What do you Carry for Protection on the Trail?

[icemanat95]

Unless one has taken the time and trouble to learn how to use them properly, "protection" aids such as mace, knives, etc. might help your peace of mind, but in fact, probably pose an equal threat to the owner. The single best tool for self-protection in the backcountry is simple commnn sense.

For the most part Jack is right.

Carrying a weapon, any weapon, without reasonable preparation and training, both mental and physical, is of marginal defensive value. Yes, even a marginally trained person can use a firearm effectively for self-defense IF they have enough time and distance between themselves and the bad guy to overcome their lack of muscle-memory level proficiency. Time and distance can be a rare thing in self-defense situations. An angry dog, or violent human can cover 50 feet from a standing stop in less than 2 seconds. How long will it take you to get that big sheath knife, can of mace or gun out of the depths of your pack. or even out of a belt pack if you haven't practiced, practiced, practiced until you can do it instantly and with little conscious thought. That goes for any and all weapons.

Now with that out of the way, you have less need of a defensive weapon on the AT than you have of one on the streets of your home town. Monastaries and abbeys are probably less safe than the AT (at least as far as human predation is concerned.) Animal threats are minimal on the AT as well. The loose dogs you find roaming the streets of your home town are more of a threat than the wild animals along the AT.

Common sense, both on the streets and on the trail, is your single best defensive tool. Just stay aware of what's going on around you and pay attention to your instincts. If your gut tells you things ain't right, they are probably right and it's time to get into a friendly crowd or beat feet. Generally a thru-hiker is going to be in better condition and more certain of their footing in the woods than your average cretin, so running away is probably a real good option.

What do I carry for defense on the trail? Usually not a damned thing except a prepared mind. Chance favors the prepared mind.

Truly, do not get yourself all wrapped around a post over this issue, it is a non-issue on the trail...or maybe not a non-issue, but almost inconsequential.

[Footslogger]

Just carry your common sense and instincts with you and follow them ...

[illininagel]

It's kind of scary to think that 8 people have already responded that they carry guns on their hike.

[oyvay]

Well, the lubricated ones are quite good....oh wait wrong protection
Anyone who knits can tell you metal needles number 1, 2, 3 or 4 will puncture in the skin that will take a good 3 months or so to heal. Beware of "Hell's Knitters!"
According to airport security a pair of nail clippers will do some damage, why else would they be confiscating thousands of them since 9/11.

[Kozmic Zian]

Yea......protection. Heavy boot.

[weary]

Self protection on the trail appears to be a controversial subject, but I wonder just how significant it really is. Please vote and let us all know.

I can't vote, because your choices leave out the only right answer, probably because nature made it a part of every hiker's gear. The only protection device that is remotely useful is your brain.

Weary

[Freeze]

When it comes to personal protection on the trail, I adhere to this very simple principle: A good offense is the best form of defense. If I see someone who could be a potential threat, I will launch a preemptive strike and neutralize that threat. Just in case. You can never be too careful. Now, if we are talking about a bear, boar, or your typical 6’4’’, 250 pound linebacker type guy, then that is another story. Run forest! Run!
I don’t know. Never really gave protection on the trail a thought. I kind of feel safer out in the woods than in this urban jungle. Except for the Blair Witch.

[jec6613]

I never have carried protection but once, and that was for people and not animals when I was going to cut across an urban area (small can of mace). There are some situations where I'd carry something a bit more serious, but I can't think of any way to make those come up. If I ever felt the need to, and I don't much see the point in carrying pepper spray, a knife or a Glock. Basically, if you needed to protect yourself against wildlife (humans are different, obviously) pepper spray would be less effective than good old fashioned noisemaking, a knife is completely pointless since the animal is already close enough to have seriously injured you and very few handguns or rifles would stop an animal large enough and agressive enough for a person to need to use a weapon.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that if you ever need to use a weapon, then fine, but what any hiker would carry would be rediculously underpowered compared to what would be necessary to make any sort of a difference, and if you're carrying a weapon of the necessary firepower (about a .44 Magnum and up) then that's adding 4 pounds plus a holster plus additional ammunition and cleaning supplies to whatever you're carrying, minimum, and even more if you get into what are really the proper weapons to defend against charging wildlife, such as the Colt-Walker or dragoon pistols.

[Thomas Hughes]

I don't think that anyone should carry a Colt-Walker. That's a bit old fashened. That leg cannon is a cavelry weapon anyway. And, it's a blackpowder weapon at that. I feel at ease when I carry my pistol when I'm out. I don't think that person needs to have a .44 mag. for taking big game animals. I think a person shouldn't carry fire arm unless he/she knows how to us the thing, knows when to use it too. As far as taking care of one out in the sticks, just keep it oiled, small can of WD/40 when your in a pinch. Ammo, don't shoot a lot, don't need a lot. I wouldn't freak out if I saw a person with one on there hip. In general, if the person is carring on his hip, he an't going to use it on you. Crimenals tend not to bradcast that they have a gun to use it one you. I'm a git surprised that a lot of fulks here are freaked out by them.

[jec6613]

Well, if you carry it for personal comfort, that's one thing, but if a bear's charging at you, you could empty the entire magazine of a Glock 9mm or Beretta M9 and not stop it, and it would take quite a few rpunds out of a pistol firing .45 ACP that you may or may not have in the clip depending on which weapon you bring.

The reason I mentioned the old black powder Colt-Walker or single shot dragoon pistol is that you don't need to buy special ammo (like you do with a .44) to stop a bear, the old fashioned lead ball is enough since it's traveling slow enough but yet with enough kinetic energy to stop a bear dead in its tracks, and black powder is preferable since even the bear is intimidated by it, not so if it's smokeless. That's the real big advantage to carrying black powder for protection: anything, whether it be bear, person or moose or squirrel is scared of black powder much more than by smokeless.

[Kozmic Zian]

LEKI 138cm defense specials. IMHO, if i ever ran into someone with a gun on the trail i would leave immediately and not look back. i dont care if youre a policeman or a soldier or whatever. no guns necessary. IMHO.
walkon

Yea.....I thought we'd been thru this, before. Sorry guys, but the AT and LDH Trails just are not the place or forum for gun carrying. Go to the forums at MSNBC or some of the others on the WEB. Maybe a NRA forum. I'll say it again, If you're carrying a hand gun (concealed) on the AT you're breaking the law. Different states have different laws. You go through 14 on a Thru-Hike. You'd be bound to break the law somewhere up The Trail. Even if you have a permit, you have to have a license for all the states, not just the state you're from with the permit. What are you afraid of anyway? Guns are heavy. People who carry them (in a backpack) could't get to it fast enough to help out in a BEAR(?) attack anyway(that's bout the only thing could hurt a human on the AT, too rare to even worry about). All this talk of guns and glocks, and M50's and 44magnums and the like, needs to be elsewhere. AT hikers are not gun carryers. If you want to go hunting, do it in season, with a registered firearm, in an approved location. Hardly, anywhere on State or Federal Lands in this country can you just walk up with a gun and start popping off rounds, anyway. You have to have permission, and be registered for the hunt. If you don't you can't shoot. These gun yahoos get in the woods and just start shooting, even during hunting season. Shoot, shoot, shoot. I wish they'd just shoot each other, then it'd be over with. I'd like to ask them how many shots they actually got at animals. S***, they make so much racket moving through the woods, there'd be nothing to shoot at anyway. Down in FL where I live sometimes, there are pretty good sized State Forest that I hike in. The Hunt Season is way too long, too many hunters, not well enough controled, not enough weapons checks by Rangers,
and to beat that, after the Hunt is over, then about a month later they have another one, black powder, or some ****, then bow season, then muzzle load season and on and on, Jesssse....give me a break. The poor deer are so freeking scared, you never see one. And this is every year, not just once every 5 years. A freekin slaughter. Give me a break. The guns popin' off, scare the **** out of all the wildlife, birds, everything. It's not that the forestry service dosen't make it easy for the hunters or anything, buy dividing the natural forest up into 1 mile square roaded areas, so's they can get their stupid forestry fire equipment up in the woods, so's they can have their 'controlled burns' to make it all look the same(like a southern Pine forest). Go figure that one. Well, I guess I've vented enough. Enough too, bout them damn handguns. The carryers always say in their dumb defense, "It's not the gun that kills the man, but the man behind the gun". Well, that's bull ****! There'd be no killing without the freekin' gun. Period. Handgun proliferation in this country has got to be controlled. What are we a nation at war with each other? You gonna' shoot somebody with you're gun? Go join the Army. You can go to Iraq and have plenty of opportunities. Leave the handguns at home on the Trail.....Be smart. KZ@

[Kozmic Zian]

You got that exactly right, Mr Weary. Thank You.

[jec6613]

Guns are heavy. People who carry them (in a backpack) could't get to it fast enough to help out in a BEAR(?) attack anyway(that's bout the only thing could hurt a human on the AT, too rare to even worry about)

You forget the one animal that can hurt a human on the AT and does more often than any other - another human, and even then a gun is pretty pointless since in most states you couldn't even use it unless they ALSO have a gun and then you'd have to get it out and that takes too darn long. Mace? fine, they're small, light, can be carried on your person in an easily accessible place, and (not to be too stereotypical) might raise the comfort level quite a bit of a woman hiking alone (sorry gals, we guys just don't worry about getting jumped as much).

I'm not going to say that in certain situations hiking you wouldn't want to carry a gun, just not on the AT, and probably not in the entire continental US. Africa sounds like more of the place to carry a high powered handgun and be profecient using it for personal protection, and there too it's more about people not animals.

Oh yeah, as for at least one state you walk through, the only pistol permit that you can have, period, is a concealed carry permit, and you must take a class and be a resident of Connecticut to get it, otherwise you are only allowed to have a pistol on a range or locked in a position outside of the passenger compartment of the vehicle in a case, unloaded with ammunition seperate from the weapon in its own case, and you are not allowed to purchase a pistol without a permit.

[Ramble~On]

Some one asked me if I was going to take a gun with me in 1996.
I thought about it and decided that if I felt I needed a gun I probably shouldn't hike the trail.
I agree that "common sense" is the best protection...
Then again, If I ever come into a situation that scares me I can always take off a sock and wave it around....that ought to do the job nicely
Other than that, the only thing that I have ever felt that posed the possibilty of needing protection from was people's dogs....but that is another can of worms

[JLB]

It's kind of scary to think that 8 people have already responded that they carry guns on their hike.

Why?

Do you think their guns are going to attack you?

[JLB]

AT hikers are not gun carryers.

Yes we are, as you can plainly see by the hikers who saying that they carry.

[JLB]

My self defense weapon is a Smith & Wesson 386SC .357 magnum, with a Scandium frame, and titanium cylinder. At 17oz, it's light, powerful, and safe.

[Jester2000]

I usually drop my pack on anything threatening me. I have found this to be particularly useful when the Southbounders are in heat.

[JLB]

The carryers always say in their dumb defense, "It's not the gun that kills the man, but the man behind the gun". Well, that's bull ****! There'd be no killing without the freekin' gun. Period.

These two women would disagree with you.


2 women hikers found slain on A.T.

Updated July 21, 1996


Two women hikers were found slain June 1st, just off the Appalachian Trail near Skyland Lodge in Shenandoah National Park. The bodies were found on National Trails Day by park authorities who had been alerted a day or so before that the women were overdue from a backpacking trip.

Killed were Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine. They were camped about 1.5 miles from Skyland Lodge, in a spot about 25 yards off the trail near a brook. Their dog, a golden retriever/lab mix named Taj, was found nearby, apparently unharmed. A roll of film found among their belongings was developed, and pictures from that roll have been used in posters seeking information from the public.

Investigators said the women's throats had been cut but officials would not say if the women were sexually assaulted. In a story published Saturday, July 20, the Washington Post reported that FBI officials are considering the possibility that the women were killed by two or more assailants, not one.


So much for the "no guns, no murder" theory.

[funkyfreddy]

These two women would disagree with you.......2 women hikers found slain on A.T. ......Updated July 21, 1996......... So much for the "no guns, no murder" theory.

Yes, the gun toting troll has to repeat over and over again that 2 people were killed near the AT 8 years ago, a trail that millions hike on or cross every year. Pretty lame if you ask me and a poor excuse for illegally carrying a weapon across state lines or in a national park. Sorry, but I have to ask - what do you carry to protect you from your own stupidity? I'm just wondering since you've advertised over and over again in a public forum how you plan on breaking the law.

Please do all of us a favor that like to hike the AT and keep your guns and your fears at home. We get enough hysteria at home and don't need it on the trail, thank you!