Outdoor Life.

Hiking with kids can be a unique experience, especially when there’s a black bear following your family up the trail. Last week, Brighton Peachy, her husband, and their three young children were hiking a popular trail in British Columbia when a black bear started following them, according to KUTV News.

While the bear appeared to be more curious than aggressive, it blocked the way back to the parking lot so the family of five—with kids aged one to six—had to keep walking up the trail as the bear lumbered along behind them. Peachy was able to record a video of the encounter with her cell phone.

Video at the link.

He has his wife and children on a hike through the wilderness of British Columbia, and he had bear spray.

I think you know what I think.

Dean Weingarten.

Cynthia had been dropped off by helicopter.  She was hiking along a narrow path on a ridge a few miles from the Salcha River, about 60 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. A “small black bear” startled her with a crash in the brush. It appeared to her, staring at her, from about 10 feet away. She yelled at it. She pounded a rock with her hammer to make noise. The bear was not intimidated.  Cynthia took a step back, which was also higher on the rock.

The bear moved out of her sight, then struck her from behind and knocked her down. She had been told playing dead was the best strategy, so she did. The bear proceeded to drag her for nearly half an hour. During that time, her right arm was disabled as the bear tore and chewed on it. She was able to get her radio out of her pocket with her left arm and signal for help.

The bear managed to eat and destroy much of both her arms before help arrived. She did not resist the bear.  If she had a firearm, she could easily have shot the bear. At 10 feet, standing still, even a small pistol could have worked.

[ … ]

Marti Miller was working for the Geological Survey as a cook when she met Cynthia, two years before Cynthia was attacked. They had become close friends. Marti visited Cynthia in the hospital and was well aware of the details of the predatory bear attack.

In 1981, Marti joined the Geological Survey full-time, after she finished her college degree. She had her own encounter with a predatory black bear after she became a project leader, sometime before 1995. In January of 1995, she was interviewed by Larry Kaniut, the well-known author of Alaskan bear books.

Marti Miller’s experience was similar to Cynthia’s in many ways. One difference was she was the project leader when her event happened. She was dropped off by helicopter in a very wild area, to work on a geological survey …

[ … ]

Marti decided to climb fast to get above the bear, to a place where she could see it approaching her.  She chambered a round in her rifle.  When she had gained elevation and space, she tried the radio again. Still no contact.  Then she saw the bear again. She moved directly upslope of the bear, and in her best command voice, yelled: “Get outta here!”

The bear was about 100 feet away. It looked at her and purposefully started walking toward her. When it was 70 feet away, she fired, aiming at the bear’s nose. The 180-grain Nosler bullet broke the bear’s neck, killing it instantly.

Dean is the king of bear attack reporting.  I’ve left a number of details out – go visit Dean’s article.  And never go into bear country without a firearm.

I would rather never be in a position like this.  That bear closed fast and had ill intentions.

Dean Weingarten.

According to the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office, authorities received a report of a bear attack at a home on Castle Road in the Township of Medford Friday around 11 p.m.

In a press release, authorities report a husband and wife noticed the bear eating from their bird feeder, opened the window and yelled at the bear to scare it off. The bear then turned and charged at the home, breaking through the window and began attacking the couple, while their kids were asleep in their bedrooms.

This correspondent was able to talk with Larry Woebbeking, Sheriff of Taylor County.  While Sheriff Woebbeking was not at the scene of the attack, he had talked to an investigating officer who was. Larry had interesting information to add. He was sure of his facts.

The bottom of the window was about three to four feet above the ground. The bear had to jump up to get through the window. The window appears to be a typical northern Wisconsin type which slides vertically up and down, with an insect screen on the outside. The screen is gone on the picture from the sheriffs office, so the bear probably clawed the screen out as it came inside.

After the wife yelled at the bear, the bear forced its way through the window and attacked the wife. The husband came to the aid of his wife, interjecting his body between them. The bear attacked him. He suffered severe bites to the neck and may have had an arm broken.

The wife, freed from the bear attack, accessed a knife and attacked the bear mauling her husband. The bear turned its attention back to the wife, which allowed the husband to escape momentarily. He was able to access a 9mm Sig handgun. He quickly returned and killed the bear.

Dean goes on to make interesting points about female black bears not displaying strong maternal instincts, and that 9 out of 10 times a female black bear will abandon cubs rather than face danger.

This bear had something else in mind.  Perhaps food.

I would never have allowed my wife to open the window and scream without having a firearm nearby.  And this is yet another instance of the need to carry inside the home.

F&S.

A U.S. Army soldier was killed in a fatal bear attack while on a training exercise in Anchorage, Alaska, Tuesday. The soldier, whose name is being withheld until family is notified, was part of a small group from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) operating in Training Area 412 west of the Anchorage Regional Landfill, according to a statement from the base.

Initial reports have not indicated what species of bear was involved in the attack. A video on the JBER website that urges caution in dealing with a heavy bear presence shows both black and grizzly bears on the base, which covers 64,213 acres of coastal lowlands surrounded by high mountain chains, mostly consisting of wild areas dotted with lakes and swamps. Hunting and fishing are allowed on the base, and access is managed through the use of an online registration system. Training Area 412 was closed to the public after the incident, which is Alaska’s first fatal bear attack of 2022.

Does Military.com know something we don’t?

A soldier died in a bear attack during a training exercise at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, the Army announced Monday.

It is unclear whether the soldier was equipped with bear spray, or if their unit supplies the spray to all of its troops. A packing list for students at Alaska’s Cold Weather Leaders Course, the region’s premier school training soldiers to survive in the area, does not include bear spray.

The base news release says nothing about cold weather training, but of course it does say that he perished in training.

What do we make of the Military.com report?  Are they sending Soldiers out to train in the region of the country most densely populated by bears without carrying means of self defense?  Are they doing that?  Do they not trust them with handguns?

Bear spray?  Seriously?

Bear spray?

Dean Weingarten.

As I collected documented incidents of handguns fired in defense against bears, a pattern emerged. The recorded incidents of pistols being fired in defense against bears overwhelmingly occurred from 1960 onward.

I’ve found 125 documented cases where handguns have been fired in defense against bears, from 1890 to present. Two of the 125 cases were considered to be indeterminate as to success or failure. An additional 20 cases, where handguns were used with other lethal means, are considered combination defenses. They are not included in this analysis.

The total numbers include indeterminate cases, but not the combination cases. 95% of all the documented cases occurred from 1960 onward. 76% of all cases occurred from 2000 forward.

Dean then goes on to examine the causes.

First, while pistols were used against bears prior to the development of the cartridge firing handgun, (about 1840 – 1870) much of the use was in hunting. There the handgun was used as an ancillary device to long guns.

Bears tended to be hunted hard on the outskirts of settled areas. They were considered pests. Bounties were offered for them. Bears had no legal protection. Bears, of necessity, became wary of humans, and seldom attacked humans other than when hunted and wounded.

Second, few records were written of handguns being used against bears during this period. Some hunts were recorded, as were a few incidents involving bears. Most involved long guns. What few records there were are difficult to find. Records became more common after 1960, and much easier to find after the Internet information explosion in the 1990’s.

Third, while human populations continued to increase, bear populations declined, then started to increase, with the greatest increase from about 1960 onward.

To sum up, an increase in effective handguns, record keeping and the ability to search records, and increasing populations of humans and bears do much to explain the rapidly expanding number of documented cases of pistol defense against bears.

It all makes sense.  Handguns firing centerfire cartridges were developed, and cartridges became much more powerful and with much higher muzzle velocity, with much better materials and construction to take the higher chamber pressures.  Next, record keeping and the availability of retrieval.  Third, bears are protected.  You can’t hunt the if they’re not in hunting season, and if you have to shoot one, even in self defense, you just might run afoul of game management officers.  Thus, population is on the rise.

Maybe depending upon how near we are to the bush, we all need to go back to carrying long guns for self defense.  Just a thought.

Long guns are heavy.  Then again, it might be good exercise.

Once again the greatest bear and firearms researcher in the world helps us with new data.  I’ll let you go to Dean’s article for the scoop, but I’ll lift this out.

Of these 20 cases, 15 involve a single, known, pistol caliber. Here are the current numbers of cases for those calibers:

• 9mm – seven documented cases, all successful
• .38 Special –  four documented cases, three successful, one failure
• .357 magnum – nine documented cases, eight successful, one failure
• .40 S&W  – five documented cases, all successful
• 10mm – six documented cases, all successful
• .44 magnum – 37 documented cases, all successful
• .45 Long Colt – 2 cases, successful, this includes the .45 Colt/.410 revolver.

Caliber seems far less important than the willingness to use the firearm and kill the bear.

These were all newly found cases.  I’m surprised to find no .45ACP in the list.

But it isn’t clear to me what Dean’s list means.  This totals to 70 cases, not the 20 new ones he listed.

Dean Weingarten.

On the evening of 22 September 2005, a hunting guide and his hunter, who was from Ohio, were attacked without provocation, by a grizzly bear in the Shoshone National Forest in the northwest corner of Wyoming. The details of the attack were found in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response to AmmoLand. This correspondent has not found any other published account of this attack.

[ … ]

The guide attempted to draw his .44 magnum revolver, but the pistol hung up on the trigger guard. The bear was very close, so the guide dodged behind an eight-inch birch tree, to avoid the bear. The guide estimated he spent 40 seconds dodging the bear around the tree, until the bear grabbed him by the right side, and threw him to the ground.

With the guide on the ground, the bear worried him for a short period, then left him and ran at the hunter, who was armed with a crossbow. At ten yards, the hunter shot the bear in the chest with his bow. At the impact of the bolt, the bear stood up, and started back toward the guide, then lay down.

The hunter shouted to the guide, “She’s dead, I’m all right!” The guide got up and asked where the bear went. The hunter said “She is right next to you, about 6-8 feet away.” The guide determined the bear was still breathing, so he shot her in the back of he head with the .44 magnum.

This is impressive skills at composure under pressure.  Still, I’d rather have successfully deployed the .44 magnum handgun.

BBC.

The man told them he had been attacked by a bear and hadn’t slept for days after it kept coming back to his camp.

He was found with chest bruising and an injured leg he had taped up.

The helicopter crew had been on their way to fly a team of scientists on a wildlife research mission when they were diverted off-course by weather and spotted the distress message.

According to the New York Times, the man had almost run out of ammunition for his gun and the door of the shack where he was staying had been ripped off.

“At some point, a bear had dragged him down to the river,” Lieutenant Commander Jared Carbajal told the newspaper. “He had a pistol. He said that the bear kept coming back every night and he hadn’t slept in a few days.”

The pilots found the man stumbling out the shack waving a white flag.

The man has not been named but officials said he is in his late 50s or early 60s and had been reported overdue home from the trip by friends.

The US Coast Guard flew him to hospital in order to get medical attention, but say his injuries are not life-threatening.

News from Montana.

Early Tuesday morning (July 6), a bear attacked and killed a woman while she was camping in western Montana. Local authorities are still searching for the animal.

The attack took place near Ovando, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) northwest of the state capital Helena, according to KGVO News. A statement from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) noted that, prior to the attack, a video camera at a local business caught footage of the animal, which appeared to be a grizzly bear. Grizzlies are common to Ovando and the surrounding Blackfoot Valley, according to the statement.

[ … ]

The bear initially passed by their campsite about a half-hour earlier, waking the campers and prompting them to secure their food before going back to bed.

“The bear basically came back into the campsite. It wandered into a campsite a couple different times,” Powell County Sheriff Gavin Roselles told The Associated Press.

[ … ]

It’s not clear why the bear sought out the campsite or attacked Lokan, but Tuesday’s attack does not represent “normal bear behavior,” Lemon said. “Usually, human and bear conflicts stem from bears protecting food, female bears protecting cubs or surprise encounters that result in the bear feeling threatened and attacking the person. … Going into a campground and attacking a person is not a natural instinct.”

I think he needs to update his psychological profile of bear behavior.  This video was a juvenile bear attack in California.