I carry bear spray in bear country, but I also carry firearm(s) whenever feasible.
The POINT TO REMEMBER about THIS THREAD is IT'S ABOUT SUMMER-[bleep]-TIME BAKCPACKING... not horsey packing, not dayhiking. It's about an already BURDENED person adding what many of us consider UNNECESSARY additional SUMMERTIME weight when one's trying to pare away ounces everywhere.
...your opinion like your azzhole, but not all opinions are created equal.
Well, Sunshine, I have to bust yer bubble here a bit...
I've done a LOT of alpine miles on shanks pony. Most of them in "summer-[bleep]-time", as you put it, because where I grew up and lived the larger part of my adult life, "summer-[bleep]-time" was all we had. As in June through October, and outside of that you were on skis or snowshoes.
My first bear kill was in August, at point-blank range with a .303 sporter I'd borrowed from my cousin and never expected to see use of until the black bear boiled out of my friend's corn patch at me with blood in his eye. My second defensive use of firearms on a bear was in August across the Freeman River in Alberta's Swan Hills. That bear (which was probably a black, but might have been a sub-adult griz, truth to tell) lived to tell his buddies about it, but it took two 12 gauge slugs in the dirt between his paws at bad-breath distance to change his mind about me being his next Happy Meal.
My only use of pepper spray on a bear was on a mama griz in July at bad-breath distance in Kananaskis with two or perhaps three bawling cubs orbiting around us in tight cover near a trout stream while me and mama both schitt our pants.
Of my 30+ close encounters with aggressive bears, all but one have occurred between July 4 and Labor Day.
So let's not dismiss "summer-[bleep]-time" as a time to not be concerned about bear attacks, Sunshine. Bears have one job from the time they wake up in the spring til the time they go to sleep in the fall: eating. And if you look tasty to a bear, then you're a problem. Moreover, if you look to a bear like you're threatening his food cache, berry patch, or just his general grumpy territory, then you're a problem.
Stephen Herrero's first book, Bear Attacks, opened a whole lot of people's eyes to the ethology of bears, and to the reality that death by bear-ingestion, while rare, is not easily pigeon-holed. If you want to avoid being a bear casualty, you have to learn about bears.
I've spent years and years in bear country, learning about bears. Like BCBrian, I consider my outdoors experience to have been incredibly enriched by being in bear country. But my experience of bears has taught me that there are no absolutes. You can't dismiss black bears as harmless (they kill waaaaay more people than griz, and they eat us, too). You can't say griz are harmless at some time and harmful at others. There's no easy solutions.
I have never been mugged, but I carry a handgun every day and train with my handguns in preparation for such a possibility. I have never had my car catch fire, but I keep a fire extinguisher in each of my vehicles in anticipation of such an eventuality.
I have never been mauled by a bear, but I've been closer to being mauled and/or hunted and eaten by a bear than I have to being mugged or burning my car up. And when I go into bear country, whether it's "summer-[bleep]-time" on the Appalachian Trail, or the height of elk season in the high country along the Great Divide, I carry everything I'm authorized to carry to deal with bruin and I make no apologies for doing so.
That usually means a medium-bore rifle or short-barrel 12-gauge long arm with a .45 caliber revolver on my hip, and a couple of cans of pepper spray on my other hip. And my kids will each have a can of bear spray, and one or more of them will have a revolver or a shotgun.
You want to trust your life to bear spray? Be my guest. It's better than nothing, I'll give you that. But bear spray, a slug gun, and a .45 Colt gives you mo-bettah options.
