Short news article and accompanying video interview of a man who was attacked by a black bear a few days ago. The outcome could of been much worse had this been a bigger and stronger bear.

Tim Scott was attacked by a black bear while hiking with his family at Red River Gorge on Sunday.

He described in detail how he tried several times to get away from the bear before he was attacked by the 150 pound animal.

Wow, that's really unusual bear behavior. Interesting analogy - a bear criminal. I wonder if he had some food in his pocket or something? Where were his dogs in all this? The rest of his family? Be interesting to see if there are other stories in that area with a similar MO.




As an aside, the grammer police in me was really itching to yell at the writer...

From what I know (not an expert), a 150 lb. blackie is basically a yearling that got the boot from mom. That's a time where they are vulnerable to starvation, which would explain the clearly predatory behaviour. This behaviour is rare but not unknown. In this situation, with a blackie, you fight back with everything you've got.

It may not be fair to say so, but I get the impression that this fellow may have unwitting presented the body language of prey. (Armchair assessment, I know.)

BTW, fighting even a small black bear would be no joke. One of my Great Danes is 150 lbs.; a big marshmallow, but plenty intimidating; you have no idea how bloody strong those jaws are 'til you try to remove porcupine quills with pliers ...

Obviously we don't have all the facts but I thought it was interesting that there was no mention of doing anything to appear large and threatening when the bear was approaching. No yelling, arm waving, hitting, kicking, eye gouging, rock throwing, etc.

His behaviour (walking away, dropping items, turning his back on the bear) sounds like the behaviour of a prey animal.

Obviously he could have left facts out (or facts could have been edited out) of that very brief account.

Glad to hear that things turned out relatively well for him.

First word to remember with bears is 'unpredictable'. After that, you learn about them and they are as predictable as pie.

I am betting that guy did everything to make the hungry young bear think he was prey, and it makes me mad that there are humans out there who take walks in nature and then call an animal that is just being an animal a name like "bad". It is more like bad human. That guy must have been crazy to have acted like he did, backing up and turning his back. He probably could have scared the bear away if he presented himself as a viable danger to the bear, but it looks like he didn't even try. Now the bear is hunted down as "criminal" because of a human's ignorance. He could have in the least carried a pepperspray... or a spine!

My understanding of how to act near bears:

All Bears = scare it away or kill it before it gets to you.

Brown (Grizzly) Bears = if it is on you, play dead in fetal position, covering back neck with hands, face tucked in to chest; as it is trying to eliminate the competition and threat to its children, and when it believes it has done so it go away. Although in the rare event the Griz is starving, you may fight, but know that you will most likely lose.

Black Bears = if it is on you, FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! Even if it does have cubs, it is likely planning on eating the competition and threat.

I was approached by a young black bear as I was searching for my camera at the tailgate of my truck. It was about the same size bear (~200 pounds), and it approached to within about a couple of feet, obviously hungry, and I began stamping my feet and yelling and raising my arms. The bear hesitated, so I got more intense and it turned and climbed up the nearest tree like a cub would do. After about a minute it climbed back down and lay down at the base of the tree. I couldn't scare it away, so I got in my truck to drive away. Then the bear got up and approached my truck. It wasn't scared of the horn, so I drove away before it could start damaging my truck. It is sad, because this bear was conditioned by people throwing food to it at the side of the road. It probably had to be killed because of ass-ignorant people getting a thrill out of feeding wildlife.

That guy's incident reminds me of that jogger in Canada who got killed by Coyotes because she didn't understand predator-prey dynamics.

For all you who think that bear is "bad", understand this, there is no bad animal, only humans acting stupidly. Don't go into nature unless you are confident you know what you are doing and are prepared to deal with uncertainty.

Scott mentions he mainained eye contact with the bear. I thought that was one of the things you shouldn't do - don't look a bear in the eyes. Am I correct?

No, that's gorillas. You challenge their dominance within the group if you look them in the eyes.

"First word to remember with bears is 'unpredictable'. After that, you learn about them and they are as predictable as pie."

I don't think you've met many bears.

A hungry bear probably isn't going to act the same as a sated bear. A bear who's just been chased away from a dead deer by a bigger bear might be in a bad mood. A Mom bear probably isn't going to act the same as a female w/o cubs. A healthy bear probably isn't going to act the same as one who has an old injury from a hunter's bullet, with the bullet still in him. What happens if you're in between a female in season and the bear that has been following her? A bear who has had some warning that people are around probably isn't deliberately going to hang around if he has a way out in the other direction. Truly wild bears who haven't had any/much contact with humans will probably act differently than garbage can bears.


As to the guy in the article, I don't think he acted very smart. It was almost like he had never even entertained the idea of running into a bear, or considering what he might do if he did run across one.

When the bear first approached, he started taking photos. He didn't even have an idea in his head that he might be in danger.

Sue

Here are a number of references suggsting it's a good idea to avoid eyecontact with bear.

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&a...wAAAKoEBU_QzOs8

You are right, Susan. I have not met all the bears. They are "predictable as pie" in that the basic premise is to increase the distance between yourself and them, because they can kill you, even though they are unpredictable enough not to. "My understanding of bears" is of course going to differ with others' depending on unpredictable circumstances, thus the unpredictability of bears.

So again, unpredictable and yet as predictable as pie.

Or maybe you like 'predictably unpredictable' better.

It is a good idea to watch body language and not get too distracted by the "am I looking it in the eye" thing. Body language can tell you much more than eye color. But, dominant male gorillas are certainly not a wild animal you want to have a staring contest with. If it sometimes applies to bears as well, that doesn't surprise me, but I doubt it is as direct a statement of challenge with bears as it is with dominant male gorillas, whom we are much more closely related to.
They say the same thing of any animal threat including human, so I can't say it is true of bears in particular, whereas dominant male gorillas...

[quote=TAB]It is a good idea to watch body language and not get too distracted by the "am I looking it in the eye" thing. Body language can tell you much more than eye color.quote]

Eye color? Who mentioned anything about eye color? I made the simple point with references that many experts say it's a bad idea to make eye contact with a bear. Since there are no advantages to making eye contact, why take the chance?

What I meant by eye color is that when you look someone in the eye, that's all the info you are really going to get. A constant reminder of eye color is a useless info stream. I do not differentiate in this sense between looking a bear in the eyes and looking a mad pit bull or a hooded mugger in the eyes. I would rather watch the pit bull's ears, back and legs and the mugger's stance and especially hands. The eyes tell you nothing and can only be understood as a challenge to the dominance of the threatening animal. In a more specific sense, the more closely related to the threatening animal I am, I feel the greater the challenge to dominance via eye contact. It's a subconscious thing. Humans most especially, then apes, primates, other mammals, on down the list until eye contact means practically nothing, such as with birds and reptiles. There are many ways to look at it.

We are not really in disagreement as to what to do, only perhaps the why to do it. I think the 'what' is much more important when it comes right down to a do or die situation than is the 'why'. The 'why' is really only for nerds who have nothing better to do than analyze these sorts of things so they can best advise the general public.

Again, I am no bear expert, however I have hiked, camped and lived in bear territory bears for much of my life. I have literally come face to face with many bears in less then 10 feet distance. In almost all cases, once the bear senses you he/she will turn tail and run.

In my experience, those bears that didn't run, I don't recall any incidents where eye to eye contact made any difference(YMMV though). That said, observing the bears' body language and behavior is crucial as at the same time, the bear is also studying your behavior. How you react to the bears' presence will greatly influence if you are about to have a bad day or not...

There are plenty of bear experts out there, keep in mind that many have never personally encountered a bear in the wild closeup and as usual, don't blindly take any one person's "expert" advice as gospel.

That said, Charlie Russell is one of the foremost Grizzly experts in the world and his documentary "Bear Man of Kamchatka" is nothing short of outstanding. The documentry follows Mr. Russell researching and living amongst Grizzlies. After watching this documentary, it will change your views on many aspects of bear behavior.

I've read somewhere that one of the things you should do to convince the bear you are not a prey is talking to it since animal prey doesn't usually do this.

I think that is a very good idea. I also heard that you should never grunt or make bear-like noises when in bear country.

Yeah, but I just never know what to say in situations like that.

On a more serious note, I've always been told to "look big" by opening up and raising one's coat, putting one's backpack on one's shoulders, etc. Supposedly this makes the bear less likely to want to try anything. Honestly, though I'm not sure how practical this advice is. Like who's going to be taking off their coat or backpack when they're face to face with a bear.

I've had two relatively close encounters with bears. On both occasions, I was walking one direction on a trail and the bear was walking the other (coming towards me). Both times the bears took a good look at me and then lumbered off. They weren't afraid but neither were they aggressive. I just sort of stood my ground in both cases (running is generally a bad idea) and waited for their next move. The 2nd encounter I had was in the dark. It was rather unnerving to see a large, shaggy black mass with two golden orbs reflecting the glow of my headlamp.

HJ

I have never had a conversation with a bear! Again depending on a Bear's demeanor/body language and how threatened they feel, usually a loud "Hey Bear" is enough to send them running in a different direction.

One time, DW and I came home from a walk (we lived up in northern rural Canada at the time) only for me to come around the backside of the house and face to face with a big cinnamon phase black bear. No amount of yelling (after retreating to a safe distance) would send that bear away, he just stood there eying me and snapped his teeth a few times. It wasn't until the dog came trotting down the driveway to see what the yelling was about that the bear decided to find a friendlier house to hang out at...

Cinnamon "phase"? I guess I thought that bears, like humans, sort of had their individual colorations, no? There are actually phases that they go through?

HJ

Since it made the news I've been thinking this. Sure, circumstances can make for some erratic behavior. However, nothing about the news coverage has left me settled. I gotta wonder about what actually happened.

Please don't take this personally, but this line of thinking is just plain stupid. There are crazy animals just like there are crazy people.

In the context of bears, looking at populations as a whole, bear encounters are rare. Most people have never seen one in the wild and never will. For those of us who get out and enjoy the fresh air, the chances go up. I've encountered several in the wild and never had a problem with them. But with 6 billion people on the planet, there are a fair number of folks missing some marbles. There are some animals out there, including bears, missing some marbles as well.

Some animals are more aggressive than others, even without the human factor. Granted, animals can be conditioned based on their environment. But that doesn't mean there aren't some bad apples out there that can't cause problems on their first human encounter. People do need a better understanding, but people also take the quickest answer and treate it like doctrine.

I've posted this before, but I still think it makes for an interesting read:

http://fwp.mt.gov/mtoutdoors/downloads/BearAttack.pdf
http://www.nps.gov/glac/parknews/news10-05.htm

Keep hiking...

Just insert "mostly" in the appropriate places and there's (mostly) no disagreement.

Having worked closely with all sorts of animals, I can tell you for a fact that a few are "on the prod" by nature. In a controlled environment, you can temper that. But in the wild, you react in the manner that 99% will respond to. For the other 1%, you invoke Plan Z, because they leave you no other option.

Mostly, that works.

Looking any bear in the eye works very well.....as long as the looking is done through the scope of a high powered rifle.


There was an erie video a few years ago about a blackie stalking a guy for miles. He filmed it all and it was a miracle it never attacked.

I have killed one black bear. Amazing animals and when skinning him, the claws and muscles were awe inspiring. Not something I would want to go up against with pepper, bells or a sharp stick!