Althouse: Mauled into marriage.

August 20, 2007

Mauled into marriage.

What does it take a man to realize that he should be married? It takes a bear attack.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...: So he was willing to make enough of a committment to create not one but two children with her but not willing to offer her and those children the legal benefits and protection of marriage?

What did she see in him in the first place?; 8/20/07, 8:29 PM
David53 said...: He fired his .475 magnum pistol, hitting the bear......Evan turned to run but the bear's powerful jaws crushed his right calf. He isn't sure how his left leg was injured.

I lived in Alaska for 3 years. They told me if I was going to take a pistol as a back-up weapon while in bear country to be sure and file the front sights off the barrel. That way when the bear shoves the pistol up your butt it doesn't hurt so much. I can thoroughly understand having a new outlook on life after having a dead bear's jaws pried off the remains of your leg.; 8/20/07, 8:30 PM
Eli Blake said...: Well, c-f,

She had a son who is now seven. And a second who is a year and a half. So he obviously had a woman who was willing to give him sex without requiring him to grow up.; 8/20/07, 8:54 PM
Anonymous said...: Eli, you're right -- she was complicit.

You might deserve your non-spouse, but you don't necessarily deserve your parents. I don't pity her, but I do pity the kids.; 8/20/07, 9:00 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Eli, then she's just like Judith Nathan, sort of.; 8/20/07, 9:22 PM
AmPowerBlog said...: factotum and eli: You guys sound like this was the first guy in history who wouldn't commit. He was with the woman.

I imagine a lot of moms out there might wish their no-good, wayfaring children's fathers would be attacked by a bear.

Burkean Reflections; 8/20/07, 9:52 PM
Anonymous said...: Donald,

But only if they were the beneficiary of his will, his life insurance, his 401k, his pension and his social security. How many (straight) people bother to set up these legal arrangements if they're not married? Why not just get married and have everything pretty much automatically go to the spouse?; 8/20/07, 9:55 PM
Christy said...: B.S. He came face to face with his mortality and wanted to make sure she was always going to be around to take care of him.; 8/20/07, 10:07 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: Althouse is TRAPPED !!!

It's 11:30 pm in New York right now, and she can't go outside. Maybe she'd like to go for a midnight stroll, gaze at the moonlight, go get ice cream, listen to the crickets....

....yet she's benched. She can't leave her fortress after dark for fear of being mugged.

And, to add insult, it's getting darker earlier.

In the annals of bad decisions and poor judgment.....are there any worse than this move to NY ???; 8/20/07, 10:10 PM
The Drill SGT said...: David,

I thought the same thing

After walking about a mile, Evan spotted 90 feet away. He fired his .475 magnum pistol, hitting the bear. It rolled down a hill end over end before crashing against willows, Evan said.

at 90 feet, god only knows where he hit the darn thing with a pistol. There is a lot of mass there and not very many places that a pistol bullet will hit something critical. it goes into a thicket and he goes looking?

if it were me, I'd stand back and give it a few minutes before going any closer than 90 minutes.

Bears as you know are fast movers, I can only imagine (and he sure couldn't) how fast a pissed off bear running down a steep slope to get a bite of him could run. a new land speed record I expect.

that must have been a fearful sight :); 8/20/07, 10:29 PM
Simon Kenton said...: David53, my ex-brother-in-law worked with bush surveyors in Alaska, and had his FFL. Each new surveyor had to have an S&W .44 Magnum, which he ordered and supplied. Then someone would point out that a .44 magnum was, if you could even hit with it, about as powerful as a .30-30. No one ever touts a .30-30 as adequate for brown or grizzly bear (though, sometimes, perhaps, maybe it sort of can be - you try it and you let us know, hear?) So then they would order a 12-gauge pump with slugs and sling, and this regular ordering sequence was his reliable second income.; 8/20/07, 10:43 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: New York is supposed to be the city that never sleeps. So, what is Althouse doing inside?

Let's face it: it's much better to do New York as a tourist, than to actually, gasp, live there.; 8/20/07, 10:43 PM
Palladian said...: Maxine, that spiel was old before you started it. Now, it's unbearable. You're tiresome, dear.; 8/20/07, 11:13 PM
jeff said...: I never even heard of a .475 magnum, I had to google it. I would imagine you could hit a bear sized target at 30 years if you kept your head, and a bullet that size at magnum acceleration probably delivers a fairly large impact. Having said that, I would prefer the shotgun full of slugs. I would suspect however that the impact of the .475 magnum is about the same as a deer slug. Too late to do the math though.; 8/20/07, 11:43 PM
mtrobertsattorney said...: I live in Alaska and I've been closely following this case. It was a tragic comedy.

Mr. Evans and his two hunting partners took their boat up the Shaktoolik River to hunt moose.
After a few miles up river, Mr. Evan's hunting partners spotted a grizzly bear from their boat swiming in the river some 300 yards away. They decided they wanted some bear meat and bear claws and took some shots at the swiming bear at a distance of about 300 yards. The bear, now wounded, made it to shore and disappeared into the brush. After going ashore, Mr. Evan followed a blood trail into the brush, spottted the wounded bear. He shot at it with his handgun from 90 feet away. The bear attacked and grabbed him by his right leg. By this time his two partners arrived and stated shooting. One of the shots hit Mr. Evan's left leg and shattered it.

Moral of the story: 1)don't shoot from a moving boat at grizzly bear swiming 300 yards away; and 2)get some new hunting partners.; 8/21/07, 12:38 AM
demian said...: How much had these guys had to drink? They set out to hunt moose and, on a whim, decide to bag a passing grizzly. Then one of them chases the wounded bear with pistol.

"I'm screaming, praying, asking how could this could happen..."

It happened because you were a dumbass.; 8/21/07, 1:18 AM
Daryl said...: Christy: B.S. He came face to face with his mortality and wanted to make sure she was always going to be around to take care of him.

You can't actually call "B.S." on something that is basically admitted.

I agree with the people who say he was in over his head. You don't mess with a grizzly unless you have serious firepower, and any handgun smaller than a Maadi-Griffin* isn't going to cut it.

* .50 BMG, i.e. a 12.7x99mm round, i.e. that thing that comes out of an M2 MG and is actually ILLEGAL under the international laws of war to aim at a person**

** if you needed to read the footnote, you aren't a real gun nut.; 8/21/07, 2:39 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "before going any closer than 90 minutes."

"I would imagine you could hit a bear sized target at 30 years."

Strange ideas about the distance between human and bear.; 8/21/07, 5:25 AM
Anonymous said...: I accept with c-f and eli. If he truly love Lydia, then he probably married her well before. He decided to marry her only after he faced this. Lydia's love is true, but Evan's is doesn't seemed to be like that.
Desiccants; 8/21/07, 7:00 AM
The Drill SGT said...: before going any closer than 90 minutes."

run on thoughts on my part

a concatenation of two bear related thoughts.

don't go closer than 90 feet to a wounded bear in a thicket

wait 90 minutes for the bear to weaken or give its position away before closing to claw range.; 8/21/07, 7:06 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Maxine said In the annals of bad decisions and poor judgment.....are there any worse than this move to NY ???

Maybe when Ann moves to Alaska decides to go bear hunting,

C-F said What did she see in him in the first place?

Based upon the story it obviously wasn’t his marksmanship or his IQ

I don't pity her, but I do pity the kids.

Actually I feel sorry for the bear.; 8/21/07, 7:14 AM
Christy said...: Daryl, you're right.

When I was a kid I remember climbing up to the hay loft, a great place to read while Mom visited with her mother, and coming face to face with a big bear I hadn't known Grandpa had brought back from Colorado. That drying skin was the closest I ever want to come to a bear.; 8/21/07, 7:21 AM
Trooper York said...: There are actually bears in Brooklyn....they hang out in the first bar on the left side of Montague St...I forget the name...but they march in the parade every year and are pretty cool guys....I think Andrew Sullivan went hunting in there last year...he was also looking for a moose but ended up with a bear.; 8/21/07, 9:20 AM
jeff said...: Well the guy from Alaska has a better take on it than the article. If those are the true facts then the only conclusion that can be made is everyone in the story is a dumbass. Except for the bear. He might have come out on the short end of things, but he got his licks in.; 8/21/07, 2:45 PM
Trooper York said...: As did Mr. Sullivan; 8/21/07, 8:31 PM