My wife always makes a comment to me "why do you need that gun with you when we are out in the woods?".... this is why-

https://www.wsmv.com/news/us_w...3b-be7fd5bdc075.html

We had a nut around here a few years ago that kidnaped and killed a girl on a day hike on the AT and I've seen a few sketchy folks there myself.
I would bet there's a number of lesser crimes that you never hear about there so being prepared isn't a bad idea at all.

I used to do volunteer work with the National Park Service. Criminals and others enjoy the outdoors as well. Altercations are not uncommon, although murders are infrequent. The Park Rangers do a variety of things. Law enforcement is one of them.

I don’t suppose there’s a possibility that he was using drugs out in nature again (after having a recent brush with the law because of that).

It would be interesting to know what the drugs were. Probably not a hallucinogenic mushroom.

Those trails attract all types, some that are intentionally avoiding the law for one reason or another.

Apart from the trails, even the national forests are being utilized by criminals for drug grows/labs/operations.

This article describes some of these activities in Colorado from a couple years ago. I bet it's worse now...

https://gazette.com/crime/acre...5e-6620099c7476.html

Would have been good if they had actually put him in jail after the first time, or at least the second.

Many years ago I was being stalked/ pursued while hiking on a very remote trail. I let the gentlemen know I was carrying a 44 magnum. They ran away.

Former park ranger, current trainer of park rangers.

The Appalachian Trail in particular seems to draw a subculture of marginal personalities... some hiking the trail, some predating on hikers on the trail. Dirty little secret that few seem to want to publicize, but there are a LOT of disappearances on the trail... beyond the many known/reported assaults, rapes, thefts.

I do not hike unarmed. Ever. Ever, ever, ever.

quote:

Originally posted by DennisM:
The Appalachian Trail in particular seems to draw a subculture of marginal personalities...

Closer proximity to urban areas than similar trails? More users?
Any ideas?

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by DennisM:
The Appalachian Trail in particular seems to draw a subculture of marginal personalities...

Closer proximity to urban areas than similar trails? More users?
Any ideas?

You can stay "mobile" for a long time on the AT if you're essentially a drifter or predator. Long trail, a few hundred "official" trail shelters along the way and lots more campgrounds very close by the trail in state & local parks, added to lots of hostels and low-cost hotels catering to through-hikers on or nearby the trail. It's not difficult to never stay anywhere for more than a night or two, which makes it VERY easy to stay off the radar. If you're a fit-enough psychopath/sociopath to keep hiking, you can work the trail pretty much forever.

If LE wants to investigate a disappearance, the first thing they need to know is that there's BEEN a disappearance. The dynamic for this has changed a little bit with near-free and near-seamless cell coverage everywhere, but think back 10-20 years and it wasn't at all unusual that somebody hiking a long trail like the Appalachian or in a forest/park backcountry wouldn't be in touch with family for weeks, if at all, beyond an occasional postcard from a trail crossing through town. Under those circumstances, it was always WAY difficult to establish where the disappearance occurred as a starting point, much less the circumstances. NPS and trail advocates tout the "safety record," largely by glossing over disappearances that can't be strictly tied to a particular area of the trail (or to the trail at all) in the old days.

For prey, the AT has historically attracted lots of people of both sexes and all ability levels who were looking to prove that THEY could do it independently (and the system of trail shelters, caches, etc, helped bolster that myth) when they might not have been particularly well-equipped to do so. Weakened, confused, alone victims are good victims.

Doing cop work in an environment where most of your criminals AND most of your victims are completely transient (in the "in transit" sense, e.g. not rooted to the locality) can seriously stack the deck against you. Criminals know this. There isn't a single crime I've worked in more urban LE that I didn't also see in natural resources LE roles. Beyond the violent crimes, thefts of every variety were rampant also. I've investigated thefts where families literally lost everything beyond what was actually in their shorts & shirts, food & water stolen from backcountry campers, "straight out of a bad Western" campsite thefts, etc.

I would not let anyone I cared about attempt the trail without serious discussions about safety, group size & composition, contingency plans, and "equipment."

Have the names of the victims been released? The sites I've checked did not specify.

Question for DennisM:
I read a while back that assaults on Ranger LEOs are drastically higher now than in the past.
True?

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Question for DennisM:
I read a while back that assaults on Ranger LEOs are drastically higher now than in the past.
True?

The raw numbers always looked low because of the proportionally small number of rangers as a segment of the LE community. Scaled, the rate has never been much "off" the larger population. It HAS gone up lately, either in fact or because of more honest reporting. Rangers were over-represented among LEOs killed in the past few years, but again the "spike" is more obvious because of the small universe of rangers.

In the Fed world, the "leaders of the pack" in assaults have traditionally been correctional officers (BOP and BIA), Border Patrol, and Natural Resources agencies, the rankings usually juggled around from year to year.

I usually carry my 10mm when on trails — his machete would have quickly met its match had I been around.

quote:

Originally posted by Copefree:
I usually carry my 10mm when on trails — his machete would have quickly met its match had I been around.

Problem with carrying legally on the A.T. is that it runs through 14 states, some with ridiculous laws and no reciprocity, and through Fed lands with nuanced carry regulations (example: NPS now allows concealed carry if you have a permit valid in that state, USFS has generally not cared one way or another.) I suspect the number who'd be inclined to consider it to begin with would be small, and of that group the number who could pull it off legally would be even smaller (cough LEOSA cough.)

You always, always, always carry on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. Most people you meet on the Trail are fine. But there are quite a few hippie, homeless, mentally ill who live on it who exercise their [sometimes violent] weirdness to anyone they pass. This isn't the first murder on the Trail in Virginia.

Gun boards, this one included, are full of threads about "What gun should I carry for animal defense?" When I contribute to one, I answer along the lines of, "Whatever will stop a man, that's what you need to worry about the most" or "The most dangerous creatures in the forest walk on two legs."

We are on the AT to walk the dogs often (10-minutes away)................see lots of people - most pleasant.....some not.

I always carry on there............and everywhere.

Wholeheartedly Agree

quote:

Originally posted by Micropterus:
You always, always, always carry on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. Most people you meet on the Trail are fine. But there are quite a few hippie, homeless, mentally ill who live on it who exercise their [sometimes violent] weirdness to anyone they pass. This isn't the first murder on the Trail in Virginia.

I used to live less than a mile from the AT in western NC, and crime was there even then.

I never leave my home w/o a pistol, neither should you.