The more you can learn about bears and how they behave, the less likely you will be to have a negative encounter or misinterpret interactions. Bears are predictable. In fact, bears are usually more predictable than people.
If you learn more about bears and how to interpret their behaviour, you will be able to react appropriately when you see them and avoid a negative encounter. Bears are NOT ferocious. They are NOT mean or malicious. Bears are normally shy, retiring animals that have very little desire to interact with humans. Unless they are forced to be around humans to be near a food source, they usually choose to avoid us.
The size of the critical space is different for every bear and every situation. Each species has evolved different strategies for survival. Black bears, for instance, are usually less aggressive and more tolerant of people. They often live near human settlements, whereas grizzly bears prefer to stay away from human settlements and are often extirpated from heavily used or populated areas. Black bears are excellent climbers. When a black bear is threatened he usually runs from the perceived threat or goes up a tree.
Although black bears tend to retreat from people, they are still incredibly strong animals that can cause injuries. Today, brown or grizzly bears tend to live in coastal or mountain forests, but they evolved in treeless habitat that influenced their behavioural response to perceived threats. For instance, they are more likely than black bears to defend themselves when threatened.
For instance, a mother grizzly will usually aggressively defend her cubs on the ground rather then send them up a tree as a black bear sow will. Just like a firearm, bear spray is both dangerous and ineffective in untrained hands. Forrest put together a moving target that replicates the speed of a charging bear and the distance one might surprise you from—just 20 feet. You can and should order a few cans of that inert training spray right now.
Same controls, same capacity, same spray force and distance. When you get it, go outside and spray a can. I was surprised by the incredibly limited range just a dozen feet or so and how short the duration of available spray lasts less than ten seconds.
I was also disappointed by the narrow spread of the spray. My takeaway from spending most of an afternoon trying to hit a moving target with the inert spray was that most of us probably place way too much trust in bear spray.
It may help deter a curious bear, but I would not want to rely on it as my only means of defense if I ever do experience an attack. Just throwing a can on your hip when you head into grizzly country is by no means capable of guaranteeing your safety.
Tactic also teaches its students how to use marine flares. Those have recently found favor in Alaska, where anglers have been using them to deter brown bears that get overly interested in their catch. Unlike bear spray, marine flares have the benefit of working longer and having a farther reach. Pop a flare, and an incredibly bright flame roars to life, burning for 60 seconds or more.
Apparently all that light and noise is enough to scare bears at at a distances in excess of yards. I encourage you to seek training with flares before carrying one into the wilderness. All grizzly fatalities are the subjects of exhaustive investigation by state and federal law enforcement agencies. And having completed the course, I know that gun might be the only tool I have capable of stopping a determined attack. A bear charged his hunting partner, who immediately deployed his bear spray.
Unfortunately, the direction the bear was coming from was upwind, and the spray had no effect on the grizzly. Seeing that, the instructor drew his handgun and shot the bear dead. An investigation the next day ruled that shooting justifiable.
The gun? A nine-millimeter Glock. He teaches that small and fast rounds are more effective than heavy, slow ones, but he does recommend that you use a hard cast lead hunting bullet.
His favorite caliber for Grizzly defense: ten millimeters. His recommended gun: a Glock I run grain hard cast Buffalo Bore ammunition through mine. Forrest recommends you use a chest holster like those sold by Gunfighters.
Throughout a day of dedicated range time, Tactic teaches its students to rapidly draw their weapons, then place as many rounds as possible on target as fast as they can fire the gun. Semi-automatic pistols like Glocks combine large magazine capacities with low recoil, enabling a knowledgeable shooter the best possible chance of critically wounding an attacking animal. Forrest and his staff break down the skills required to do this in a friendly manner that will be accessible and effective even for novice shooters.
With a near one-to-one student-to-instructor ratio, everyone in our class made rapid progress and left the course with newfound confidence in their abilities to protect themselves.
Starting while facing away from the charging bear target, I managed to spin, draw, and place three rounds into an area the size of my hand in the two or three seconds it took the target to reach me. Virginia did even better. You just read a lot of matter-of-fact talk about guns and potentially even killing a really neat animal. Fortunately, even here in Montana, there is one surefire way to avoid bear conflict: simply avoid the places where they live. However, this approach can backfire: If a dog is ahead of its owner and then runs into a bear, the bear may chase it, which is not only dangerous to the dog but could endanger humans if the dog runs back to its owner.
If you see fresh scat, for instance, a bear has recently passed by. Think through, 'How am I going to react? Throwing things, standing tall, and yelling will drive away most black bears—although that strategy isn't foolproof.
If you run into a grizzly, your approach should be the opposite: Backing away slowly and getting away from the situation without provoking the animal, he says. That's especially true with female grizzly bears with cubs, which can be particularly dangerous. When threatened, female grizzlies will often stand up, slap the ground, and make blowing sounds.
However, "that means it's nervous; it's not aggressive," he says. In Smith and Herrero's analysis of bear attacks in Alaska, the vast majority of incidents in which bears charged occurred when people and bears confronted each other at close range, within ten yards nine meters or less.
In more than 50 percent of those situations, the person was not physically hurt. Of the cases in which the bears injured the person, 36 percent of injuries were to legs and feet, 18 percent to the back, 18 percent to arms, and 9 percent to head and neck.
Keep watching the animal as you walk away, and some experts suggest speaking out loud in a calm voice. If it's a black bear, try to fight back. If that strategy doesn't work, lay on your stomach protecting your vital organs , clasp your hands on the back of your neck, and pull up your knees. At this point, the bear may give up and leave. If it's a grizzly, do not try to defend yourself. Since , Yellowstone National Park has tracked bear encounters and found that those who play dead when attacked by a bear during a surprise encounter only got minor injuries 75 percent of the time.
Those who fought back, on the other hand, suffered severe injuries 80 percent of the time. The analysis by Smith and Herrero also revealed that things don't always end well for the bear: In physical run-ins with people, bears died 34 percent of the time from injury incurred during the incident or from subsequent management actions.
For instance, if you're a homeowner and like to put out birdseed, consider doing it in the winter, when birds really need it and when bears are hibernating—otherwise you could have an unwelcome visitor. Also remember that bear encounters can be enjoyable, as long as you keep your distance. See National Geographic's best bear pictures. All rights reserved. Living With the Wild. As bear populations rebound across the United States, and as people increasingly move into their habitat, bear-human run-ins are inevitable.
This is one of several stories asking: How do we live with the predators? This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our photo community on Instagram. Follow us on Instagram at natgeoyourshot or visit us at natgeo. Todd Wilkinson is an environmental journalist. Follow him on Twitter.
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