Changing the topic to bear spray, I'll share the following story about it's effectiveness.
Once upon a time we had a cougar working the neighborhood regularly enough that it caused our neighbors enough concern they were considering purchasing a firearm to carry while they walked their ancient Golden Lab around the semi-rural area we call home. As they'd been traditionally anti-firearm of all sorts and had no clue how long it'd take them to legally acquire said arms up here in the so civilized north, I offered them a spare can of bear repellent.
This turned out to be fortuitous as one can only imagine what would've resulted if I'd loaned them say a 1911...
For reasons that were not clear to anyone relating the tale of woe after the fact, the safety tab was almost immediately discarded. Somehow in the narrow stairwell of their home, when the innocent senior citizen Lab and the neighbor's wife were descending said said stairwell, the can came out of her jacket pocket and as it bounced on each stair managed to go off directly into both the lady and the dog.
Perhaps now is the time to say neither occupant of the stairwell would have been considered a "small specimen", so then the gentle reader can better envision a large ancient Golden Lab attempting to run up the stairs to escape the demon mist which his formerly loving master was unleashing on him.
Honestly when she was telling me the story it was all I could do to keep it together. I will admit I absolutely could not when I relayed it to our family afterwards......
One daughter kept asking, "But Dad, why would she take the safety off, that doesn't make any sense?"
