I would like to add that if you carry something (anything) for protection from bears, cougars, or (the scary species) humans, you need to PRACTICE with it. This includes pepper spray! It's difficult to find practice pepper spray bottles, but they ARE made....they are used for police and firefighter training, and contain only water.

This happened a couple years back to my neighbor, and I posted it here on FAOL. If she had practiced in advance with the pepper spray, it likely never would have happened:
http://flyanglersonline.com/bb/showthread.php?t=9974

DANBOB