ORIGINAL: Hiawatha
Fuzzyballs, a few of the books i have read written by the same guy who handles hundreds of bear attack cases in western Canadaclaims that he has had enough cases of grizz climbing trees come across his desk now to form the theory that grizz will climb trees up until age 4-6 because they loose their ability to grip/turn paw unlike the blackie who retains this the full lifespan. Weird i never knew that was possible. I just read over this stuff again last night cause it got me interested again. There is one story where a bear used the limbs to climb much like that of a human except the bear hooked its wrists over the limbsand another where the bear just hugged the tree and scuried up. There was one pretty bad one also where the bear would climb the tree, get the victims foot in its mouth then let go of the tree, free falling 25 feet taking the human with them. The bear did this to a guy twice, was unreal. I thought this info was pretty interesting so i thought i'd share. I read alot of bear attack books, bout all that can keep my attention.
I have never encountered a bear, but everything I've read would fit the analogy of fighting Mike Tyson or Lenox Lewis - The Grizzly (Lewis) is gonna hit you the hardest of the two (
http://www.secondsout.com/usa/colcohen.cfm?ccs=527&cs=20590 but he has more manners. They usually just want you out of their face. Tyson (Black Bear) is also an extremely hard hitter.... but he's gonna bite your ear off too. lmao
I've read that Grizzlies can hook-climb up until about 3-5 - their claws grow straight at that point. After that though, they 'hug-climb'
http://www.canoe-kayak.org/pages/a24.html
"All black bears (even adults) hook-climb trees; grizzlies hook-climb until their third or fourth year, after which, their claws straighten and they can no longer scamper up trunks. They can, however, climb by lunging or hugging the tree. The bottom line is that all bears (except polar bears) can climb trees as well or better than most people. If a bear wants what's in a tree, the bear will get it! Given this fact, why is it that BWCA campers emphatically believe that treeing a food pack will keep it safe from bears? Or, that if you climb a tree you will be safe from bears. Indeed, Shelton describes many cases where people have climbed trees to escape predacious bears (both black and grizzlies) only to discover that the bears climbed up after them! Shelton's studies show that the bear was often able to climb the tree and pull the human out of it! Human tree climbers who survived a "tree-climbing bear attack", did so by poking the bear with a stick or other object. Persistent stick-poking--not inability of the bear to climb the tree--was what saved the day."
EDIT - first link breaks but a copy and paste to the address bar works... when you click the link it makes the link http://www.secondsout.com/usa/colcohen.cfm?ccs=527&cs=20590%29... take off those last three characters and the link works, not sure why its injected into the link.