I am somewhat confused by the latest advice I’ve read about how to protect yourself during a bear attack. I do have a pretty good handle on the subset of fatal bear attacks that occur when someone enters a cage with a bear in it.
The National Park Service has some tips if you are “involved in a bear attack.” As a writer, I would prefer they say “attacked by a bear.” Anyway. If you are experiencing an aggressive encounter with an ursine-American, you need to first assess the danger and the bear’s intentions. Because it could be a “bluff charge.” You simply have nothing to worry about if the bear is bluffing. She just does that to scare you. It’s probably not necessary to go to all that trouble on her part, but she might not be assessing you properly.
You can tell it’s a bluff charge if she’s standing up all puffy with her ears forward and bounding toward you in big galumphing leaps, and—here’s the key—veering off just before she gets to you. If you believe a bear is bluffing, you should wave your arms slowly over your head and walk away slowly, murmuring quietly and in an unthreatening manner, perhaps “Who’s a good bear? You’re a good bear.” If the bear charges, you hold your ground and then continue to walk away slowly if she stops short or veers off.
Now. Suppose it isn’t a bluff.
Their first suggestion is to try to seek shelter in a building or vehicle. These are the same people who put “Warning: May contain nuts” on a bag of nuts. If you do have a choice between a tent and a Buick, don’t go for the tent. Bears think they’re tortillas.
Speaking of a bag of nuts, my leaky brain still has seared upon it the image of an old bull’s testicles swinging like grapefruits in a pair of tights, a hairy pendulum knocking against the old bull’s ankles with every step in a manner that I can only assume is irritating to the bull. Bull in question was in a fenced field in Utah that my sister Bobbie and I entered to look for petroglyphs, and the bull was between us and our car and our frantically gesticulating family. “Don’t run,” Bobbie said, and off we went, but it was clear within seconds that a mere stroll was not going to put us on a trajectory to outpace the bull, and so our strides became longer, and longer yet, until we were keep-on-truckin’ across the landscape at around 25 mph and leaping over arroyos.
Which is why I’m pretty sure I can’t follow the most important instruction of all, which is “do not run from the bear.” I am not zippy by nature but given enough adrenaline I am Usain Bolt.
Secondly, they say you have to do different things according to the bear species. If you’re being attacked by a black bear, try to beat the crap out of him. Pummel him with your little fists. Kick him in the face with your size-sixes. Call him a big stupid bear. Grizzly bear, however: be prepared to play dead.
I’m a goner. My only hope is that the bear will be put off by explosive diarrhea.
Happy birthday, Katie B.!
I recall a family vacation to Yosemite, living in a rented cabin and experiencing the wildlife. We were afraid of bears, but it was the hungry deer that posed the danger. There are pictures of us kids hand-feeding the deer (with hot dog rolls?). One morning, a rather large one got aggressive and started to chase my little sister. She ran to the car, hopped in, and LOCKED THE DOORS.
Dave and I once went on a hike in the Olympics and a deer crossed slowly across a shallow ravine and onto the path he was on and followed him all the way to the car. It was deeply creepy.
There have been a number of bear attacks reported on my news feed lately for some reason. Most of the time it’s the people who are just plain stupid. One of the more stupid ones was a couple of older Scottish women going on a car trip through the Carpathian mountains. They saw a bear, and immediately wanted to take a selfie with it. The passenger had her window closed and got her selfie. The driver had her window open and the bear mauled her arm. But for a heavily padded jacket she was wearing, it would have taken her arm off.
That was stupid enough, but the stuff they said afterwards was even more stupid. “We thought the bear wanted to be friends.” “I wanted to feed the bear something, but my friend said that it was prohibited to feed the wildlife here. The bear must have heard her and was hungry, so he tried to eat my arm.” Just shows that it’s not only Americans who are stupid. It’s a pandemic.
Also, I saw a YouTube video of a bear who apparently is a frequent visitor to a woman’s home. He turns the doorknob on the back door and just walks into the kitchen. In the video, she scolds the bear for just coming in whenever he wants, tells him to close the door and go — and he DOES! “All the way,” she tells him. And he grabs the doorknob and shuts the door firmly. So maybe those Scottish women didn’t overestimate a bear’s ability to comprehend speech. Which is more than can be said of a lot of people.
Yeah, I can’t even get Dave to do that.
Am I the only one wondering about the petroglyphs?
I lived briefly in a state with petroglyphs and went for a hike with my brother, who’d previously hiked in the same area and visited the petroglyphs. But we did not go to see the petroglyphs on our hike.
I’ve also lived in several states and visited several states where bears live. Where I grew up in NJ didn’t have any bears back then, but there are occasional bear sightings now. I’ve only ever seen black bears, despite making a trip to a national park that had populations of grizzly bears in the hopes of seeing one.
I once saw an idiot being bluff charged by a mama black bear in the Great Smoky Mountains. He was busy shuffling towards her cubs with one eye glued to his movie camera’s viewfinder and didn’t see mama charging until her mouth was fogging the lens. That must have been a hell of a picture.
From what I hear black bears can be quite aggressive and apparently have considered adding human to their diets. Those who consider themselves knowledgeable about such things suggest that making lots of noise as they go through the woods is a good idea. Frankly I think those are the people the bears should be eating.
Friends of a friend came home one night to find six bears making themselves to home. They’d figured out the fridge, turned on the tv and were lounging on the couch when discovered.
OMG! SIX bears eating their food, watching TV… and probably smoking their pot. Y’know, I’m starting to think more highly of bears, and less highly of people. (As if I ever thought highly of people. Especially with their freakin’ selfies!) I hear that people taste like pork. Someone should tell bears that. From what I understand, THEY understand human language.
Human meat is sometimes referred to as long pork. And I can say from personal experience that burned flesh tastes like a bad grade of hot dog. I managed to burn a finger one day while welding and as one does, I stuck my finger in my mouth. Hence the experience.
Mmm! That’s your story and you’re sticking to it!
The petroglyphs were a ways off the pavement in Nine Mile Canyon in Utah, where some very famous petroglyphs are located. This one Bobbie knew about and you had to get through the barbed wire to find them. It was of a bison with a baby bison inside. Yeah!
That’s bizarre!
Scroll down on this site and you’ll find the pregnant buffalo. Now they have signs and everything…you don’t need a savvy sister for it…
https://www.gjhikes.com/2014/01/big-buffalo-site.html
My plan is to never be in the same area as bears. Or bulls.
It’s a solid plan. Much like my plan to never go in water over my head.
Carry an air horn.I can tell you black bears can gallop.
I’ve lived in two states that have bear, by that I mean brown bears, or grizzly. Black bears are pretty common in many states.
I’ve hiked a lot in Alaska, and only had a couple ‘encounters’ with browns, neither was a pulse pounder. It is impressive to see a animal that weighs 800 pounds look at you, then slowly walk away. This was when I had my 7 year old daughter with me. And a shotgun.
Regarding the posts about women’s preference to be in the woods with a bear or a man, as the dad of two daughters, I agree with the preponderance of the replies.