Actually, this makes me think about what it means to travel as a group in bear country.

This weekend, for example, there were 5 of us out hiking and one of us had bear spray. Looking at this on the surface, this seems like a good and fairly safe set-up.

However, realistically for many stretches of the hike we were effectively a group of 3 and a group of 2. A bear isn't going to know that lead group of 2 was actually a part of a larger hiking group; its just going to see 2 people.

Added to that, this also meant one group had bear spray and one didn't. Had the lead group of 2 startled a bear they would've had no defence and those of us following behind would have been of limited assistance.