Da Bears

[pinstriper]

[leslie]

Just which park was this???

[pinstriper]

South Beach SP. Newport, OR. Over 100 miles south. Highly unlikely the bears in Ft. Stevens will be the same bear.

[leslie]

Ah, I will buy some bear spray before I cross the Rockies. I have pots and pans to bang together. My dogs will bark at a bear, at least until they can wriggle out of their collars so they can get back to the camper faster than if I were on the other end of the leash. For my husband, the Bear Early Warning System will be working. We are prepared.

[peislander]

Ah, I will buy some bear spray before I cross the Rockies. I have pots and pans to bang together. My dogs will bark at a bear, at least until they can wriggle out of their collars so they can get back to the camper faster than if I were on the other end of the leash. For my husband, the Bear Early Warning System will be working. We are prepared.

Leslie - The classic advice is if you can run faster than your husband, you have nothing to worry about.

If he is faster than you -- start training! Make sure he doesn't train. Buy him fattening treats. Buy yourself some expensive running shoes too. They are faster. 

[admin]

Ah, I will buy some bear spray before I cross the Rockies. I have pots and pans to bang together. My dogs will bark at a bear, at least until they can wriggle out of their collars so they can get back to the camper faster than if I were on the other end of the leash. For my husband, the Bear Early Warning System will be working. We are prepared.

Leslie - The classic advice is if you can run faster than your husband, you have nothing to worry about.

If he is faster than you -- start training! Make sure he doesn't train. Buy him fattening treats. Buy yourself some expensive running shoes too. They are faster. 

Or better yet, make friends with an even slower camping buddy

[pinstriper]

Beer, bacon, and donuts at Leslie's site !!!

[leslie]

Well, beer anyway

[pinstriper]

Saw [a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU5cMZymSr0"]this[/a] and thought of you, Leslie !

Not that this reminded me of you, only that you would get a kick out of it.

[leslie]

I think that stupid woman got what she deserved after spraying the bear in the face with pepper spray! The bear was moving away from the kayak when she sprayed him. However, since you have a kayak, you may feel different.

[pinstriper]

I think that stupid woman got what she deserved after spraying the bear in the face with pepper spray! The bear was moving away from the kayak when she sprayed him. However, since you have a kayak, you may feel different.

Oh no, she was a total idiot.

I was totally rooting for the bear to destroy her kayak, and then turn and eat her.

If she needed to deploy her spray - and I'm not saying she did - she did it incorrectly, from too far away to have effect. And then, of course, her voice made be want to....well, let's leave it at the bear eating her. Shocker: she's single.

[leslie]

www.fox8live.com/story/33305971/test

This is a news article about a Bozeman MT man who survived TWO attacks by the same bear. Unfortunately, he did something wrong, or he might not have been attacked in the first place - he went hiking alone. From what I have read, a minimum of 2 people need to be hiking together in bear country - 3 people together would be better. He was armed with a pistol, but the bear ripped it away in the first attack. The bear had cubs with her, which is why she probably attacked him.

[pinstriper]

80 yards away is not a lot, but should be enough to engage a firearm, especially when you see the bear first and she starts running away before starting her charge.

He wasted time yelling in the hope that if the sow knew he was human she wouldn't attack, then went for the bear spray instead of the pistol, which it doesn't say what it was, but on a Griz, almost no sidearm is enough. Certainly it starts with .44 magnum and goes up from there (.454 casull, various .460's and .500's)

Bear spray, of course, did not work even once, much less twice. And then again bear spray and wind is not a good combination,  and it doesn't talk about the wind conditions.

The story I read on fb has him talking about "jogging" away after the first attack, which of course may have elicited the second charge. Or it could be that the bear was watching what she thought was her kill, and found it in her to finish the job. In any case, something about him, in that place, with her cubs, made her particularly aware of his presence and unhappy about it.

It also said he lost the pistol during the second attack. For me it would have been in hand, not in the holster at that point, and moving slowly with lots of listening. But he probably wasn't thinking too clearly at that point.

So a series of poor decisions.

I believe that black bears are more likely to make a false charge than a griz. If they do attack, a griz just wants to kill you, which is why playing dead works (sort of - you will take lots of damage that is well possibly fatal). A black bear that attacks doesn't just want to render you dead, but digestible. So with a black bear you fight to the last fingernail.

Leslie, I give you a lot of ribbing over this whole bear thing, which I think is entertaining for us both. But everyone needs to REALLY understand the wildlife threats and have a plan BEFORE an encounter, and even when we are camping in state parks and other places, wildlife has a way of showing up, and it ain't Yogi and Boo-boo.