Humans and bears.(Exercising The Right)

Three recent incidents involving humans and bears underscore the crucial importance of being armed when facing enraged wild animals. The first incident ended in tragedy because the humans were unarmed.

Lethal encounter: In early October, Timothy Treadmill and girlfriend Amie Huguenard, both of Malibu, California, were videotaping bears in the Katmai National Park and Preserve on the Alaska Peninsula when a large brown bear attacked Treadmill. He had spent more than a dozen summers living with and taping Katmai bears without incident. During an appearance on CBS' Late Show with David Letterman in 2001, he described them as mostly harmless "party animals," asserting that he felt safer living among them than jogging through New York's Central Park. He would not carry weapons.

A video camera operated by Huguenard was running during the attack, but she apparently dropped it during her futile attempts to help Treadmill. Though the video does not show the deadly clash, the camera did pick up about six minutes of audio. The Associated Press reported on October 8 that the graphic sounds revealed the unarmed "wildlife author's final, frantic screams as he tried to fend off the beast."

Treadmill was killed and Huguenard was later mauled to death by a bear, though it is not clear if it was the same one that turned on Treadmill. On October 6, their bodies were found when an air-taxi pilot arrived to pick up the couple. A bear was reportedly sitting atop human remains.

When park rangers arrived at the camp, they encountered a large, aggressive brown bear, thought to be the one that killed Treadmill and, possibly, Huguenard. As two of his fellow officers stood by with shotguns, Katmai park ranger Joel Ellis fired 11 shots from his handgun, killing the beast. Later, while loading their plane, another aggressive bear began stalking the rangers, who were compelled to shoot it as well.

Stalking bear: Dr. Roger Brown is a plastic surgeon in Kalispell, Montana. On October 3, after scouting for mountain goats in the Swan Mountains near Kalispell in preparation for a hunt with his son and grandson, he encountered a grizzly on his way back to camp. Fortunately, unlike Timothy Treadmill and Amie Huguenard, he was ...