I have recently become interested in backpacking and winter camping and was curious as to what type of pistol/revolver any are carrying on there excursions into the backcountry. I have grown to appreciate the need for lighter and more compact items and have pretty much gone in the direction of a Smith and Wesson airlite revolver. What say the experienced. Thanks for any ideas and practical thoughts beforehand.

I like lightweight as much as the next guy but some things are just worth the extra weight. Depending on where, when and with who I'm going, I will sometime carry my older Ruger P94 9mm. It's not a fancy or expensive gun... but in the last 15-16 years that I have owned it...it has never let me down.

I don't carry anything. I've been backpacking for over 60 years including in grizzly country and have never been in a situation where a firearm would have changed anything. I like to shoot, and do so often, but carrying 2 pounds of basically dead weight on the trail is not to my taste.

I agree with Pika. The extremely remote chances of needing the firearm are not worth the weight. Add to this that a pistol, even extremely well-aimed, is not an effective weapon against a large charging animal like a grizzly--it will just make him madder.

The other reason I don't carry a firearm is that my history (which includes a rifle target-shooting class in college along with growing up in a hunting family and 20 years of marriage to a hunter/target shooter) only proves that I couldn't hit the side of a barn when inside it. If I can't hit what I'm shooting at, there's definitely no point in carrying!

This gets brought up once in a while. Up in my home state of Alaska, there seem to be two routes that a person takes with handguns: 1) ultralight, which usually ends up being a S&W model 329PD with an x-frame grip, or 2)something powerful with a short barrel, which is typically either a 4" Smith model 500 or a Ruger Alaskan in .454.

Here in Washington I might pack a Ruger SP101 or Smith Airweight, but most of the time I don't carry anything. There just aren't enough dangerous animals in the area to justify carrying it. I sometimes pack anyway because of the meth labs people can find in the middle of nowhere, but they don't seem to be much of an issue around here either.

If I were more serious about using a handgun for protection from anything (4-legged or not), I'd enroll in a defensive handgunning course and spend a lot more time at the range. As it is, I'm considering switching to pepper spray because I'd be less likely to leave it at home.

It might be that I pack less often because experience has made me less paranoid; in my nearly 3 decades of hiking I've only been in 3 situations where I'd wished I'd been armed with something. Hiking's pretty safe.

I have a Ka-Bar for various uses, one of which is to calm my mind at night when I think there's three dozen bears outside my tent waiting to eat me. In reality I doubt the 8-inch blade would do much against anything but a small black bear, but it helps, and it's good to have.

There are several threads on this subject and everything that can be said has been said - again, and again, and again.

Do a search on gun, proctection, firearm etc. and set the timeframe for 6 months and you'll see all the posts.