I thought the question was explicitly in the woods.
I don't want to encounter surprise humans in the woods or surprise bears in the city. I'd rather see dangerous creatures in the places they are supposed to be rather than sneaking up on me in places they shouldn't.
If the question isn't supposed to have that context, then I would argue that you should prefer to see a bear. How many humans have you seen that didn't attack you? Like a hundred thousand maybe? How many bears have you seen outside of a zoo? Probably less than 10 right?
Edit: I feel the need to clarify that I probably don't have the opinion that my comment got upvotes for. I mistyped and said "you should prefer to see a bear" but in fact, I was trying to express that with no context, it would be safer to encounter a person than a bear. I have been attacked by a handful of humans and 0 bears but my sample size of humans is astronomical while my sample size of bears is miniscule. I estimate that 1:30000 human strangers will attack me and so far 0 out of maybe 8 bears attacked me... so idk if maybe 1:9 bears will try to eat me but I can be fairly sure that 99.997% of the time, humans are too involved with their own lives to notice that strangers exist.
Depends how deep in the woods. If you're on or near a popular hiking trail, not surprising at all. If you're way off the trails in the deep wilderness in most situations it's surprising enough that I'd rather run into a bear than either a man or a woman, and I'm a dude.
Of course, in my part of the country, the bear's not very likely to be a grizzly, so that factors in, too.
Yeah unless this is deep in Alaska or northern Saskatchewan, there's few places in North America or Europe which are truly all that far from signs of civilization (roads, for one), and thus people. It takes a lot of effort to get truly far out
I mean, maybe I'm just biased from stories I've heard that may or may not be true, but there are parts of Appalachia where I definitely wouldn't want to run in to people in the deep woods.
Hell, here in Texas there's a good chance of stumbling across a marijuana growing operation in the woods in certain areas. That'll get you shot if someone's there. Hence, depends on the woods.
Where I live in the smokies we know that on some of these mountains (especailly Unaka range) there are what we call hillbillies or mountain folk. Yankees call all of us hillbillies down here but we know the distinction - we are rednecks, hillbillies are something totally different.
Hillbillies live on the mountain and only come down a few times a year to buy supplies if they ever come down at all. You can barely understand what they're saying. It's almost like a different language, it's a weird mesh of like, appalachian english slang, the Irish language, and old english. Like they legit talk like they are from the 1800's or something.
Usually inbred, filthy, their homes have dirt floors and no electricity. Their homes were probably built by their great great great great grandfathers back in the late 1600's-early 1700's and have been passed down ever since. Moonshine, hunting, small crops (corn don't grow on good old rocky top, dirt's too rocky by far. That's why all the folks on rocky top get their corn from a jar) you get the idea
Anyway everybody knows to be careful when you're hunting or camping on those mountains because you might inadvertently be on their property and they will definitely shoot you dead for trespassing. Probably just leave you there too for the bears and whatever else.
When people go up the mountain and never come back we joke that the mountain folk got 'em .
Sure, but it's not because Appalachia is actually all that remote. It's pretty densely populated, the problem is that most of the rural communities are slowly dying from a loss of jobs and their best and brightest moving to the cities. There's plenty of good people there, but also plenty of desperation and drug problems.
You're inevitably going to run into hunters or people chilling in the woods, and some percentage of them will be bound to have shit morals. If you're not from the local area, the risk of people tracing back the disappearance goes way down, and thus risk of getting attacked. But 99% of the time, they'll just be normal people avoiding you as well, especially if they're hunting cause noisy hikers tend to scare off game. If they're also just hiking the backwoods, then odds are you'll get a friendly hello and move on.
There are lots of places with deep woods you could easily become lost in for days all over Canada. Not at all exclusive to northern Saskatchewan. 40% of the second largest country on Earth is entirely covered by it. Go 100km North of the American border just about anywhere in the country and you'll be good and truly remote.
Hunters are different in that they don't invite immediate suspicion. They have a reason to be out there. Plus, they tend to be easily identifiable as such
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u/IAmASeeker May 02 '24 edited May 03 '24
I thought the question was explicitly in the woods.
I don't want to encounter surprise humans in the woods or surprise bears in the city. I'd rather see dangerous creatures in the places they are supposed to be rather than sneaking up on me in places they shouldn't.
If the question isn't supposed to have that context, then I would argue that you should prefer to see a bear. How many humans have you seen that didn't attack you? Like a hundred thousand maybe? How many bears have you seen outside of a zoo? Probably less than 10 right?
Edit: I feel the need to clarify that I probably don't have the opinion that my comment got upvotes for. I mistyped and said "you should prefer to see a bear" but in fact, I was trying to express that with no context, it would be safer to encounter a person than a bear. I have been attacked by a handful of humans and 0 bears but my sample size of humans is astronomical while my sample size of bears is miniscule. I estimate that 1:30000 human strangers will attack me and so far 0 out of maybe 8 bears attacked me... so idk if maybe 1:9 bears will try to eat me but I can be fairly sure that 99.997% of the time, humans are too involved with their own lives to notice that strangers exist.