Running with guns

I was reading an article (in Runner's World online) yesterday about the governor of Texas shooting a coyote while out running. I no longer have the link and its not that important anyway. Of course there were tons of comments on this site as well as on facebook, from anti-gun people to anti-coyote people to anti-politician people, etc., etc. While it seems perfectly reasonable to me for the governor of Texas to run with a gun for his own protection (there might be people out there who want to shoot him!), and coyotes don't have a very good reputation, I am feeling especially sensitive lately about people shooting and killing animals. Just because you have access to a loaded gun, it doesn't mean you have to kill something!

Maybe the coyotes out here in Montana are nicer than the ones in Texas, but we've never had any problem with them even though we've seen them plenty. They've never even come after our chickens. Several times Wesley and I saw coyotes in the woods, and one time a coyote even stopped and looked at us for a while before running away. I never felt threatened, maybe because Wesley was so big and could be scary looking. Even if I had a gun, it never would have occurred to me to shoot them.

Now, if I had run into a bear or a mountain lion and I had a gun, the thought of shooting them would certainly cross my mind. However, the real reason for carrying a gun out there in the woods is in the rare occasion that you might run into a scary wild animal, you could shoot it to make a loud noise to scare it away. And if they are actually attacking you, it's probably too late anyway. The point is, I don't want to kill anything, especially just because I happened to roam into their territory and surprise them.

The one time that Jim ran into a bear out in the woods behind our house (with her two cubs!) he didn't have a dog, a gun, or bearspray. When she chuffed and started coming at him, he did the first thing that came to mind (after the thought to run - he had the sense not to do that) - he screamed at the top of his lungs. I don't think it really scared her but it surprised her enough that he was able to slowly back away, and after he got a safe distance around a bend, ran home. He hasn't seen her since.