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Red Pygmy rattlesnake

Vaughn McMillan said:
Sounds more like a grizzly instead of a black bear.
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I dunno.. some of the big old ones do get pretty hefty.

I was out walking with my dog up in central BC when I was a wee piker and walked over a hill coming face to face with a rather HUGE mama bear. We didn't really have any grizzly where I was then but we did have a lot of black bears (and black bears that looked pretty brown..). Now it's been a few years and i was shorter then.. but i swear she was over 6' tall standing up. I side eyed to my right.. cub up a tree.. side eye to the left.. another cub up a tree. The bear huffs at me.. NOT a great sign. I grabbed the dog by the collar and very carefully NOT maintaining eye contact slowly and from outward appearances.. calmly backed away back down the hill. Nothing else happened but I was more than a touch shook up on that one. Usually the little black bears don't bother me much but a big old mama bear? yep.. nope...
 
Ryan Mooney said:
I dunno.. some of the big old ones do get pretty hefty.

I was out walking with my dog up in central BC when I was a wee piker and walked over a hill coming face to face with a rather HUGE mama bear. We didn't really have any grizzly where I was then but we did have a lot of black bears (and black bears that looked pretty brown..). Now it's been a few years and i was shorter then.. but i swear she was over 6' tall standing up. I side eyed to my right.. cub up a tree.. side eye to the left.. another cub up a tree. The bear huffs at me.. NOT a great sign. I grabbed the dog by the collar and very carefully NOT maintaining eye contact slowly and from outward appearances.. calmly backed away back down the hill. Nothing else happened but I was more than a touch shook up on that one. Usually the little black bears don't bother me much but a big old mama bear? yep.. nope...
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My one and only encounter with a bear was with a mama bear and two cubs. A friend and I were cutting wood on another friend's farm located adjacent to the Great Dismal Swamp. A mama bear came out of the woods followed closely by her cubs. She was perhaps 100 yards away. We had been taking a break and my buddy said we needed to fire up the chain saws and drive the mama bear back into the woods.

Well, that was a bad idea. As soon as we fired up the chain saws she looked at us and started heading our way. We turned off the saws and got in the truck and proceeded to leave the vicinity. Big Mike ain't arguing with no bears. We came back the following weekend and picked up the wood we cut and never went back to our buddy's farm for wood. We went for many other reasons, most of them debauched, but not for wood.
 
Vaughn McMillan said:
Sounds more like a grizzly instead of a black bear. Yellowstone is one of the few places south of the Canadian border where the two species coexist. I know I'd have been...ahem...defecating clay masonry units...if came face to face with one that big.
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Yeah, but Allen was in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.
 
Mike Stafford said:
My one and only encounter with a bear was with a mama bear and two cubs. A friend and I were cutting wood on another friend's farm located adjacent to the Great Dismal Swamp. A mama bear came out of the woods followed closely by her cubs. She was perhaps 100 yards away.
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I've encountered black bears in Alaska, Washington, California, Tennessee, West Virginia, and North Carolina over the years. About ten years ago we had one in the back yard here in Ohio. Never had an aggressive confrontation, though. Kinda exciting just coming across them in the wild, though.
 
I'm offended a little that some here think city boys are soft
I ran a pharmacy in one of the top 3 zip codes for crime in america
I went to work everyday with a sw chiefs special strapped to my ankle and a Glock 9 mm strapped to my waist and a moss berg 500 clamped under the rx counter
I've dealt with some of the worst gang members convicts drug addicts shop lifters and every other type of dangerous type
Getting used to a bear visiting every now and then seems like a much less stressful and safe lifestyle
My wife was glad when illness forced me to retire
I don't like snakes or sharks and huge animals in my personal space is always gonna be a bit unnerving if that's the right word
 
Vaughn McMillan said:
It's always pretty easy to tell the city boys from the country boys. :rofl:
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When I first moved to Nevada, well, me and snakes did not get along very well. I've since learned to identify them and have gotten an appreciation for some of the different snakes we have here.

Still don't like the rattlers very much, but we've come to an agreement that if they stay away, they can stay alive. Truth be told, I have let a few live and have just 'sprayed them away' with the garden hose. Must be getting soft in my old age
 
Jim DeLaney said:
Yeah, but Allen was in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.
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My mistake...I was thinking of another friend who was recently at Yellowstone. :doh:
allen levine said:
I'm offended a little that some here think city boys are soft...
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It was a joke, Allen. ;) I've been both a country boy and a city boy. I know very well that the two face different challenges and threats. As a city boy these days living in a city that's regularly in the top 5 most violent cities in the US, I carry a handgun nearly everywhere I go these days, as does my wife (and she doesn't even enjoy shooting). I also teach and certify others to carry, and most importantly, I train regularly how to defend myself with a handgun (which involves much more than just standing still shooting at bullseyes on a piece of paper). One thing I've learned since I became a firearms instructor is that very few people in this country who carry are well-trained when it comes to real-life defensive situations. ;)
 
I learned to shoot in an indoor range
Every Monday was my day off from work and even though the range was closed for public the instructor for ny court guards let me shoot as long as I followed their instructions and didn't shoot when instructor was talking
They made you run in place for 10 minutes spin around several times shut lights off and on and sometimes put on a blistering siren
It was all done to make one train under a bit of stress by getting your heart rate up and then trying to get you flustered and then take gun out of holster to shoot

Pretty interesting but not enough shooting for me
 
It's good that you could shoot at a place that would let you draw from a holster. :thumb: Most public ranges don't allow shooting from the draw, and that's a critical part of defensive shooting.
 
My college classes often took field trips to Cicero swamp, home to another small rattler, the Eastern Massasauga, or pygmy rattlesnake. Walking on a bouncing bog studying the various plant species that lived there was interesting enough and the prof made sure we kept our eyes on the ground by mentioning the slithering things that lived there.

To continue the thread drift, with apologies to Mike, I earned a 'shoot from the draw' card from my range after passing a 50 round live fire exam. I really don't practise enough and am thinking of something from Mantis to help with dry fire training. Anybody have any experience with it?
 
I used to compete in Action Pistol and the initial draw was quite important to get off to a good start. The same course that held the competitions allowed us to practice the draw. I haven't practiced drawing in quite a while.

I have done some shooting but not Action Pistol. I don't feel that I can depend on my hands for that particular event.
 
Ted Calver said:
...To continue the thread drift, with apologies to Mike, I earned a shoot from the draw card from my range after passing a 50 round live fire exam. I really don't practise enough and am thinking of something from Mantis to help with dry fire training. Anybody have any experience with it?
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I've not used the Mantis, but I do have an iTarget setup that I use from time to time. It has been useful for students who are having trouble with the concept of sight picture, or issues with getting accustomed to a red dot holographic sight. We can do "target practice" in my living room. :thumb: I think one advantage to the Mantis system is that is can be used to analyze your movements during live fire. It looks like they also have dry fire only product available as well.

Our local indoor range allows drawing from the holster only after you have taken their one-hour "Draw Course" for $40, and you have to re-do it annually. The city-owned outdoor public range doesn't allow holster draw at all at the public range, but lets instructors and their students do it at the private ranges they have available. That's where we shoot with my club. In addition to shooting from the draw, we can shoot on the move, from behind cover, and at moving targets.
 
Decades ago I did dot shooting
Standing 21 feet from dot targets and using 22 s trying to hit dots the size of the caliber
I have a bull nosed barrel( I believe that's what it's called) mk ll ruger with a custom molded grip
I think the dot shooters association went broke? A long time ago but I still have targets
Most difficult precise shooting
Scored points if you touched a dot
 
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