Yes!
Heck No
Sometimes
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye....Originally Posted by vitamaltz
But seriously - I worry more about other people's dogs and dehydration than I do animals. Tho having your tent unzipped at night by a 60 pound raccoon is more than a little unnerving... a friend on a coastal campout had that happen, she asked me if I ever had anything crawl in the hammock with me. Which I haven't. But I suppose there's a first time for everything....
Interesting details on the predatory bear attacks - it is my understanding that the two choices in how to defend - play dead or fight back, are actually dependent on why the bear is attacking far more than the type of bear.
Predatory - fight back, surprise/challenge/defense - play dead.
There are lots of stories about bear attacks, several books around here, anyways. A guy I know was hunting when he was almost run over by two fighting grizzlies. I understand that the mad, slower one came back for him when he couldn't catch the first one. He said that the Conservation officers told him he put 3 bullets in a 3 inch group in the bears chest. The bear picked him up, threw him around, put holes clear through his shoulder,seriously damaged the upper arm/shoulder/back. He was telling me about this 3-4 years later when he was only just regaining the use of his arm. The bear still got up when help came and had to be shot some more. He was hunting moose, I believe, so should have had a reasonably heavy caliber rifle. (don't know, not a gun nut, familiar with them, know how to operate, clean and somewhat care for, but that's about it).
Don't know how much a gun will really help - depends how much warning you have. He had his gun out and the bears had already run by him, so he was prepped. These animals are fast. Really fast.
Which reminds me of another story:
I was driving back to Vancouver from Ft. St. John in northern BC when a bear cub came out of the bush on the side of the road. I hit the brakes to slow, but the thing turned an ran beside my car for 2-3 seconds while I slowed from 100 kmh (60 mph) to 60kmh (40mph), and tried to move away from it, as it couldn't completely change it's direction. The bear then tripped and somersaulted off the road. I was absolutely astonished at how fast that small (little more than half the height of a standard jeep tire while on all fours) bear could go.
(I slowed down in the story above, completely because I didn't think there was a hope in h*ll of not hitting it. It was almost in front of me from out of a bush on the opposite side of the road in a split second. Just a dark blur. )
I'm not sure we're not saying the same thing but with a bit different emphasis . I'm not that good at conversation from a keyboard.That goes with what I have read that a black bear attack is ( at least some who write about bears seem to think this) more likely to be for the purpose of predation than is a Griz attack. Either one can kill you quite easily, whatever their reason for attack.
Well, I hope the above story will not cause any one to NOT pay attention, but hopefully just the opposite. It certainly won't work that way for me, it will keep me paying attention if I am in bear country, black, Griz or both. I don't plan to get bent out of shape over the quoted true story, but I will keep paying attention and not dismiss bear precautions just because no Griz are around, but "only" black bears. I hope that is the message others will take from the report.
Stories about predatory black bears are not hard to find. When I say predatory, I mean that when bear "experts" look at attacks that have occurred and try to figure the cause, what went wrong to cause the attack, they seem to be far more "predatory" attacks from the black bears than in the Griz attacks. I, of course, have no clue, I'm just going by what those who claim to know say.
Personally, I don't care to be mauled by a bear regardless of what might be motivating the bear. Whether it is a black bear looking for dinner, or a really po'ed Griz, or vice versa, either way I am being chewed on by a bear. I think I will take precautions, even in black bear only country.
I bet if we did a search, we could come up with a pretty good number of supposedly predatory black bear attacks in North America. In fact, here is a quicky list of brown and black bear fatalities and best guess reasons why:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._North_America
Now I'm sure more folks die from black bears, than Griz, because there are way more black bears, and they are in more populated areas. None the less: 52 killed last century by black bears, 50 due to brown bears and 5 due to polar bears. 27 total in the last decade, 17 of which were black bears. Of those 17, AT LEAST 11 appear to be clearly predatory in nature.
The only thing unusual or outlandish about the story I copied here is the brazenness of the attack, which was continued despite lots of people coming to help and that there were multiple maulings and 2 fatalities from one black bear attack. A black bear attacking( even stalking) humans for the purpose of eating those people, is not all that unusual among the total of bear attacks that do happen.
The only lesson I take out of that is: Whatever bear precautions a person may choose to take, if any, you might want to take them with black bears as well as Griz. I will anyway, but HYOH every one! But as for me, I won't dismiss a bear as not really dangerous just because he is not a Griz or Polar bear.They ALL can and do kill people, and not just because you surprised them with their cubs or kept a dirty camp. And though it may be a truly rare event, black bears can and do stalk and kill people for the purpose of having a good meal. At least that is what the evidence seems to indicate.
A person should prepare themselves when they go to the woods. They should take precautions according to existing wisdom and to give themselves a feeling of comfort. But people seem to get more concerned about the possibility of sh*t happening than the numbers warrant. Using your own numbers there's only one person killed/yr by a bear. I wonder how many people died eating a chocolate bar. Its just about giving the situation what it deserves and not more because that will get in the way of you attuning to where you are which is different than having read what you should do.. When i say "not paying attention" i mean when you spend time in the back country you develop a different sense of things than when you started with your list of precautions etc,, not that you illuminate those precautions necessarily but you do them from a different perspective (experience), that gives you a different focus or attention. Having read about things is different than being there. One of my jobs , many yrs ago, was with the parks branch. I lived and worked in the back country for months at a time . We dealt with black bears almost every other day from a distance or three feet away. Black bears are predictable most of the time. You act accordingly and watch for any changes in their behavior . They have been known to be predators, Some native tribes have spoke of this also. Their are always exceptions to the rule as with anything. Thats what paying attention is about.
Last edited by mbiraman; 01-04-2010 at 14:48.
" The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it."
“The measure of your life will not be in what you accumulate, but in what you give away.” ~Wayne Dyer
www.birchsidecustomwoodwork.com
Even a 12 gauge slug would do!
The "deer are dangerous" comments made me curious about something else.
In survivorman, Les Stroud comments on Bull Moose in season in Ontario being an extremely dangerous animal. I put that down to "raising the dramatic tension" when the only animal he had seen was a moose.
However, I am not really familiar with moose at all, (except for the taste, moose is an absolutely fantastic meat, my apologies to those that don't like to think about where food comes from or are vegetarians) so I mentioned that to some others that echoed the same sentiment as Les Stroud. Moose in season are dangerous.
Can anybody elaborate?
Moose are frigging HUGE! You won't find a sane person standing anywhere near a Moose during rutting season. The bulls are very busy showing off for the ladies and tolerate zero competition. I've heard horror stories, but have yet to have a bad moose meeting. Did I mention they are huge?
Trust nobody!
Moose are some of the most feared animals in N America. Not only the bulls but a cow with calves will stomp a mudhole in you. When I lived in Alaska in the 70's, interviews of bushmen indicated such. The first morning after arriving in Anchorage, there was a cow and two calves in the greenbelt behind the condo we moved into. I though that was pretty neat until I learned how dangerous they can be.
Last edited by Scottybdiving; 01-04-2010 at 14:56.
Moose attack more people than do bears and wolves. (Scroll down to aggression)
what that has to do with cooking under a tarp..????
now back to our regularly sheduled thread!
Ambulo tua ambulo.
Les is talking about moose in rutting season which is the season of heightened sexual activity. If your in the canadian bush during rutting season the moose is the most dangerous animal out there. They've been know to charge head long into trains, big trucks, cars etc.,,,,just cause their not gettin any (-;
" The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it."
“The measure of your life will not be in what you accumulate, but in what you give away.” ~Wayne Dyer
www.birchsidecustomwoodwork.com
I hiked Point Reyes a couple months back, near the end of the rutting season - the elk aren't fussed by the tourists unless someone steps off the trail. But you certainly don't want to take chances with even the habituated elk.... Not as big as moose, but it certainly doesn't take a large animal to be a dangerous one.
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