Hunters report self-defense in two grizzly deaths

Pepper Spray didn't work these times last week in Montana.

http://www.kxlo-klcm.com/site/news/sport...bear-death.html

Perhaps one might say" bear spray didn't work quickly enough to satisfy hunters who were able to resort to another option." Hard to say, none of us were there....

Bear spray has a pretty short effective range. If they had time to bring a firearm into use against a charging grizz (think racehorse) after using bear spray, it was likely used too soon. Still, they did try to use the non-lethal option, which is laudable.

-Doug, in his comfortable armchair with no charging grizz in sight

I know no more about these incidents than was in the original article, but I can think of two scenarios where bear spray could be employed correctly followed by using a firearm.

If the bear stops after being sprayed at the appropriate range, the hunter moves away, and then the bear continues to attack, it's possible that a firearm could then be employed. Similarly, if there are two hunters (as in one of the incidents) and one uses bear spray correctly while the other is ready to shoot, that could be an explanation.

Like I said, these are hypothetical explanations.

I have been on foot in the backcountry of Yellowstone and Grand Teton many times. Very, very commonly the wind was blowing so steadily that the only way bear spray would have worked is if the bear was perfectly and directly downwind from me, and extremely close even by bear spray standards. At any other vector the wind would have whisked the spray away.

You can't afford to get that stuff in your own face, so there were times when my pre-planned response was to go to the secondary option.

Agreed, bear spray is a last ditch defence with many drawbacks, not the be-all, end-all. And as chaosmagnet said, there are many ways a situation can unfold.

Has anyone heard about the berry crop in that area? North of the border, we've had drought, and a berry crop that was extremely poor in the mountain parks. This brings desperate bears into areas frequented by humans, and close contact does not end well for either species.