Bear Spray - seems completely ineffective (Livingston, West Yellowstone: house, closing, living)

[kamoto]

Livingston man dead after his friend left him to hike alone near Yellowstone while bears are coming out of hibernation. I looked at his Facebook and can see pics with some carrying bear spray, but not a gun to be found. I don’t get it. Are these anti gun guys who don’t want to take a bears life? I go nowhere in the back country without a 44 magnum. Last year a guide was found dead with his empty bear spray canister in his hand. Again, he was close to Yellowstone. Are these just foolish men?

[509]

I would go with the bear spray over the 44 magnum.

The US government did think it was a good, BACKUP weapon. Hmm, I will have to think about the concept of a backup weapon in a grizzly encounter,....yeah, not gonna happen....Griz will win that one, before the backup weapon comes out!!

YOUR government at work.....yeah, ditch the 44 magnum.

https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/gtr152.pdf

Get a REAL gun instead.....and the US government does have some great options.

[Shuffler]

Better chance with spray IF you can get it deployed fast enough as one of those brutes is closing the gap on you.

'Spray and Pray' vs. draw, aim, shoot.

If you don't see or hear it coming soon enough, you're likely done.

Still not a bad idea to carry both; pistol is better suited to dissuade ruffians of the 2-legged variety.

[Cloudy Dayz]

Bear spray is about 94% effective. So unless you can shoot a moving target with 94% proficiency, you are probably better off just using bear spray.

Personally I would have bear spray in one hand and pepper gel in the other hand. I would hit it first with the bear spray, then follow up with the pepper gel if necessary. If the bear kept coming at me, I would be spraying both bear spray and pepper gel right to the end. But I don't think it would get to that point.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

And let's not forget those little bells! Which is how you can tell grizzly scat. Pepper smell, and little bells. Old, old joke...




From what our neighbors have told us, the bear spray works fine with black bears, but not always with a grizzly. We have black bears coming through our property on the North Idaho-Montana border, so we always have a bear spray can handy--but we have heard reports of griz in the area, too. Honestly, we're hoping a backwards retreat to the house will be enough. There are huge legal repercussions from killing a grizzly. But if we have to defend ourselves within our own 4 walls, it's shotgun time.

[Parnassia]

Originally Posted by Clark Fork Fantast

And let's not forget those little bells! Which is how you can tell grizzly scat. Pepper smell, and little bells. Old, old joke...




From what our neighbors have told us, the bear spray works fine with black bears, but not always with a grizzly. We have black bears coming through our property on the North Idaho-Montana border, so we always have a bear spray can handy--but we have heard reports of griz in the area, too. Honestly, we're hoping a backwards retreat to the house will be enough. There are huge legal repercussions from killing a grizzly. But if we have to defend ourselves within our own 4 walls, it's shotgun time.

Beg to differ about black bears vs grizzlies. I have personally witnessed and heard multiple accounts of grizzly/brown bears being successfully deterred by properly-deployed bear spray. Operative phrase being properly deployed...and that includes the human sizing up the situation correctly and interpreting an individual bear's behavior before they ever pull the cannister off their belt. Spray is a tool. A gun of any caliber is a tool. So is an understanding of bear behavior. Using the wrong tool at the wrong time can make things a lot worse. Even your 44 magnum. Unfortunately OP, you're trying to condemn a tool out of hand based on ONE situation. No one saw what lead up to the death you referenced so all anyone else can do is speculate about what happened.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Originally Posted by Parnassia

Beg to differ about black bears vs grizzlies. I have personally witnessed and heard multiple accounts of grizzly/brown bears being successfully deterred by properly-deployed bear spray. Operative phrase being properly deployed...and that includes the human sizing up the situation correctly and interpreting an individual bear's behavior before they ever pull the cannister off their belt. Spray is a tool. A gun of any caliber is a tool. So is an understanding of bear behavior. Using the wrong tool at the wrong time can make things a lot worse. Even your 44 magnum. Unfortunately OP, you're trying to condemn a tool out of hand based on ONE situation. No one saw what lead up to the death you referenced so all anyone else can do is speculate about what happened.

Oh, that's a relief. But I'd still not rather encounter a griz at all...Now a moose, there's something to be really afraid of...

[oregonwoodsmoke]

If a bear is angry enough, you aren't going to stop him by hurting him. It's much more likely to make him more angry.



I suspect that most bear encounters are not with a really angry bear so, usually, backing off will work and bear spray will work because the bear hasn't focused his rage on you. If the bear's adrenaline is up and he is on full attack mode, there isn't much you can do that is going to stop him.

[kamoto]

Great post on the gun ballistics. True we don't know the reason for the Livingston mans encounter, but we do know the guide near West Yellowstone came across a grizz eating an elk carcass, and he had an empty can of bear spray in his hand when they found him. Seems like these encounters happen around this time when the grizzlie emerge from their dens ravenous for food. They killed the grizz which attacked and killed the guide. I have a tiny bell I wear on my back pack, but maybe that isn't large enough to make enough of a noise, so I'll look to upgrade that. I remember seeing a show on brown bear attacks in Alaska, where the bear snacked on the remains of someone. Park service finally tracked it down and shot it but they were commenting on how aggressive the bear was. So I don't know about NOT being able to put a bear down if its angry. Stay safe when you head out this spring.

[Parnassia]

Originally Posted by kamoto

Great post on the gun ballistics. True we don't know the reason for the Livingston mans encounter, but we do know the guide near West Yellowstone came across a grizz eating an elk carcass, and he had an empty can of bear spray in his hand when they found him. Seems like these encounters happen around this time when the grizzlie emerge from their dens ravenous for food. They killed the grizz which attacked and killed the guide. I have a tiny bell I wear on my back pack, but maybe that isn't large enough to make enough of a noise, so I'll look to upgrade that. I remember seeing a show on brown bear attacks in Alaska, where the bear snacked on the remains of someone. Park service finally tracked it down and shot it but they were commenting on how aggressive the bear was. So I don't know about NOT being able to put a bear down if its angry. Stay safe when you head out this spring.

Well, blundering onto a bear feeding on a kill in spring is one of the worst possible scenarios you can find yourself in. The other is getting between a sow and her cubs. Even if you are armed to the teeth you're in deep trouble: a hungry bear defending a meal will probably attack you or any other creature (like another bear, even a younger one) it feels threatened by. It would take a very experienced level headed person to put that bear down and let's face it...most people won't have the presence of mind to disable a charging bear effectively before it makes physical contact.

As for bells on backpacks, there are bad jokes about finding bear bells in bear scat, but the underlying intent is correct: you want to make noise in places with poor visibility or a lot of background noise (such as wind, river noise, etc) while in bear country to announce your presence. If a bear knows you're coming they can, and usually will, avoid you. One problem is the bell itself. If a bear has never heard one and doesn't associate the jingly noise with humans, it may not distance itself. Personally, I prefer talking to myself or the air at large. A human voice sends a more informative message to a bear who didn't get an earlier warning I'm approaching.

As for the brown bear found snacking on human remains, who knows what actually happened. The bear they saw may not have had anything to do with the initial injuries that disabled the person or their death. Bears will scavenge carrion...and once they're feeding, its THEIRS, whether its a person, elk, deer, salmon, or another bear. As for being aggressive when the parkies tracked it down again, it was probably stressed out, on the defensive, and more than ready to fight off whatever threatened it. Makes sense to me!

When watching "shows about bear attacks" remember one important thing. The show is compressed down to the most dramatic events. What such shows don't do is relate the hundreds of bear encounters occurring every year that don't result in violence. No drama, no show. Statistically, the vast majority of encounters between humans and bears end peacefully.