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The dangerous game in North America is a short list:

Grizzly Bear/ Brown Bear

Polar Bear

Mountain Lion

Black Bear

I agree that the Brown Bear and Grizzly bear are the same genetically. They differ only in that Brown has a great source of food for an extended period of time and is less tempermental than interior Grizzlies. Each bear has their own personality and finding out which each one has would be dangerous. Polar bears are at the top of an isolated food chain and exhibit little fear as everything they come across has the potential to be a meal and not a threat to them. Given the choice, I would rather get into it with a black bear as my odds of survival go up exponentially. I have had them climb onto my porch. I have had them get into my garage, and I have driven them away with handball sized rocks!

A mountain lion could be a ripper if it latched onto you and got those back legs engaged in the Arkansas Cultivator mode.

Then there are others that due to their numbers, like whitetail deer, cause more incidents per year than the bears that are not dangerous game. If the bear populations were identical to that of the whitetail, I think all of us would be shooting bears and the whitetail would not even be a thought.

That being said, I wish I had pictures of a man who worked on the North Slope and was attacked by a Polar Bear while in his living quarters. I know some of the docs that treated him and I can tell you his physical injuries were severe. This would include the loss of his lower and upper dentures. He also had one of the bears canines pierce his Radial Nerve and lose the use of his hand. The dentures did turn up in the bears stomach upon autopsy but for some reason the guy wanted a new pair. Go figure!

I have had grizzlies stalk me. I have had them lay in wait for me while caribou hunting, and I have had them false charge me. The one time I think was the most dangerous was a sow with 3 cubs that were about 150 pounds each. She smelled me and considered me a threat to her cubs. Fortunately, we got the boat off the bank ASAP and left about the same time she scooted into the brush on the same trail I came out on. We measured her height against a tree where she stood up after she left and it was well above my outstretched arm by a foot. So she was 9' tall standing!

2 days later I had a grizzly respond and come into a cow moose call using just my voice and my hands from over a 1/4 mile away. Be ready as they think you are food and in the dusk it can tell you that tense is an understatement.

I still have not had to shoot one yet. I would stand by my list in the order it is presented.

577/500WR

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Most folks nowadays think talking about guns is a perversity. I view the old guns as being a record of the industrial revolution transforming the ordinary into high art and functionality.

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