Bear trail and Mag Charger

Bear Trail and Mag Charger

Summer vacation is here! Two weeks of it I am going to spend in a little rustic cabin with no electricity or plumbing, deep in the Adirondacks Mountains.
My intentions are to fly fish for brook and rainbow trout a little creek that is 15 minutes of hiking away from the cabin .

This hike is going to be thru a wildlife trail; actually mostly a bear trail as deduced by the tracks, droppings, and scarred "bear post" trees along the trail.
The area usually has plenty of blueberries and the trail is used by the bears to go down to the creek for drinking, frogs, turtles and maybe even fishing too.

Fly fishing is always best in the very early morning and also at dusk, so I am planning to navigate this trail in the dark with the help of a Mag Charger stock except for the two new AeroNimhs battery packs that I recently got from Ginseng.
Since I don't have electricity in the cabin to recharge the batteries I was very concerned about how long the batteries where going to last.
After conditioning the packs through Ginseng instructions, I set out to find out for how long the batteries will run using the stock bulb.

I put a strip of masking tape along the body of the flashlight and ran it in 15 minutes cycles while watching television.
Fifteen minutes running and fifteen minutes resting and for each cycle I made a red mark in the masking tape.
When the light started to get yellow, I stopped and put it back in the recharger.
What I got was 8 marks indicating 2 hour of light for each AeroNimh stick.

The 16 marks let me know that I can navigate that trail for seven days and I will still have a half hour of life left in the second stick.
Another Mag Charger with two stock battery sticks will take over the second week. This is also the light that I have inside the cabin for when I have to go to the outhouse or the woodpile.

The Mag Charger will be not the only light that I will have with me on the trail. A Princeton Tec Aurora headlamp is going to be on my head, switched on all the time that I hike and also invaluable for setting up the reels and rods and tying flies before daylight.
In a Surefire holster I will carry my L-1 McGizmo PR T 917 Luxeon III which its two light levels. It will be really good in case something happened to the Mag Charger.
Why the Mag Charger and not something more handy?
Well, since my left hand will be occupied by carrying a flashlight anyway, why not make it a heavy and powerful Mag Charger that also can be used as a club in case of attack by one of those bears that frequent the trail?
Of course I also carry a Peacemaker of heavy caliber just in case a strong light is not enough to convince the bears to let me go by.
I am also carrying two rods, a backpack with extra reels, landing net, waders, thermos, camera, etc, so I will be so heavy and encumbered that in case of a confrontation my best bet will be to stand my ground and place the heavy Mag in my left shoulder. In that position it will illuminate the sights on the gun in my right outstretched hand and the target.
Of course I prefer not to have a confrontation, but is better to be prepared, as I well remember that years ago, two of my fishing friends spend a very miserable night in a boat in the middle of a lake been eating alive by mosquitoes, while a black bear on shore was destroying the tent and munching on camp supplies.
A good flashlight and a gun will have made a very big difference that night, and those friends after having learned the hard way are now carrying both guns and flashlights when out in the woods.

Juan C.

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juancho said:
Why the Mag Charger and not something more handy?
Well, since my left hand will be occupied by carrying a flashlight anyway, why not make it a heavy and powerful Mag Charger that also can be used as a club in case of attack by one of those bears that frequent the trail?
Of course I also carry a Peacemaker of heavy caliber just in case a strong light is not enough to convince the bears to let me go by.
I am also carrying two rods, a backpack with extra reels, landing net, waders, thermos, camera, etc,

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Hey Juancho: Leave that big honkin' flashlight at home and take a couple beers. For god's sake, you're on vacation! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

juancho,
I sounds to me like you've got it covered. When I'm in bear country I take a S&W Mountain Gun in 44 mag and a Surefire M6. If I can afford the weight and size I bring out the big guns. Headlamps are a given.

Take a small solar panel and a 12V charger to the cabin and you can keep your light charged. A tigerlight would be better than the mag, not just because it's a better light but because it also has pepper spray.

pepper spray a bear
ha ha not me

Better than hitting him with a maglight. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif

Sotto: The beer is also in the back-pack

Hoghead: My "peacemaker" is a Colt Anaconda .44 Mag. with a 4" barrel, I have been bothering the people at Crimson Trace to make a laser grip for it. So far no luck.
But you can get one already made for the S&W.

josey: The 12 volt solar charger is a great idea!! I am going to get one and put it in the picknick table right next to my solar-shower. Thank you for the tip.

Juan C.

Juancho:

I think Brunton makes a solar battery charger already made up and ready to fly. I have one around here someplace in case TSHTF.

[ QUOTE ]
markdi said:
pepper spray a bear
ha ha not me

[/ QUOTE ]

Actual bear spray is actually very effective at stopping bears. There seem to be more people that used OC to stop bear attacks, than those who used their forty fours. Of course, I'd still take along both, a nice big can of bear repellant, and a hot loaded Ruger .45 Colt (I will have one of those eventually).

For the people that fly and want to take bear spray with them, I have heard that it is not allowed in airplanes, not even as cargo.
So you must plan to purchase it at the place of arrival or send it by mail to your destination ahead of time.

Juan C.

Lugging a Magcharger up and down a trail for even 15 minutes seems like way more hassle than it's worth. I bet you'll leave it in the cabin after just one hike with it. Just stick with that lightweight LED headlamp and stick a more powerful light (e.g. your PR-T 917) in your pocket in case you need to look at something far away. That should be plenty of lights.

Paulr: Yes, normally for hiking a trail a headlamp will suffice, but this trail and the adjacent terrain with the berry patches and cool thick underbrush is bear paradise.
I have a lot of respect for black bears after hunting and studying them for thirty years. I'll never know if I am going to find one with a chip on his shoulder or a mother bear with cubs that will object to my presence in their domain.

Last year I felt inadequate using a Surefire 6P. The fourth day of the first week one of them put an show of displeasure by trashing a bush while growling for the space of about 15 second, fifteen centuries for me that I could not locate it with my light in that very narrow trail.

I don't know if a more powerful light will have made a difference, but I know that I don't want to be again in the situation of wondering about it.
What I want is a powerful enough light that will give them plenty of warning of my approach, so they can get out of the way.
Having close encounters with bears in a dark trail is not my idea of a vacation, but the fishing in this particular spot is so very good that I have to take some risk to enjoy it.
So making this trail less dark is one of my priorities, and if it takes a heavy flashlight to accomplish it, so be it.

Also is the question of logistic and cost. Last year in the 2 weeks I stayed there I spent 16 123's batteries, 14 for the 6-P and 2 for my E2e back-up, also a P-60 lamp had to be replaced.
Also the cabin had a porch that overlooked the small meadow. At the far end, 114 yards away (by Rangefinder), is the dump where I dispose of the scraps of food and other refuse. Those scraps contain a lot of fish parts that attract bears and raccoons and also coyotes and porcupines.
With the 6P I could see the shine of their eyes at night but the light was insufficient to show a body. I could only deduct what they where after checking the tracks.
The more powerful MagCharger with the longer reach will be ideal to illuminate that dump, especially after the little flashlight holder I made for my camera tripod using a piece of wood and an auto hose clamp.
I can direct the light exactly and I can watch with a binocular the feeding show, all that while sitting in my rocking chair from the porch.
So, Paulr, here you have my reasons for selecting the MagCharger.

Juan C.

Hoghead: I have been wanting to ask you how much running time I can get out of the Surefire M-6 before thermal shutdown?

Juan C.

[ QUOTE ]
juancho said:
What I want is a powerful enough light that will give them plenty of warning of my approach, so they can get out of the way.


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Juancho-
You might take a lesson from travelers in Grizzly country. It's standard practice out there to carry some sort of noise-maker to give warning to bears that a human is coming down the trail. Especially for mother bears with cubs. A gadget such as a tin can with a few pebbles inside can be heard by a bear for some distance.

Of course bears have poor eyesight and great hearing. But a big flashlight wouldn't hurt I suppose. Of course, a black bear can cave in a cow skull with one good blow.....and maybe yours, too, if you were to enrage him by hitting him with a Maglite.

StuU : Why you think he will be enraged if I hit him with the Maglite? The Bear knows about the boycott to the Mag Company? Have him had trouble with Maglite's lawyers?
Do you think that he will be happy if I hit him with a pricey Surefire M-6?

Juan C

Hilarious.... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif

juancho,

I haven't had thermal shutdown /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif I have read that it happens, I think I read 7 minutes. When I use a light this bright, it's just to spot something and I doubt if I've run it for more than 5 minutes at a time. I used to use the MN21, but I usually use the MN20 most of the time now. Roth was surprised when he saw that I had the MN20 in my M6, but it works for me.

How is bear spray differnt from "human spray", ie Fox 5,300,000 SHU? I suspect it's ordinary OC spray in a bigger canister, hyped as something especially effective on bears.

Brightnorm

[ QUOTE ]
brightnorm said:
How is bear spray differnt from "human spray", ie Fox 5,300,000 SHU? I suspect it's ordinary OC spray in a bigger canister, hyped as something especially effective on bears.

Brightnorm

[/ QUOTE ]

It used to be this way until the FDA got involved. I can't remember their reasoning, but for any OC to be labled as a bear repellant it must meet a certain percentage of capcicanoids(sp) I'm guessing their name for oleoresin capcicaisin, the hot stuff. Not the percentage you find on normal defense sprays though. It was actually a good thing as now you know that there is some consistancy and minimum standards for bear spray.

[ QUOTE ]
juancho said:
StuU : Why you think he will be enraged if I hit him with the Maglite? The Bear knows about the boycott to the Mag Company? Have him had trouble with Maglite's lawyers?
Do you think that he will be happy if I hit him with a pricey Surefire M-6?
Juan C

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Maybe you should bring along a green laser. The bears reaction to being painted with an intense green beam could get interesting. And much classier than being flashed with a M@glite. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif