Ah, missed that part (and I'm reaaally bad with names).

Luckily I'm not allergic to bees or wasps although I don't enjoy being stung. I take precautions to avoid both. The issue with bears is that they run faster than Usain Bolt and they're hard to avoid sometimes. Camp hygiene is important but that won't help if you stumble on one hiking.

I'm not condemning bear spray and I have four cans of the stuff, two Counter Assault and two of the Udap. Mostly I'm just bringing to light something that I for one didn't know. Every article I've read up til that one parroted the same old "98% effective" stat and I figured that was likely right even though I've seen some high profile cases where the spray had zero effect.

Information is power, and everyone should look at all the facts before deciding what to carry. That's all I'm getting at.