Humans vs Bears

Bears can run faster than Usain Bolt.   

This unsettling fact made me seek out official advice on dealing with bear encounters.  As our USA national parks trip approaches, and it was reported that a mother grizzly bear munched on a hiker in Yellowstone yesterday, I felt it was appropriate to learn what I could about bear safety.    

I found the following;

"Avoid carcasses."  I tend to do this wherever possible anyway, so I feel the risk from this is somewhat low.

"Allowing a bear to obtain human food even once often results in the bear becoming aggressive about obtaining such food in the future"    I am just the same with biscuits, so I understand the importance of not letting them get their paws on them in the first place.

"If a bear attacks...." well that depends on what sort of bear it is.   The most up to date advice with grizzlies is to hold your ground and freeze as it may be a bluff charge.  I can imagine it would be very difficult to hold your ground with a bear charging towards you at 30mph, a bit like not stepping out of the way of a Fiat 500.  It seems grizzly bears are pretty bad at climbing trees so they rely on aggressive behaviour to protect themselves and their cubs.

If it does attack, the advice continues; "curl up facedown on the ground and don't move."  I think at this point I would be wishing I had a packet of HobNobs.  

With black bears, the authorities recommend not dropping to the ground but fighting back with whatever weapons are at hand.  This could include carcasses but heavy rocks and large sticks would be more effective.  It doesn't mention punching them on the nose, but I think I may be confused with sharks, or maybe lions.

The next piece of advice.   "Colour cannot be used to identify whether the bear is a grizzly or a black bear."   Jeesh.    

So as this creature is charging towards me, I have to decide in the blink of an eye whether to play dead or start a punch up with it.  I'm not sure I could even punch an animal, but do accept that my survival instinct may well have already kicked the shit out of my Buddhist tendencies at this point.

A handy grizzly and black bear comparison diagram found online shows two seemingly identical bears and one's got a bit of a hump.

So overall the advice is to avoid bear encounters which is of course very sensible.  Whilst it is terribly sad for the family of the man who died I like to think that as they were in a relatively isolated part of the park, they must have been experienced hikers.  The kind of people who respected the natural order of things but were just unlucky to surprise a mother bear with her cubs.   It makes a great news story, but if bears could write headlines, just imagine what they would say about our impact on them.

By the way, don't hit lions on the nose.  I think I must have got that from the Wizard of Oz, so not recommended as a real defence technique against real lions, unless of course they are cowardly ones.