He may have an irrational fear of bears too. I'm seeing that a lot. Lot of these guys see bears and think vicious predator because of all the "I survived" shows and stuff like that. There's been an awful lot of mansplaining about bears, which has been funny.

To them, random bear is always a grizzly. It can't be a black bear, which are easily frightened, or a sun bear, which are extremely docile and about the size of the average woman (standing and weight).

I grew up in black bear country, as did Eleanor Rice, here on Medium. She wrote a good article on man vs bear too, btw. Both of us would rather run across a bear in the woods than a wild boar. Bears aren't ornery. Boars are.

But see. We *know* know. We know bears. For real. Not the Hollywood or reality TV version. We know bears, local wildlife in general, and woods.

There are far worse things out there than bears. Even beyond men, who, let's be honest...in this scenario the random man does not equate to the average man you see or pass by on the street. If you live in a rural and isolated area like that or you're out in the back woods, and you don't know this guy....he's up to something. This isn't some nice National Park or trailhead. Somebody owns that land. If it's not you, you have permission to be there. When you got that permission, why didn't the landowner let you know somebody else was out there?

Exactly. This random guy is an immediate threat to life and limb.

A lot of these city men are completely ignorant of the sorts of shit that can go down in back country. And it shows. Not that they will listen and learn. Too busy getting their feelings hurt over their own ignorance.

You know though, even on trailheads and in Parks where bears (particularly grizzlies and brown bears) reside, campers and hikers get a safety talk about bears. Women planning to hike and camp alone also get a safety talk about random men. I'd guess there have been as many or more disappearances of women as there have been bear maulings.

Ultimately, that's the only stat that matters. That's your direct comparison. Disappeared women vs women mauled by bear in a given area over the same time frame, say 20 years. Not maulings. Women mauled. Because let's be honest again. A fair portion of those maulings are going to be because some guy refused to leave the poor bears alone. He had to go test his mabhood and he got owned. Even after that nice safety talk the Park Service provided for him.