You have the right to carry a sidearm when in the forest while hunting, even concealed carry when out there in the pursuit of hunting. Unless it is specifically an area that says it disallows them, like up Mt. Wilson Rd, for example, with all those antennas on that hill and the on-sight staff living up there, they don't want idiots messing around and taking shots up there not paying attention to backdrop and hitting a multimillion dollar antenna. That understandably would be a bad thing. I carry a .380acp when just in MtnLion country. If there are bears, and it's not an AO Archery Only tag, I'll take the .357 4" on my center chest rig just for a little better piece of mind, along with BearSpray too. My thinking is, the BearSpray wouldn't be a good idea if you're caught within your tent when an encounter happens. You'd undoubtedly get some spray reflecting back at you when you try to spray him, and I can tell you from experience that BearSpray burns like the Sun after it gets on you and your sweat wets it up. I did a test spray and didn't get out of that area fast enough so some particle wafted back over to my eventually, and landed on my eye, and my inner elbow, and behind on the back of the knee. It happened at like 7a and didn't stop feeling like a 2nd degree sunburn til like 1p. When I was hiking the throbbing was tolerable, but any time I'd stop to take a drink of water, it was like my body would heat back up a little since you stopped moving thru the air, and the throbbing feeling would begin to start rising to where you felt you couldn't stand it anymore so you went back to walking so the air going over your skin would cool it back down. I also had to wear my liner gloves because having the sun fall upon the backs oh my hands felt like a bad sunburn sting. So I knew I had to cover em, and have been covering them almost ever since just for the benefit of not getting sunburned.
