A Reddit user from Canada said he wished he could legally carry a pistol in the bush because, in his words, there was “no shortage of predators” where he lived. Then he dropped the kind of story that makes you understand exactly why. He wrote that among all the dangerous animal encounters he had already had, one of the worst was being stalked by a mountain lion for about 45 minutes. He said he did have a rifle with him at the time, which is probably the only reason the story did not get even uglier, but the cat stayed with him long enough that he clearly had plenty of time to think about how bad it could go. In the end, he said the lion turned away before he had to shoot it. That was the whole point of his comment: he had the rifle, the cat stayed on him long enough to make it real, and he still came away thinking a pistol would have been far handier than a heavy long gun in a moment like that.
What made his comment even crazier was that he came back and edited it after the fact with a second story from literally the next day. He wrote that after posting about the lion encounter, he went out and hiked for nine hours without seeing a single deer. But that did not mean it was a quiet day. According to his edit, he got bluff-charged by a black bear with her two cubs. He used that as his “case in point,” basically saying this was exactly why he hated not being allowed to carry a sidearm in the bush. One day he is talking about a lion stalking him for 45 minutes. The next day he is out for a long hike and winds up dealing with a sow black bear coming in with cubs behind her.
He added one more line that kind of tied the whole thing together: he said he sees nearly as many predators as game animals, and he usually hikes way out away from other hunters. That matters because it tells you the kind of country he is talking about. This was not a story about seeing a cat near a subdivision trailhead or bumping into a bear close to a campground. He was talking about being deep enough in the bush that the weight and awkwardness of a rifle start to matter, especially if something big and fast decides to stay with you instead of vanish the second it sees a human.
The rest of the thread filled in that same general picture. Another commenter from Alberta said he carries an older 30-30 everywhere in the bush because he has been charged by bears while fishing, had a bear run between him and his brother on ATVs, and been stalked by wolves, and he agreed that a handgun would be quicker and easier to access than a rifle on his back. But the original commenter’s account was the one that really stuck: a lion following him long enough to call it stalking, a rifle in hand the whole time, and then a bluff charge from a black bear with cubs the very next day after a nine-hour hike.
So the story he told was basically this: he spends enough time in predator country that seeing dangerous animals is almost routine, but even by his standards, being stalked by a mountain lion for about 45 minutes was bad enough. He had a rifle, the cat eventually turned away, and he did not have to shoot. Then, almost unbelievably, he came back the next day to say he had just been bluff-charged by a black bear with two cubs after hiking all day. That is the kind of one-two stretch that makes a guy sound pretty serious when he says he wishes he had a pistol on him every time he heads into the bush.
What do you think — if you had already spent 45 minutes being stalked by a mountain lion and then got bluff-charged by a sow black bear with cubs the very next day, would you still feel comfortable heading back out with only a rifle?
Original Reddit post: To the guy that was looking for it. That’s a crazy ass situation to be in.
