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Old July 26, 2000, 02:05 PM   #10
Keith Rogan
Senior Member
 
Join Date: March 11, 1999
Location: Kodiak, Alaska
Posts: 1,014
Bad,

Well, I don't want to "stay away from the salmon streams". I like to fish. The bears are part of the landscape and you have to learn to deal with them.
I don't know if you've ever been out here on Kodiak or along the Alaska Peninsula but you're not going to avoid bears. If you hunt or fish or just hike, you're going to run into bears.
Its usually not an issue. You stand your ground and yell. If he doesn't back off you give him a squirt of pepper spray. I floated the Ayakulik a few years ago in June for the King run. We saw dozens of bears every day, they came into camp, they tried to "woof" us out of good fishing holes, we ran into them on trails and got "challenged" - you going to shoot all these bears?

The brown bear in the threatening posture, "woofing" and clicking his jaws is not a bear that is likely to attack. You're in a "personal space" dispute (a biologist corrected me on my calling this "territorial" - something else entirely). You could shoot this bear but in some areas you'll likely run into another tomorrow who does the same thing - you going to shoot him also? How many bears a day do you shoot until the F&G slaps the cuffs on you?

In my research on brown/grizzlies I've found that maulings fall into two broad categories.
The first category is what happened to me - a bear for whatever reason, surprise, injury, hunger, PMS, just suddenly rushes an unsuspecting human (usually from cover). You don't see this coming, you don't have time to fool around with pepper spray, you don't have time to ring your little bear bells or blow your stupid little whistle - if you have a gun you use it if you have time. Hopefully you're with a partner who'll also start pumping lead into the bear and not shoot you in the process.

The second category of maulings is where you do something stupid in one of these "space disputes". Bears are just like big dogs and they'll challenge you on their turf. 99.9% of the time, if you just stand your ground they'll eventually become satisfied and just wander off. If he wants your deer or fish, give it to him.
If you run, they'll chase you. If you whip out a .44 mag and shoot him you're going to make him very angry and possibly precipitate an attack. If you hit him anywhere other than the brain he'll likely charge and you'll be dead long before he bleeds out from that wound.

Pepper spray is for this second category of confrontations. It WILL work in that situation - and thats a VERY common situation. If you can't gracefully edge out of the scene, spray the bastard! Pepper spray temporarily blinds a bear as well as eliminating his smell, taste, etc. It also inflicts a lot of pain - if you ever get a whiff of this stuff you'll understand. An animal without his sensory input is a helpless animal - it will run away.
If this happens to be that one bear in a hundred who doesn't run, you've still got your partner covering the situation with a large rifle, right? At worst, you're dealing with a large angry bear thats now blind - a better situation.

And you're right, if its windy you can't use pepper spray. If you've got someone between you and the bear, you can't use it. And perhaps it just won't work on a particular bear.
Its still a good option to have and works very well in most situations. Rule #1 is that you don't go into big bear country without a partner. You're armed with REAL guns - big bore rifles or shotguns w/ slugs. Ideally, one guy covers, one guy sprays.

In yesterdays paper there was a story about a mauling down on Admiralty. Guy runs into a bear and instead of standing his ground, he runs. An animal running from a bear is "prey". Bear chased hims down, works him over and then leaves.
Thats the typical confrontation that would have been nothing but a good story if he'd just stood his ground and backed the bear down. He was a kayaker so he probably had nothing more lethal than a bag of granola - thats simply being unprepared and uneducated.

Shooting a challenging bear is too far in the other direction, its over-reacting. As I tried to point out earlier, if you shot every bear that got to close or acted aggressive in coastal Alaska you'd leave a trail of dead and wounded brown bears behind you everywhere you went. You'd likely go to jail - you'd certainly get someone mauled by leaving wounded bears around. They're damned hard to kill. Maybe its hard to appreciate living there on the mainland where bears are relatively few and far between. The density out here is 10 or 20 times what you find around Anchorage or the Kenai.

There is a reasonable middle ground. Have a rifle and be ready. Use the spray. Get on with your fishing or deer hunting instead of filling out paperwork down at the F&G office.




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Keith
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