Western Wilderness Not For Everyone
There’s a way we do things out West in fact some principles are so set in stone that we considered it more like a rule called, "the Code Of The West." I’m Susan Allen When Open Range returns, that said, there are some people that simply don’t belong in our Big Sky Country by virture of their ethics. In the forward of James P. Owens best seller, Cowboy Ethics he writes that a cowboy gets his strength from knowing what’s right and wrong and being true to his beliefs. I would hazzard to guess that to mean that if you end up in a precarious postion, one that happens to be part of our western environment, be it hunting, climbing, fishing, riding, whatever, you don’t blame anyone but yourself, in other words you don’t sue. It’s a sad state of affairs when the famly of a man gored to death by mountain goat is demanding millions of dollars from the Park Service for his naivete. I’m sorry but when you enter the wilderness don’t expect a petting zoo. The very reason many of us carry pistols. Apparently the aggtressive nature of Klahhane Billy a mountain goat the size of a small roping steer was well known, obviously others had handled his cantankerous personality. According to the man's wife and fellow hiker Billy was grouchy that day and the followed the three of them on the trail harassing the gorup for an hour. An hour ! Certainly one them could, as my grandma used to say, "put on their thinking caps" and turned tables on a goat? Had any o fthe three been armed even with pepper spray the outcome would have been different. The west is unpredictable, it’s weather, wild animals and livestock, predicable is the "blame others" attitude of a few bad apples that shouldn't be considered true Westerners.
