A public service announcement that in a study, the most dangerous animal to Americans was determined to be the deer, due to traffic accidents caused by or involving deer. Give those sweet looking deer a wide bearth.
2 Likes
I lived in Western Canada for a couple of years (long ago) and encountered many, many bears in the Rockies. One vivid memory was hiking g around a blind curve and meeting a bear face to face (yes, within three or four feet!) That bear appeared more rattled than I was and scurried off lickety split. Also remember X-country skiing along a narrow valley bottom one late afternoon and thinking āwhy are these dogs way out here in the middle of nowhere?ā Before realizing the line of canines silently filing by, parellel to my path (Iād say around 50 feet away) were not dogs! A stunning sight Iāll never forget.
I had a few close calls with men in my younger days. Yup, definitely
more afraid of two-legged predatorsā¦
7 Likes
Iāve fallen a few times too but never been seriously injured. Itās scary though!
Once I was stung by a hornet, that sucked 
The question keeps coming up, that people are not assessing risk accurately. And I get that; lots of things people worry about are not things I think warrant that much worry.
But the initial question is about relative risk, not absolute risk. Yes, youāre not that likely to be assaulted by any individual man on the trail. But you ARE more likely to be assaulted by the man, than a bear.
And thatās because overall, hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted by men every year, in one place or another. And we know that. And yes, prudent precautions are necessary. BECAUSE ASSESSING THE RISK MEANS BEING CAREFUL AROUND MEN WHEN VULNERABLE.
So I think the risk assessing in this thread is accurate. Even if cars are more dangerous, statistically, men are also. I will still get in cars, I will still love the guys in my life. But I can read statistics and i KNOW that bears arenāt the issueā¦or deer.
14 Likes
Exactly.
One example is that many families today are afraid of child abductions, and therefore refuse to let their children play outside by themselves. The reality is that child abductions are way down over the last several decades, and when it happens, itās almost always a family member. The odds of a child abduction by a stranger is vanishingly small.
3 Likes
Yep. But fear of it has changed the way an entire generation was raised and immeasurably increased anxiety levels.
3 Likes
When my D was about 13 she was performing in a ballet in a large university town (about an hour from where we live). In a short break during dress rehearsals the dancers would walk the block or so from the theater to a Panera, in ballet tights and leotards but wearing ballet skirts and jackets etc. I was walking RIGHT BESIDE my D past a frat house where some young partying on the roof (opened beers) looked down and cat-called my D (who, by the way, didnāt look more than her 13 years). Just Wow! It took her quite awhile to become enthused about going away to college one day. (glad to say she fully recovered and is doing just fine).
2 Likes
Actually, absolute risk is what is relevant to most people. Your risk of getting hit by lightning is higher than that of being struck by a meteor, but both are so tiny that most people donāt worry much, or alter their behavior for either.
As I recall, we agreed about the child abduction issue on past threads. I get where you are coming from. But stranger assaults of women are hundreds of times more common. And a heck of a lot more common than either lightning strikes or meteor hits. And you know that.
6 Likes
Yes, they are, but oneās chances of such assault in any one random encounter are very, very small.
It would be different if you were engaged in thousands of encounters on the trail, or if they were not random. But as far as I know, hikers are not more likely to be criminals than any other person.
1 Like
And a personās risk of being struck by lightning is far greater than an unarmed personās risk of being shot by police, but many worry about the latter and not the former.
7 Likes
I agree. Again, just more likely than the bear.
Have a great evening!
1 Like
But if she found herself in a situation where she did have to be out alone late at night or in a crime-ridden neighborhood (not all people have a choice about that) would you rather she encounter a man or a woman on a deserted street?
3 Likes
Seriously, the risk that any one random person she encounters one time is a serial killer or rapist is not worth worrying about. I would hope that she doesnāt increase that risk by either 1. having many such random encounters, or 2. that it doesnāt occur in a crime-ridden neighborhood, which is not a random place like a hiking trail.
Unless you consider hikers dangerous. I never heard of such a correlation.
In a"crime-ridden" neighborhood, as usually defined, that means the risk of personal crime is high,and since statistically most criminals are male, she would be better off encountering a female to lessen that risk. Even in such places, the odds are in her favor regardless. I do like statistics.
2 Likes
I think fear is not always data-driven or 100% rational but it is powerful nonetheless. Part of it, I think, has to do with qualitative things beyond just facts. Yes, I know Iām more likely to die in a car crash than many other things, and such a death could be instantaneous or incur terrible suffering. But somehow, I think Iād still much rather die in a car crash than be tortured, raped and perhaps murdered at the hands of a fellow human being.
Iāve done a lot of adventurous things in my long life and taken a lot of chances (some involving months of solo travel in pretty remote places at a time when cell phones were not a thing and no one in the world knew where I was. And as I said, I had various close calls that I always got out of.
But in my late thirties I was acquainted with a woman (not a close friend, but we were friendly) who was at least as adventurous as me, and stronger. She was almost six feet tall, athletic, assertive, intelligent. Had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia. Knew her way around. In the saddest irony possible, she attended a conference on violence to women (she was in a joint social work/public health grad program). Left the program for the day with her friend (in summer, so there were still hours of light left). Tney parted in a part of this city that was full of cars and pedestrians. She was to catch public transportation one block away to go straight her apartment a couple of miles away. At some point, somehow, she disappeared. Her body was discovered about three days later in an abandoned industrial /warehouse area some twenty miles away in the outskirts. The autopsy showed she had been raped and tortured for most of that time. Iād take a car accident any day.
Yes, this was a freak thing. Yes, it is unlikely to happen to me or to you. Yes, itās just one more meaningless anecdote to you. No, it didnāt paralyze me for life, or turn me into a person who takes no chances. But Iād be lying if I said it didnāt change my decisions about what I do and how I do them, or change my former perception of relative safety if one is just careful and savvy enough.
18 Likes
I once ran into a bee while running - and got stung on my eyelid!! That sucked. After about 70,000 miles Iāve seen a lot! But I know myself to know that running on trails is a bad idea. I have no ankle mobility and canāt correct myself if I have a bad step.
1 Like
The threat of deer on the roads does scare the crap out of me. Pretty much everyone who lives in the county will hit one at some point. All of our county roads are blind hills, blind curves, no shoulder, and 55mph. No chance to see them. A coworkers son hit one, flipped and hit a tree. He was horribly hurt, but lived. However, his best friend next to him died. And it took quite some time to extract them. Canāt imagine how horrible that was for everyone involved.
3 Likes
Hikers tend to be fine. But not all guys in the woods are hikers.
We have a cabin in a rural area of our state. Sometimes my cellphone gets a bar, sometimes none. We are half a mile from a trailer park. I know a fair amount about some of the residents in the area through word of mouth and other ways, and some of it isnāt good. There are problems with drugs, domestic abuse, untreated mental illness. There was a guy rumored to be a serial child molester in town, until a dad took matters into his own hands and beat him to death recently.
I still stay alone at the cabin sometimes. I still walk in the woods by myself. I have game cams and keep an eye on them. When I see pics of the bears, I smile. When the game cams capture a dude, I donāt.
9 Likes
Yes! Our game cam usually captures deer but last fall there was a guy who showed up two days in a row. Itās disconcerting because our cabin is 1/2 mile up a very steep hill, and thereās a gate at the bottom. Our property isnāt posted so he wasnāt trespassing, but what was he doing there?? Itās hard to describe how remote our place is.
4 Likes
I was with three other people hiking above the treeline in Denali. We spotted a mother grizzly not terribly far away with two cubs! Not recommended ā¦but still thrilling! Fortunately there was a bit of a gully between us. The gully woudnāt have been a real deterrent but fortunately it seems it was just enough of a barrier to keep wary mother bear (who was very aware of us) from feeling too threatened or aggressive. A good thing because we were miles away from help should we have needed it!
2 Likes