When hiking in bear country it's a good idea to wear little jingle bells on your shoes to alert but not startle the bears. Also have pepper spray in case of an encounter. Be aware of signs of bear activity such as bear droppings. These can be easily identified because they contain little jingle bells and smell like pepper.
All true. All standard textbook wisdom.
If I hike a new area high up in the Rockies, I will wear not one but two canisters of pepper spray on my belt. I would probably refuse to hike with greenhorns who own a poorly trained dog or appear ready to panic run at the first sight of a bear.
Wearing jingle bells or tin cans with pebbles or some other forms of constant noise makers are standard, traditional advice. Which I ignore.
I prefer to be dead quiet in the bush/backcountry and.... this is really hard for many .... pay attention. Both griz and blacks generally make a huge amount of noise if actively feeding. You can hear grizzlies working terrain from 400 to 500 metres away. Signs (prints, scat, scratched trees, worked over rocks and tree stumps) are usually highly visible, if one cares to actually look.
I will however make noise when traversing thick dense underbrush or negotiating noisy creeks. I woof like a Grizzly. And then sometimes I will hit my chest. Territorial communication. Not for everybody perhaps.
Seattle is having king tides along with lots of runoff and a big low pressure system. The result is really high water that is topping bulkheads and causing some river flooding.
Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Dec 27, 2022 - 1:59pm
Bill_J wrote:
When hiking in bear country it's a good idea to wear little jingle bells on your shoes to alert but not startle the bears. Also have pepper spray in case of an encounter. Be aware of signs of bear activity such as bear droppings. These can be easily identified because they contain little jingle bells and smell like pepper.
When hiking in bear country it's a good idea to wear little jingle bells on your shoes to alert but not startle the bears. Also have pepper spray in case of an encounter. Be aware of signs of bear activity such as bear droppings. These can be easily identified because they contain little jingle bells and smell like pepper.
Way back when, I was told that when a black bears sees you they are only thinking about one thing, dinner.
The wife told me that when they would go camping / hunting up in the Sierra or out at Joshua Tree in California, they would always get a bear tag. They were not there to hunt bears, wild boar actually, but in case they had to shoot a bear in self defense, you had better have a tag. It does not matter if you kill a bear in self defense, no tag and the wrath of the government comes down on you hard. Huge fines and possible jail time.
My experience with black bears has been very different. A few simply keep focusing on the food they came to eat (mollusks on the beach, grass, berries). All the others are scared absolutely shitless by me and anybody I might have with me. The majority actually.
I have treed two black bears so far (without trying) and I expect to tree a few more black bears before my time on this earth is done. The first time this happened, we mutually treed each other in dense after-forest fire pine. I started banging on the pine tree branches like a griz and the yearling black bear slid out of the tree and fucked off running as fast as it possibly could. It was the same yearling that had raided the ranch garbage cans on a couple of occasions. Embarrassing.
The second time, I was pushing my way a few centimetres at a time through a heavy thicket of Devil's Club on the Bel Irving River in NW British Columbia. Man was I glad it was a small cinnamon shade black bear because 'flight' was out of the question. Oddly enough, I was not that worried. Earlier that day I came within 15 to 20 metres of massive bull moose. That was scary. Bull moose are like range bulls. If they panic, they blindly flee. There is no negotiating. "Excuse me sir" is most unlikely to work.
I have a friend â my travel mentor actually â who lives in and regularly hikes the high country in the Rockies. He has been charged by griz at least twice (on both occasions he was hiking with greenhorns). So when his daughters were growing up, he packed a rifle whenever they went fishing and hiking. This friend is bigger than I am. ~1,98 maybe? 6 foot, 6 inches? He was also a long-distance routard so like me he has faced all kinds of dangers. I strongly suspect that he took out a couple of guys in northern India about half a century ago. But I don't push it too hard. If it happened, they would have been righteous kills.
Buddy had an excuse to carry his firearm. His daughters are now fully grown and he no longer packs even when he goes a half day hike off the road all by himself.
Nobody else I know carry firearms to protect against bears. I have never carried a firearm and never will. I used to pack pepper spray on coastal salmon streams. I no longer bother.
Knowledge is power. Maintaining good physical health, good eyesight and good hearing are important. Knowing how to look and how to listen are key. All that takes dedication, focus and effort.
If firearms are necessary to provide protection against bears, then a trained, qualified security officer should be assigned to providing bear protection and nothing else.
Yes. It is interesting to read the the characteristics and circumstances of the people who died. Looks like there are many preventable deaths in that list of cases.
Then there are the predatory black bears — not that common — but hard to predict.
Some stylized facts from western Canada: Brown (Grizzly) bears in the coastal regions and on salmon rivers are not particularly dangerous, i.e., overall safe. The same bears in the interior mountain ranges, especially the Rocky Mountains can be very dangerous. Anybody hiking the high country in the Rockies during the summer months should be bear aware and competent. There appear to be far more Brown bear/Grizzly bear fatalities in Alaska than British Columbia. I have no idea why.. Could it be simply a function of more people going into the wilds in Alaska? I have read of stories of Americans with really romantic, out-to-lunch views of bearsand nature in general who managed to get themselves killed but we have those people here in Canada too. A few years ago, a retired Alaskan bush pilot was badly mauled on the Morice River near Houston, BC. He would have been fishing steelhead in late September. Several species of Pacific salmon run into the Morice. The sow removed his lower jaw. He survived. Apparently he had spent much time in the company of Grizzly bears and was not worried. I suspect that given his age and profession, his hearing was failing. A nearby creek would have provided lots of background white noise to smother bear movements. I also suspect that he did not check and read the area before becoming engrossed in working on his gear. Veteran Alaska Bush pilot mauled by grizzly Pasted: Grizzlies are common to the area, but authorities reported this was the first mauling in anyone's memory.
Way back when, I was told that when a black bears sees you they are only thinking about one thing, dinner.
The wife told me that when they would go camping / hunting up in the Sierra or out at Joshua Tree in California, they would always get a bear tag. They were not there to hunt bears, wild boar actually, but in case they had to shoot a bear in self defense, you had better have a tag. It does not matter if you kill a bear in self defense, no tag and the wrath of the government comes down on you hard. Huge fines and possible jail time.
Yes. It is interesting to read the the characteristics and circumstances of the people who died. Looks like there are many preventable deaths in that list of cases. Then there are the predatory black bears â not that common â but hard to predict.
Some stylized facts from western Canada: Brown (Grizzly) bears in the coastal regions and on salmon rivers are not particularly dangerous, i.e., overall safe. The same bears in the interior mountain ranges, especially the Rocky Mountains can be very dangerous. Anybody hiking the high country in the Rockies during the summer months should be bear aware and competent.
There appear to be far more Brown bear/Grizzly bear fatalities in Alaska than British Columbia. I have no idea why.. Could it be simply a function of more people going into the wilds in Alaska? I have read of stories of Americans with really romantic, out-to-lunch views of bearsand nature in general who managed to get themselves killed but we have those people here in Canada too.
A few years ago, a retired Alaskan bush pilot was badly mauled on the Morice River near Houston, BC. He would have been fishing steelhead in late September. Several species of Pacific salmon run into the Morice. The sow removed his lower jaw. He survived.
Apparently he had spent much time in the company of Grizzly bears and was not worried. I suspect that given his age and profession, his hearing was failing. A nearby creek would have provided lots of background white noise to smother bear movements. I also suspect that he did not check and read the area before becoming engrossed in working on his gear.
...I know, I know. Dozens if not hundreds have died horrible deaths from savage, cruel Grizzly bear attacks over the decades. Or have they? Frankly, has anybody in the area died from a griz attack in the post-war period? Not that I am aware of. ...
OK, as a city slicker - but I watch a lot of Alone - I don't know why the blade, unless you're thinking of shaving bark to make kindling?
Season 7 was my favorite, maybe because it was my first.
I watched a few episodes of Alone. Especially the ones filmed on the shores of Chilko Lake in Cariboo-Chilcotin region of British Columbia because I know the area. I was impressed with the skill sets and problem solving abilities of some of the participants. I was not impressed with the gratuitous fear mongering efforts. Perhaps viewers understand black and grizzly bears about as well as American voters understand the Vietnamese, Cubans, Venezuelans or Russians?
I know, I know. Dozens if not hundreds have died horrible deaths from savage, cruel Grizzly bear attacks over the decades. Or have they? Frankly, has anybody in the area died from a griz attack in the post-war period? Not that I am aware of. Would guess that hundreds if not thousands have died in automobile accidents and from substance abuse, in particular tobacco and alcohol.
Can imagine the producers of Alone sharing that information with you?
—————————————
A short skinning blade can be used for all kinds of things including shaving dry sticks to create kindling. It can be used as rough substitutes for an axe, a saw, a shovel. It can be used to clean fish or rodents. It can dig slivers out of your skin. It can open mussels and shells. A knife can be used to mark a trail, useful if you get lost. A knife can be used to carve words as a message to others which, once again, could be useful if you get lost.
In passing, I never get lost because I always do my homework before going into a new area. I spend hours pouring over topographic maps and satellite image maps at home to the point that I form rough 3D images in my head. That said, it does not hurt to be prepared for all possible outcomes.
Finally, if I ever have a close territorial face-to-face confrontation with a bear, the knife will give me an extra layer of confidence that might help, on the understanding that the knife by itself is unlikely to help.
I once worked for a woman on a cow-calf ranch who stood down a big boar grizzly when she was in her young 20s. She had a .22 rifle with her and knew that it was completely and utterly useless. Dodie stood her ground, softly cursed the boar, told him to behave in a low steady voice, and avoided direct eye contact. It was too much ice cream and not enough exercise that finally did Dodie in after well over a half century of playing and working in the Purcells and Rockies. She and her second husband Harry Riddel ran British Columbia's largest big game guiding outfit up the Bull River for several decades until Harry died. By that time, the logging roads had been pushed in and degraded the quality of the experience.
