Grizzly - How close is too close ?

I know one thing, I would not know a bluff charge from a real one. Anyone else??

PrairieHunter said:

Yep. Unless someone video taped the incident it would simply come down to what the game warden was told.

Makes me wonder if there has ever been anyone charged with a crime after shooting a bear in self defense. I certainly can't think of any but maybe it has happened.

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If someone has it on video... I'd want a copy, convicted or not.

A Hunttalker DLP'd a bear at close range in MT a while back, he wasn't charged with a crime, but the amount of time and money spent to investigate was ridiculous. You would think the bullet in the face was evidence enough. They really wanted to make a case out of it.

Up here, you'll only get investigated if you want to turn it in as a DLP, or have to due to being out of season or you don't have a hunting license. Most areas are open year round, don't require a tag/permit other than a hunting license. I think a number of bears are killed and taken home that would otherwise be "DLP". IIRC, there are about 40 or so turned in a year here, but the number seemed to have declined since they started hunting them more on the Kenai.

For me, if they look menacing and are close, they are getting a bullet. I've only had one encounter that was close, and luckily it turned out fine for both of us. But since then... I won't take chances.

Bambistew said:

If someone has it on video... I'd want a copy, convicted or not.

A Hunttalker DLP'd a bear at close range in MT a while back, he wasn't charged with a crime, but the amount of time and money spent to investigate was ridiculous. You would think the bullet in the face was evidence enough. They really wanted to make a case out of it.

Up here, you'll only get investigated if you want to turn it in as a DLP, or have to due to being out of season or you don't have a hunting license. Most areas are open year round, don't require a tag/permit other than a hunting license. I think a number of bears are killed and taken home that would otherwise be "DLP". IIRC, there are about 40 or so turned in a year here, but the number seemed to have declined since they started hunting them more on the Kenai.

For me, if they look menacing and are close, they are getting a bullet. I've only had one encounter that was close, and luckily it turned out fine for both of us. But since then... I won't take chances.

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Ivan, you have a pretty unique perspective, living and hunting Alaska but being from MT and hunting the West as often as your schedule allows. Do you notice a difference in demeanor and aggressiveness between the typical Alaskan grizzly and those in the Western US that you have encountered?

I’ve had about a dozen too close for comfort grizzly encounters. In 2 of them the bears made physical contact with me. None of them were “life threatening”.
Attacks and maulings are the exception, not the norm.

Don't overreact

Coach Chris said:

I’ve had about a dozen too close for comfort grizzly encounters. In 2 of them the bears made physical contact with me. None of them were “life threatening”.
Attacks and maulings are the exception, not the norm.

Don't overreact

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Any chance you can expand on this for guys who may have never been in close proximity to a grizzly? A dozen encounters too close for comfort, 2 of which the bear made contact, yet none were life threatening - I'm sure the guys who started this thread might like to hear more details.

Preponderance of the evidence is a very low legal standard. It simply means "more likely than not" or "greater than 50%".

yeah about that contact........................

If you are lucky enough to see a bear don't freak out and get nervous. I am a firm believer in bears picking up what a person is feeling... anxiety, fear etc... Stay calm and slowly move away. I have been mere feet away from black bears and one grizz; all didn't give a rats behind about me. Now a bear with cubs is a different story... Good luck and don't freak out.

I wonder if they had the hunting guide that just got eaten by a grizzly bear in Wyoming last week with bear spray deployed on the bear in their statistics? Some bears like a little pepper on their meal. I believe I’ll take my chances with a 44mag and maybe if that doesn’t work well try a little non-lethal deterrent. It’s not the 92 percent effectiveness of the non-leathal deterrent/bear spray, I’m worried about its the 8 percent of the cases where the non-lethal deterrent such as bear spray didn’t work! If you see a bear and he’s not going away from you trust me he is threatening your life. Just ask the Florida man that watched his hunting guide get eaten by a grizzly bear last week. When I’m in the woods I do carry both, my 44mag and the non-lethal deterrent just in case I run out of bullets before he decides to go away.

Better go buy a GoPro and wear it on your chest.

mdhunter61 said:

Ivan, you have a pretty unique perspective, living and hunting Alaska but being from MT and hunting the West as often as your schedule allows. Do you notice a difference in demeanor and aggressiveness between the typical Alaskan grizzly and those in the Western US that you have encountered?

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My 1 hunt in Yukon Territory where grizzly hunting is permitted, all the bears I saw did not stick around long when they winded me. I was watching a sow and 2 cubs feed on a hill side at about 1/2 mile away in the spotter when the wind switched directions. The sow stood up. The cubs stood up looking directly at me, then the sow smacked the cubs On the head and pushed them up and over the hill directly away from me.

My understanding that in the NWT where hunting grizzlies is not permited, if you have fresh meat in your camp for more than 1 day, you will have a grizzly in your camp.

So in my non scientific opinion, hunting grizzlies does modify their behavior.

Thanks to all who responded. Something to think about on my 2300 mile drive out there.

JLS said:

Absolutely not true

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Don't step in the sarcasm.

I'm not sure if my perspective is any more or less valid than anyone else's. I respect the bears, but am not really afraid of them. At some point I think I will have an encounter that I wished I hadn't, but until then...

I think the bears in MT/ID/WY are no more or less aggressive than the bears up here. The amount of interaction with humans is quite a bit higher down there than here, though. I also think the lack of food they have available makes them more territorial, and protective/aggressive/angry.

I don't buy into the "if you hunt them they will be scared of humans," though. I think there is more to it than that. Read any historical accounts of bears and settlers/explorers and you'll find plenty of stories of people getting chewed up... all while they were being aggressively hunted. Many maulings up here happen in areas where they are hunted. I just don't believe that taking a couple dozen bears out of a population of 1000+/- is going to make the other bears become scared of humans. They are quite solitary animals. How does a bear learn that they are "hunted" if they have never seen another bear shot or been shot at themselves? The only ones that "learned" it are dead. I think the amount of maulings has increased in the MT/ID/WY areas so much because the amount of bears has increased along with more humans coming in contact, more so than them not being afraid of people due to hunting.

There are people mauled up here in areas where bears never, or rarely see humans, with very light hunting pressure. But, even high number of people are mauled in areas where they are hunted regularly, and in some instances they are hunted nearly year round. Why? The difference is the amount of people who could make contact with a bear. There was a guy killed by a bear on the edge of town here this spring, and one of the searchers was also mauled. These bears are "hunted." Albeit, on a limited permit basis, but still hunted every spring/fall. There has either been a death or serious mauling on the edge of anchorage every year that I've lived here, many years its 2-4 maulings. They are hunted to about the same level that they would be hunted in MT/ID/WY.

I do think there is a higher correlation between amount of available food vs aggressive bears and or maulings. There are very few maulings on Kodiak for instance (tons of food there), and I think maybe one fatality in a 100 years. The human/bear encounter rate is fairly high, possibly the highest of anywhere here. Hunting is allowed, but its also highly regulated by management area. Most areas have a total harvest of maybe 1-4 bears a year. Whereas the number of maulings in areas like the Brooks range is more common... in areas where bear populations are quite low, and food is scarce. The amount of hunting pressure is similar to Kodiak, or maybe a bit higher. The amount of human interaction is far lower in the Brook though.

I really don't think there is an easy answer to it. Each encounter is different. ADFG says that 1:100 encounters will result in a mauling, about 10:100 are bluff charges, the rest run away. Basically, there is a 1:10 chance that a bear coming for you, you'r in trouble. Not great odds IMO, nor would I be willing to wait and find out because I don't have to...

I've had one sow/cubs charge us, but stopped short at about 15 yards. Had another bear come charging into camp, stand up, see us (i guess) and run off... at about 5 yards. I've spooked 4-5 bears in the brush at close range that ran off. Every bear I've seen, that saw me or smelled me ran off, except for one, and he watched us. When on a river fishing, they usually run off into the brush, or just wandered off. They are unpredictable, and I respect that. I think it would be foolish to think that we could prevent attacks by merely hunting them.

Well said and some good points.

Bambistew said:

I don't buy into the "if you hunt them they will be scared of humans," though.

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This is an interesting perspective. IMO there is a difference in the way most animals who are hunted act versus those who live in areas where they are not hunted but I don't know if that's true for bears.
I think most would agree that the lack of hunting and amount of human interaction has made the animals in YNP act differently than they typically do outside the park. I assume there are probably areas where bears in Alaska that regularly have photographers following them around and have become comfortable around humans because they are not being hunted.

We also see this in animals like urban deer who are not hunted and seem to be very comfortable in close proximity to people. The lack of hunting has made them pets for some people. Other animals I can think of would be mountain goats who are hunted on such a limited basis that in many areas they are tame. The goats at Mount Rushmroe will let you stand right next to them for example. Sheep and goats licking salt from cars in the region would be another example. Elk in Estes Park seem to act much differently than elk in most other areas, some of which may be due to not being hunted. We also see animal behavior change on opening day due to hunting activity. But those aren't predators either.

Lions would be the closest thing I could compare to bears and I have seen first hand how different they are in areas where they are not hunted such at NW Nebraska where human interactions are a common occurrence with many being killed near homes. In most of those cases the animal was not attacking but in very close proximity to people and not running away. I believe at last part of this is due to them not being hunted as other parts of the country where I have known people that encountered cats they were almost always running away from the humans which I always assumed was in fear of being shot.

But you could be correct on bears as each animal responds differently and as mentioned each situation is so different with different levels of human interaction, hunting pressure, feed sources, bear densities, den behavior, etc...

Maybe predators respond differently to hunting pressure than prey does??

I have no idea if we can ever really know if they develop a sense of being hunted or not... but I'm very skepitical of hunting being a deterrent of maulings. If that was the case, then why are the vast majority of maulings in AK in areas where they are actively hunted, and always have been? IMO you are just as likely to be chewed on in a NP as you are outside one here. The difference with the parks system here, is they aren't as developed as the ones in the L48, so encounters are much lower. Most have a single road entering/exiting and thats it. Most of our NPs are way bigger than
even Jellystone, and see far fewer people. Denali probably sees in the neighborhood of 1M a year, and there has been maybe one death and a couple maulings that I can remember in the last 10 years? Tourists/hikers are highly regulated and its not a free-for-all like the L48 parks. You get on a bus, and are tracked if you go hiking, and need a permit to do so. Its pretty rare for someone to get mauled in the parks here, mostly because there are so few people venturing out into them off the road.

Katmia NP to the west of Anchorage, has probably the highest density of bears anywhere in the world... lots of tourists as well. Attacks are very rare there... because of food availability, or is it because tourists are manged? No clue.

IMO, I really don't think bears GaF one way or another about being hunted. There are a number of them that rummage through the garbage near my house, they are in "no hunting" zones and act no differently than bears in areas where they are hunted. Luckily the fish and game take them out from time to time, to the dismay of the bleeding hearts. There was 5 brownies shot within a couple miles of my house this spring/summer.

mdhunter61 said:

Any chance you can expand on this for guys who may have never been in close proximity to a grizzly?

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Two occasions of physical contact
1. Grizzly sniffed my stomach through the wall of my tent in Glacier Natl Park.
2. Grizzly slowly approached myself and a companion in the Yellowstone backcountry. It sniffed her wrist and rubbed against my legs before walking away.
Too close for comfort
Portering with a huge pack on my back, I was bluff charged within 10-15ft of me.
Downhill mtn biking I landed a technical step down jump into a right turn and the grizz was just past the turn on the edge of the trail. I locked my brakes up and skidded within 30ft of it. We had a bit of a stare down and he walked away.
Spring skiing on Buck Mtn in Grand Teton Natl Park a grizzly ran between myself and my partner while we were skinning up the mountain in the early morning darkness.
A tourist forced me off the road with their car while biking on the Moose-Wilson Rd in Grand Teton park. I nearly rode into 399's male cub. This was his first summer on his own. He was laying just off the side of the road. I don't think that really counts. Those cubs were habituated to people.
On another backcountry trip in Yellowstone a grizzly was essentially cutting off a switchback and ran about 20ft to my right from one section of trail to another.

Those are just a few of the high points

I second listen to Rinellas podcast, I think it was called "The Meat Tree" there are 2 parts. Basically they said it happened so fast it wouldn't of mattered what they used. Though they where caught off guard, not every situation is the same. It is a good episode though, check this videos out.

https://youtu.be/4fbQgjlpjgo