Torch advice

[Mortblanc]

Well yea there was a firearm involved but I was in an area where shooting would be a bit of a hazard for those around me while a bear squealing and running through the woods with a bloody nose would just be conversation for the next night's campfire.

All this is done through the tent wall and bears are not the brightest critters in the world and sometimes fail to make the connection between the whack on the nose and the presence of a mere human inside the tent.

Of course every year someone gets dragged out of their tent sleeping bag and all, carted off to the woods and consumed like a down wrapped Slim Jim, but that is because they were equipped with a dinky little LED light and not a good sturdy light capable of properly denting a bear's skull.

You guys don't have to deal with bears, coyotes, panthers and other assorted predators. You just get to where you deal with them and carry on. We had two out of the three with us this weekend. No mountain lions were available but you really never know. They like to hide and jump out on your back, so you do not know they are there until they sink their teeth into the back of your neck.

The bears and coyotes were thick. It is getting to be that way all over the eastern U.S. I camped in the same area back in 2001 and neither animal was common. This year they were everywhere. The little wolves had our camp surrounded for most of the weekend and made the night sounds a real chorus or howls.