News of the recent grizzly bear attack at Yellowstone Park caught my eye. Just about six weeks ago, my newlywed brother- and sister-in-law were honeymooning there, taking in the gorgeous views and hiking around in the lovely summer air of Wyoming.
Yellowstone offers a few tips about what to do to avoid encounters with grizzlies when hiking through the park, and mentions that sometimes traveling in groups of four or more can deter the aggressive bears from making a move on you. Other notes on this potential threat, however, are not encouraging:
If you encounter a bear at close range, you are in a potentially dangerous situation. Try to stay calm and observe the bears reaction to you. In most instances, even grizzlies, when they realize it is a person, will leave. Black bears are more easily intimidated than grizzlies but in some instances any bear may very well charge.
If it charges it is best to stand your ground while backing slowly away facing the bear. Talk to the bear in a low, calm voice. Do not run away. This seems to provoke or rather to trigger the predators natural instinct to chase something that is trying to run away. Bears are much faster than humans. You have no chance to outrun him. And as we mentioned, running almost guarantees that the bear will chase you, probably catch you, and perhaps injure you.
Sometimes a charging bear will be trying to bluff you. He stops his charge just before reaching you. So don’t panic, continue to stand your ground, backing away slowly while softly speaking to the bear. Once the bear has determined that you are not a threat, it will probably retreat.
If a bear continues with its charge, and attacks you, your best option is to play dead. Playing dead means laying on your stomach with your hands clasped over the back of your neck. Your pack will protect your back.
When bears have attacked people as the result of a surprise encounter, they have usually bitten and scratched the victim and then retreated. In a surprise encounter, it is believed that the bear attacks because it feels the person is a threat and continues the attack until it feels the person is no longer a threat. Do not fight back during an attack of this nature. It appears that fighting back only prolongs the attack and increases the severity of injuries.
The whole idea of speaking softly and backing away, while of course in a total panic and aware of the potential threat to your life this bear may bring, is nearly comical. The two hikers who were attacked were, indeed, lucky to get away with their lives; at least one of them was armed with bear spray and was able to deter the bear while it was engaged in chewing off his leg. Or was it the other hiker? In any case playing dead was attempted, but this bear was kind of determined.
Grizzlies are on the rise around Yellowstone, and apparently, attacks are, too, according to a 2001 article in National Geographic. Add that to our growing list of concerns related to humans altering the environment.
When I was camping with family in New Hampshire a while back, we had a rather sweet little encounter with a large black bear who had intruded on our site to rummage through a bag of tortilla chips we stupidly left out after playing cards late into the night. The sounds of the bear rummaging were deceptively human, but so shuffling that we thought it must be either a sleepwalker or a drunk. Imagine our surprise to train our flashlights on a huge bear, about 15 feet from our tent, with its nose buried deep in a bag of organic “Bearitos.”