by manfromthestix

A 100 pound bag of DIAPERS??? Really?

Really. We don't get garbage pickup out here. The rest gets incinerated and I don't haul the diapers out until we have a full contractor bag..

And he ate your car keys and you had to dig them out of a poop?

Haha, no. Those were for scale.

Are you going to eat it?

I do eat bear, but I got three wild (Russian escapee) boars this fall (and deer, elk, and moose from last year) so this one went to the coyotes as bears taken on private land in this situation are not required to be salvaged. I would have given it away but very few people eat bear, and no one would take it at this time of year. There is so much game in this area and so many people have beef or bison to give away. If I hunt a bear on purpose (which I don't really do anymore) I will eat it for sure. Love me a good smoked bear ham.

We have LOTS of black bears here in Virginia but even the biggest ones I've seen are significantly smaller than your bear.

If you think that one is big, you should see this one (also shot right by my house, in my shaggier days.)




Yes, it is a black bear.




But yep, deer are bigger here too.








Moose as well.

[Mercenary]

Ummm....so...tell me more about the three wheeler you have in that photo of you and that Bruin. Still have the Landcrusier?

[IKIGAI]

Originally Posted by manfromthestix

A 100 pound bag of DIAPERS???
We have LOTS of black bears here in Virginia but even the biggest ones I've seen are significantly smaller than your bear. I noticed when I first moved here that ALL the animals are significantly smaller, everything from squirrels to bears (only blacks here) to deer (only white tails here) than they are in Wyoming. I was used to huge elk, mule deer, bears (both), bison, etc. I thought WTF, the habitat in Virginia is fantastically richer than the habitats in Wyo, so why aren't the critters BIGGER? Several people have told me it's because we have such mild Winters here, the critters don't need as much body mass to survive the extreme cold like they do in colder climates. It makes sense, but it still seems odd; look at us humans, give us more food and we blossom! Lots of that around here too, sadly.

Doug

Bergmann's rule.

Apply's to all mammals -- even American's.

Larger animals have a lower surface area to volume ratio than smaller animals, and radiate less body heat per unit of mass.

Which means they can stay warmer in colder climates, whereas the opposite exists for animals living in warmer zones -- their metabolic heat has to be dissipated (faster) as opposed to being stored.

Animals living in colder climes also tend to have larger heart muscles (Hesse's rule), so lower heart rate + greater circulation usually means larger overall muscle mass.




Hey Killer, I have some questions for you regarding those Cirque del Debolt hogs you have hanging around the yard.
Just so's this RR doesn't turn into the hunting, Toyota, & hotties-in-pipeliner-overalls thread, I'd like to field my questions to you in a pm.
Let me know if you're willing,....that is, if you can possibly manage the time in between the backyard safaris and whitewater rafting trips.

[hardwaregrrl]

Whoa! I'll be going deer hunting for the first time in my life this fall. And I'm looking forward to it...it's about time I learn how to provided myself with food. Living in Georgia, it is unsafe for us to consume any fish we catch in our waterways...it's a total bummer.

Nice pics...but I want some with a bike!

[OceanMtnSea]

Now ..........if you could manage a feat like this I would be truly impressed! ....



...PS......take the Go Pro and take a spare pair of glasses - just in case!