Armed in the Woods

I love scary stories, especially pertaining to things happening in the woods.  I am always down for a good story of people having a run-in with inbred feral cannibals, bigfoot, or a werewolf.  Entertaining.  However, the real monsters of this world look like we do, and they are found in the woods just as they are on urban streets. 

Many are under the impression that crime is strictly an urban phenomenon.  This is untrue.  In fact, there are many, many, occurrences of criminal activity taking place in remote locations in the wilderness.  There are also large fury predators, but this discussion will focus on the two-legged concerns.  The number of people that go missing from national parks each year is legion.  Much of this is probably people who simply want to dip out on their current life and make themselves disappear (last scene in Yosemite three years ago, no more child support).  But much of this is also certainly due to criminal activity, and it is not confined to national parks. 

As a teenager my father owned a large track of land in the southern tier region of New York state.  The adjacent neighbor also owned a large parcel of land, combined they were several hundred acres.  One evening the neighbor called my father on the phone, a landline, nobody had cell phones back then, and said he found something in the woods on his property that he wanted my father to see.  I tagged along with my dad, we were both armed with rifles, and met the neighbor who led us to a patch of ground in his woods, off an old logging trail.  The area had a small mesh wire fence surrounding some strange-looking plants.  My father called the Sherrif department they came out to inspect. 

As an adult I realize that this was a marijuana grove at a time when such things were nowhere close to being legal.  This was clearly a criminal enterprise.  The scary part is, for anyone to actually plant and maintain this patch, they were traveling a significant way from any possible direction.  Perhaps they were using that logging trail, but still, the closest possible houses were over a mile away with thick woods in between.  The potential danger that should immediately spring to mind is, what happens if you stumble upon a group of such individuals while they are conducting their illegal business?  Could that turn bad quickly?  You bet. 

Another interesting encounter I personally experienced in the woods was meeting a stranger I did not know who told me his crew was right over the next ridge and would shoot me if I came over their line.  I am sure this had much to do with my clearly northern sounding accent as compared to the very, very, deep south woods that I was in.  Bottom line, carry your handgun in the woods just as you do on the streets. 

Obviously, targeted crime in the form of robbery, abduction, and homicide, takes place in wilderness areas, and such things probably account for many of the ill-prepared and unarmed hikers who disappear from parks.  But I believe the scenario of stumbling up something, and seeing something that a group of nefarious actors do not want you to see, is a significant danger in the woods and remote wilderness areas, even for the more prepared and competent.  This is one of many reasons that I have always carried my handgun, concealed, on person even if hunting in the woods and holding a rifle.  If taken at gun point and disarmed of your rifle, having the concealed handgun can make all the difference between survival or joining the disappearance statistics. 

There is an entire online cult that swirls around strange disappearances online.  It is a niche of true crime I suppose, though it also often dances with the supernatural.  There have been quite a few very competent, prepared, and armed hunters that have vanished without a trace.  When the body is never found, the possibility that they stumbled upon bad actors doing bad things seems more likely than supernatural explanations.  Such an individual is not going to be an easy target for abduction by a lone process predator lurking around on a trail.  But a group of narcotics growers?  More feasible. 

Holding a high-powered rifle in your hands does not replace a handgun concealed on your person if a seemingly friendly group of individuals comes up to you, then disarms you of the rifle at gunpoint.  If you are in any state that honors your 2A rights, carry your pistol, concealed, even when tramping around in the woods.  That is the baseline or defense in any environment.