by AlmostThere » Mon Apr 23, 2018 4:04 pm
People will ask me why it's illegal in Yosemite to have bear spray. Just imagine a hundred people standing on a trail photographing a bear that is foraging and completely ignoring those people. That is Yosemite front country, ie the valley floor and campgrounds. The bear gets bored and walks off eventually. Idiots will sort of follow along taking more pictures until it goes somewhere they cannot.
In the backcountry, you drive them off and they go. Unless you are an idiot and ignore safe food storage regulations, and then you get to watch the bear take your food. And if the ranger comes along and fines you that $5000 you deserve to pay every single penny of it, because it's completely, absolutely, unquestionably unnecessary for you to be storing food carelessly or illegally to create that situation in the first place, when they will rent you a bear canister for next to nothing. The bears in Yosemite, when they get food, become bolder, and eventually more aggressive. And because that is the case, they are micro-managed, and if they are aggressive toward people to get food, they are shot, dead, done. And THAT is why food storage is so very critical. You let them get food, you train them to be unafraid, they become aggressive, they die. So bear spray is totally unnecessary.
And if you are dumb enough to tote around bear spray, try to use it, have it backfire on you because you were panicked and send people to the hospital? Guess what, you get tossed in Yosemite's jail, or fined for having a weapon, or both, because yes, it is illegal and yes, it should be.