My new approach to bears
It has been a long time since my almost disastrous first encounter with a grizzly bear: I faced a grizzly bear less than 40 yards to me on a trail that I couldn’t leave (trail carved on the side of a mountain), I couldn’t unclip the bear spray from my backpack (what a moron), I allowed the bear to get within 20 yards from me and then when faced with no way to leave the trail and deploy the bear spray, I took a step forward and pretended to be Gandalf with the demon at the bridge to force the bear to leave the trail (in reality, the grizzly was annoyed by me and decided to get up the mountain and go down when he was past this noisy critter instead of just eating me and the came back to the trail ……. yes, it went around me). The people behind me were shocked because due to the distance perspective I was probably next to the bear when I raised my hands and yelled at it.
These are short descriptions of my bear encounters.
Two things have influenced and modified my approach to constantly make noise and make my presence felt no matter what: (1) the Stan Mills videos at Yellowstone and (2) a black bear encounter at Yellowstone. First, these are my rules because I hike solo and I believe that if I am prepared, whatever happens happens, you can’t predict what is going to happen, just your response to the situation is important and under your control.
The last significant bear encounter took place when a black bear and me were walking parallel towards each other (within 30-40 yards) and when I noticed the bear I stopped and made absolutely no noise at all, and somehow the bear completely ignored me and went his way. No noise, no raising the arms, nothing. It just felt appropriate to me, the bear kept sniffing the ground and moving his merry way. I realized, unconsciously, that “less is best” approach is better. I already knew that a bear (1) will see me first, (2) will smell me first, (3) will get confrontational if it feels menaced, so:
Unless I am in a flat area, a bear will see me first and that is the case for all bears that I ran into inside a forest. In a flat area it is 50/50 and if I know that I saw the bear first I will stop and start finding a path to avoid the bear and not make my presence known to him. Bears are there to eat and move in peace and that is all they want, they don’t need the stress of knowing someone “saw them”. If a bear knows I am there already, what is the point to announcing my presence? My responsibility is to remain hidden if possible and leave the area.
A bear will definitely smell me first. One time I almost got too close to a huge grizzly and her kids in Alaska without the bear noticing because I was downwind. The moment I was upwind the bear noticed me. Again, if a bear knows I am there already, what is the point to announcing my presence?
And here is where my approach has changed the most. I don’t want to raise a bear’s stress level more than it should be by my presence in the area (specially grizzlies who are always in a bad mood, wtf, dude!); if I can help it I don’t want the bear to see me or think I am seeking a confrontation. I no longer yell when hiking in a forest, I just talk to myself and that is enough for a bear to know I am there. I am constantly looking around me for movement and I am great at it (anything that I suspect, I stop immediately); this is key to me when hiking alone (be aware of my surroundings). I am thinking that yelling annoys a bear more than scaring it (there are exceptions, like when me and a group of hikers were mocked charged by a grizzly protecting her cub ….. yelling and becoming a threat to her made the bear think twice) and yelling at the wrong moment will startle a bear that got too close to me and make an encounter unpredictable.
Am I naive and inexperienced ? Absolutely not, I have been in the presence of various bears and circumstances and that taught me my future behavior, including finding myself within 10 feet of a bear from me (now that is scary). The old tale that you can see a bear coming and you can stay at a safe distance is bullshit; that you can see it coming and have plenty of time to be prepared is bullshit. But what is not bullshit is that I have to be prepared within seconds; there is no way to always avoid a bear because (1) he could be around a corner, (2) I could be walking by a carcass (yes, that was the scariest moment of my life), (3) a momma sees me from a distance and decides to remove the threat, no matter what I am doing or saying.
Bear spray has become the deciding factor in what types of hiking pants I wear, I have large side pockets that I use to carry the bear spray can like a gunslinger in the old west. I can take the bear spray out in less than one second and pull the safety the rest of the second. I don’t use the sleeve that bear spray comes in, I need now two hands to take it out that way and that doesn’t work for me. I always have my left hand free and if I am taking a pic with my camera, I can afford to drop it because I have it leashed to my neck.
These rules need to be followed because I hike alone and that adds to the risk of a bear thinking of charging me instead of thinking “shit, there are 5 of them, I better just bluff charge them”.
Proof that I follow these rules? I don’t have pictures of my bear encounters (except the Alaska one since I was already leaving the area and was surrounded by people); that would violate my rule of having always a free hand and, worse, staying around taking pics of a bear that I am trying to get away from is stupid.