ORIGINAL: Hemi
With all the guys on here that hunt remote areas with Grizzlies present, I was wondering how many of you have had an actual dangerous, aggressive type encounter where you felt your life or anothers life was in danger?
And how many of you have had troublesome type encounters where the bears come into camp etc.. and steal meat off poles or ransack tents,coolers,backpacks etc?
Im not real big on hunting around Grizzlies myself, although it seems here in BC, you dont have a choice!....
I had one Large male grizzly a couple years ago charge in on me from approx. 400 yds away. Fortuneately I was only 75 yards from the truck and I beat him to it!....he actually stopped 30 yds short of the truck and milled around and then retreated into the muskeg. Also had a number of times where we have seen Grizz at close range and they proved to be no problems...But it does make my nervous sleeping in a nylon tent in the back country when you the Grizz poplulation is high.
Do any of you have some tips and precautions for those of us that may be less experienced with this sort of environment? Theres some obvious rules like no food in camp etc...but some more thoughts would be an intersting read.
Well, heres what I learned researching for a speech at the U of Montana, that I think are usefull. The first documented case of a Griz stalking, killing, and eating a human just occured a few years ago, and remains the only case. So the good news is, grizzly bears don't hunt humans for food. If you ask a 100 people what to do if a bear attacks, probably 90 of them will say curl up in a ball and play dead. If a black Bear attacks, you need to fight for your life, if you curl up and play dead they will most likely kill you and the same is true if attacked by a mountain lion. If you are in your tent andsleeping when you get attacked by a griz, you need to fight for your life, playing dead will likely result in the bear killing you. As a general rule, if the animal doesn't feel threatened and it attacks, fight for your life. The time to play dead is if you surprise a griz, or if it feels threatened. Another thing to look for is if you surprise a bear and it takes off running, stops, and starts to come back in agressively, it most likely is comming all the way so get ready to be attacked.Once the bear stops and turns to come back in, you can assume it has had a change of heart about running, and that doesn't bode well for the hunter.