Here's the reason I always carry bear spray in my aircraft and auto survival kit when I am travelling. I'd carry a gun too, but up here in Canada, people get all squeamish about such things. We often have black bears passing through our back yard, especially in the winter...they don't hibernate in the warm, coastal areas...but they're not much of a problem. Grizzlys are a different story.

B.C. hunter survives attack by two grizzly bears
Alaska Highway News
September 15, 2004

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. (CP) -- Hunter Jay Stafford was packing up a butchered elk in a remote valley when he heard a roar on a nearby hill he assumed was just the wind.

But then he found himself knocked down by a male grizzly bear while the grizzly's mother attacked his father. "You don't want to think a grizzly is coming after you," Stafford said from a hospital bed Tuesday. He said he and his father Terry had been hunting at the headwaters of the Halfway River, west of Pink Mountain, and were getting ready to pack up an elk kill when the two bears attacked.

"We were two days up the valley with horses," Stafford, 28, said. He said the younger grizzly, which his father estimated to be about three years old, stood on its hind legs and knocked Stafford to the ground and began to maul his right leg. The female attacked Stafford's father, knocking him down an embankment. Another cub did not attack and stayed back from the other two bears. The two attacking bears then turned their attention to the elk meat that lay near Stafford. "At one point I thought they would go after the horses," he said. Bleeding and bruised, Stafford struggled to his knees, and hoped the elk meat would distract the bears long enough for him to reach for his rifle. "I had to or else I would have been dead," he said. Stafford shot and killed the female and the two cubs ran off. He said he called for his father, who had deep scratches on his back, multiple bruises and an injured ankle.

They were now faced with having to make their way back to their main camp on horseback and they didn't want to take the same trail they had taken coming into the site because one of the cubs had run back that way. The alternate route meant crossing a stream, and as Stafford tried to lead the way, his horse lost its footing.

"He fell over with me on his back," he said, adding as the horse struggled to regain its balance, "he crawled over me and stepped on my ankle." As he collected himself once again, Stafford's father found a safer crossing. The pair met up with two other hunting buddies who had accompanied them on the trip. The group rode for more than five hours to their main horse camp near Pink Mountain Ranch.

At dawn on Tuesday, a helicopter flew Stafford and his father to Fort St. John hospital for treament. Stafford said he's feeling well, despite "a big hole" and several smaller ones in his right leg near the thigh, and some severe scratches on his back. "I live all year to go hunting in the fall," he said. "I'm going back as soon as I can." But then he added: "Maybe not to the same spot."
© Alaska Highway News 2004

Many bears have learned to associate gunfire with an easy meal. An acquaintance is a hunting guide. His biggest worry is butchering a kill before some bear shows up. The two men made a cardinal error in judgement. One should have remained on guard, rifle in hand while the other did the butchering. Any decent pack horse is going to sense the grizz and turn into a 1000 lb neon sign flashing DANGER! These men were just to focused on butchering and not the very real world they were in.

That's a very good point Chris. I wondered about the horses...anytime I've been around horses and they sense danger they are as you say a "neon sign".

Just after I posted this story, I was alerted to this one:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/09/16/bear04.html
<img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

>>Many bears have learned to associate gunfire with an easy meal.

Went backpacking with the Scouts at Philmont in NM this summer. Almost all of the instruction given by staff centers on bear safety (Black bears not Grizzlys). Most of the attention focused on smellables and some of the boys seemed to doubt that trace amounts of smellables would put them in danger, even though they wisely complied with all of the rules and procedures. Of course their attitudes changed when we spied a bear across from us on the opposite canyon wall! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

However, one key factor in bear safety is not related to chance incounters. It's meant to prevent the bears from learning to accept and like human smells and foods, and then associate the two together. A normal wild Black bear is not likely to present much danger. But a bear that's learned to associate the smell of Boy Scouts with easy food is a serious risk. With nearly 30,000 scouts and leaders that trek through Philmont each year, even a miniscule amount of smellables from each crew adds up quickly. Hence the staff's extream caution in administering the rules.

BTW, that young Black Bear we saw was scaling up the steep canyon wall opposite of us. We were maybe 700 feet or so from the bottom and he was maybe a quarter mile across from us. But he knew we were there well before we knew he was around. He'd stop every 75 feet or so and look at us for a few seconds. Then he'd climb a bit further and stop again. The boys were amazed at the ease in which he climbed the canyon wall. Everyone clearly understood that he was much quicker than us and there would be no chnace to out run the bruin had we crossed paths! About 20 minutes later out trail reached the bottom of the canyon where we likely crossed the spot where our paths would have crossed had we been a bit earlier or he a bit later! <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

And yet another bear story...they're getting smart :-)

Whistler bears learn valuable skill
B.C. bruins can open doors and fridges
Scott Stinson, National Post
Friday, September 17, 2004

Black bears with an acquired taste for leftovers have figured out how to open doors and windows in the resort community of Whistler, B.C., with at least one resident finding a bear raiding her fridge. Wildlife officials and bear experts say while no one has been harmed by foraging bruins this year, a spike in the bear population has the potential for trouble on the rise.
"It is getting dangerous to have bears that familiar with human habitation," said Mike Allen, a Whistler bear researcher who also conducts bear-viewing tours for the public. "There have been around 50 or 60 homes broken into this year -- they'll go through the windows or turn doorknobs and go in that way."
Mr. Allen said some of the bears have become adept at finding food in homes and vehicles. They open doors, cupboards and drawers and have learned to associate the sight of a freezer or refrigerator with a hiding place for cold snacks.
"They know to go right to that kitchen fridge," he said, adding that one Whistler resident spent "quite some time" in her home before realizing a bear was rummaging through the pantry. The animal proceeded to rifle through the fridge as the woman looked on in terror.
Another woman, Mr. Allen said, put some groceries down on the table, returned to her car for another load and came back to find the table empty and a bear poking through bags on the floor. "There hasn't been any clear research on the subject, but I think there's a correlation between the amount of time a bear spends in the Whistler Village area and the probability it acquires the skill to break into a human habitat," Mr. Allen said.
The increase in bear activity around the village is a result of consecutive robust berry-growing seasons in the surrounding forest. Mr. Allen said the high berry yield leads to healthy, happy adult females, which are in turn more likely to give birth to multiple cubs.
"We've had more than 50 cubs in the past two years," he said, noting that a typical summer would normally bring fewer than 20 cubs. "When they grow older, the mothers kick them out on their own and they have to find something to eat. So where do they go? Near people."
Lance Sundquist, a conservation officer with the B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection, said bears will always be close to humans in Whistler because the rural and urban areas are intertwined, but that residents have to keep garbage away from areas that could attract the animals.
"If we manage the food attractions so there's no reason for them to stay [in the village], we're a long way toward solving the issue."
Mr. Sundquist said the number of calls from the public about bear sightings in Whistler is up this year over last year, as is the number of bears that ministry officials have had to respond to -- in some cases relocating them to other areas and in some cases destroying them.
Mr. Sundquist said weather is partly to blame for the bear influx in the residential areas this year. A hot-temperature spell ripened the bumper berry crop earlier than usual, so after bears had eaten that natural food they moved lower in the Whistler valley in search of more to eat. Their hunt appears to have brought them closer to town, he said.

However, Whistler Mayor Hugh O'Reilly said the town council is not considering specific action to address the increased bear population. The town already has procedures in place to limit bear access to garbage, he said, such as bear-proof public receptacles and the use of garbage depots instead of curbside pickup.
"The bears will take care of themselves," he said. "If there's nothing for them to eat, there's lots of wilderness around for them to go to."
But Mr. Allen said the town should go beyond educating residents about bear concerns, since much of its population comes from transient visitors.
"A lot of the tourists don't have anywhere to take their garbage or any way to get it to a depot," he said. "So it ends up at the side of the house, or piling up in a back room. And in the summer, when that garbage starts to smell, the bears will go right through your wall to get it."
He also said no receptacle is 100% bear-proof.
"Some of them have learned to rip the back right off of those things," he said.
"The garbage is the root of the problem. Once they get those issues worked out, we can sit back and see how that worked, and then we can go from there."
Mr. Allen said there are about 25 resident adult bears in the nearby woods.

I read an interesting statistic recently. Did you know that more people have been killed by teddy bears than by grizzly bears?

(Yeah, yeah, I know it's a silly stat because very few people have ever seen a grizzly bear, but most of us have owned at least one teddy bear at some point. Still, it's indicative of how we tend to focus on rare and unusual events and ignore more commonplace dangers.) <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

LOL that is funny ... just keep in mind that if you go to places that few pepole go to then you should prepare for situations that few people encounter. I.E if you live in NYC then don't prepare for bears. If you hunt elk in Colorado then it's probably a good idea to watch out for them. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

that's the problem with bare statistics... <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
you have to edit them some to find any sens ....