Using a Dog Spray as a self defense

[Wyobohunter]

Excellent point made here. For years I vacillated back and forth on carrying the larger size bear spray...always wondered if the extra weight was worth it. In the end I would usually begrudgingly carry the larger size. Then, two years ago the only size available prior to my moose hunt was the smaller container. I purchased it and never thought much more about it. At the end of a 2 week moose hunt and knowing I couldn't take the bear spray back home with me, I decided to discharge it just prior to loading my gear into the super cub (otherwise it would have been loaded into the planes floats and left at the hanger). The brevity of the discharge was sobering as I imagined trusting that brief time of spray to turn an advancing bear. Even the pilot made a comment along the lines of "wow, that's not much is it?" For me that answered once and for all the question of is bigger better...
Hope this helps.

What size was it?

 

[Voyageur]

What size was it?

7.9 oz.

 

[Marmots]

I did door to door census work in Detroit when I was 18. There were a lot of stray or neglected pit mixes in my life for a few weeks. Dog spray barely works for dogs. It has a range of about 2 to 4 yards, and the size of the tube means it's hard to aim and you'll miss at first, using at least half the payload in the process. The ingredients in dog spray and bear spray are pretty similar, but I feel like dog spray cans don't have the pressure necessary to prevent you from wearing a lot of the product afterwards. That sucks for a shift, but really sucks on a Backcountry trip.

A lot of folks who carry dog spray do it for liability reasons, in that it's a lot easier to explain deploying a standardized product than giving someone's ankle biter a kick in a lawsuit.

Bear spray works pretty well for everything. I've worked and taught bear safety around Glacier, Yellowstone, the North Slope, and Uqtiagvik. I've witnessed black bears and grizzlies get maced with satisfactory results, and worked with a lot of dudes who have seasoned polar bears.

I often don't carry mace in black bear country unless I'm in a park where bears are accustomed to people. I live in Idaho now and all the black bears are rightfully scared of us.

Long story short, don't compromise. If the extra five ounces for bear mace is too heavy, why carry the initial five ounces of useless dog spray?

 

[Wyobohunter]

7.9 oz.

That’s the size I carry. Backed up with a 10mm. I test spray every one that expires and it seems just adequate for a single encounter. Though I’ve never used it on a bear. Maybe that would change my thinking. I really like the new Kydex holster that can be bought with the UDAP 7.9 oz canisters as they deploy very fast. Only downside to these holsters is a fallen tree “picked my pocket” once while I was going through a nasty cry hole. Took me a bit of backtracking to find it. After that I started reaching down and checking on it more frequently. I also have a holster in place of the bottle cage on my mountain bike.

 

[trailguru]

The comment on checking pressure regardless of brand is gold. Thanks. I have several canisters of dog spray from a previous job and haven't checked any of them. I never carried any kind of spray my only "self defence" weapon being a 3.5" folding knife so the dog spray is just a lightweight backup. Not a replacement for an actual bear spray that was I used to carry and now I'm thinking about switching