Forget the fact that its a CBC article. It is irrelevant. They did not participate in the study, they only reported on it. Second, the study as published may prove to be an interesting read. I have a couple other of Dr. Herrero's books and have read several others. I might pick this one up to. Third, these are not stats pulled out of the sky they are based on 83 bear spray uses where they analysed the encounters to the minute details (which way the wind was blowing, how hard, what brand of sray, particulars of the encounter.) The gun statistics are likely from another study or part of this one, its difficult to say. But when a I hear a stat like: "Smith pointed out, and his data suggests that it takes an average of four hits to stop a bear" tells me that there was some research behind that comment.

I do know that Dr. Herrero has documented all the reported bear attacks in NA from the start of when Yellowstone was created to at least when he wrote his first set of books on bear attacks. No word of whether he has been comprehensive of all the attacks since then. It may be that Herrero was relying on his previous studies. Lastly, while I take a bit of exception to the CBC article - it mentions US and Canadian researchers but Thomas Smith is from Brigham Young and Dr. Herrero is an American living in Calgary so it isn't as if this is an Canadian anti-gun agenda being pushed here.