Talking about bears...

Seeing as another thread got into some bear talk, I thought I'd post a link to an article I read today on a black bear encounter.

[url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/06/21/i-might-die-how-a-marathon-runner-outsmarted-the-bear-that-almost-killed-her/][/url]

So we have a marathon runner that ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time; near a momma bear and cub. Turns out the bear had 3 cubs, but I guess she only noticed one. The title is a bit misleading, as it wasn't that she did anything to really outsmart the bear, but it's an interesting thing to look at.

Normally, in a black bear attack, you don't play dead. But in this case the woman did. It's probably an example of an exception to "the rule" as the bear was protecting her cubs, and a running person was seen as a threat. The woman played dead, the threat was gone, and the bear went back to her cubs. That's a big difference than walking along and seeing a bear with cubs. You have that one chance to slowly go away and not seem a threat to the bear. Unfortunately, the runner didn't have that option.

What really saddens me is that they killed the bear. It's not like the bear targeted the woman and attacked her, it reacted as any bear would have seeing someone running around her cubs. Normally, a black bear will attack when it wants to eat you (very rare), which is why you don't play dead, but this was not part of this bear's behaviour. I really doubt that this instance would even make the bear more susceptible to attacking people. To me it was just plain bear reactions that I see as normal.

Sad story all around.

Typical black bear behavior for a mother with cubs is to flee... so this mother bear was not showing typical black bear behavior. Perhaps that is why they determined this bear was an elevated risk to people.

In a typical encounter, yes, you're right. But this wasn't a typical encounter.

The woman was running, not walking, when she came up on the bears. She tried to scare the bears away, which normally would have worked, except that the cub went up a tree and the woman never noticed the cub at first, so momma bear is not going to run away and abandon that cub, she's going to defend that cub. That is normal behaviour.

There's a reason that people say not to get between a mother bear and her cub. That reason is not because the bears will run away scared.

Well I am certainly not an expert, but my understanding is that bears protecting there young is a Grizzly bear trait, not a black bear trait. It is discussed here a bit:

http://www.bear.org/website/bear-pages/b...lack-bears.html

He mentions cornering mothers in there den with babies and the reluctance they have to defending there cubs. He also mentions there is no documented human death from a black bear defending its young.

All that said, I certainly think it is healthy to debate whether it was the right choice to euthanize this bear. Particularly since it will end at least the wild life of her three cubs.

I have had numerous encounters with mother bears and cubs. Almost every year I have one or more encounters. I had one just two weeks ago. EVERY time, the mother sent the cubs up a tree or down the slope or away from me (if no trees)and then stood up on hind legs, facing me. In other words her objective was to get between ME and the cubs. If that is not protecting her cubs, I do not know what is! I either back away or turn and walk away the opposite direction that the cubs were sent. I do not run, but I do not dally around either. This has always worked for me. Only once did I not have an escape route. That time I slowly walked past the mother gently talking to her. I was pretty terrified.

I ran into a sow and her cubs last year in the Canadian Rockies. She was only 50 yards from us when she came out of the woods. She didnt seemed to be that bothered by our presents. She did keep an eye on us though

Read this today in the news:

Ontario man survives battle with mother bear by scoring two punch knock-down

Rick Nelson’s story sounds like something that should be written in Old Norse or King James English. Regular language just doesn’t seem to do it justice.

“And lo,” it might read, “he did come across a bear and verily he did smite it. Twice.”

Really. That’s what happened.

Last Sunday, Nelson, 61 was walking in the wilderness outside Sudbury with his wife’s favourite dog, a five-year-old mongrel named Maggie. He had just reached the top of a ravine and tied Maggie to a tree when a bear cub poked its head out of a nearby thicket.

“It makes out its call and my dog went berserk,” Nelson said. “So now I know the mother’s coming.”

Nelson, who boxed as a young man and still trains on a heavy bag, could have scrambled down the cliff and away from the coming bear. But he didn’t think he’d have time to save Maggie. So instead, he stepped in front of the dog and met the mother bear head on, like Douglas greeting Tyson.

On Tuesday, Nelson spoke to the National Post about what happened next and what was going through his mind when it did.

NP: Can you describe for me where you were and what you were doing?

Nelson: I was in the Panache region. It’s a hunting area with trails running through the bush. I tied the dog up to a tree and I sat down on a log and ‘pop!’ out comes a cub’s head. Now, I can’t run because I’ve got a cliff behind my back. And I’ve got my dog tied to a tree. And she can’t go down the cliff with me. So all I did was step in front of my dog. And I could hear the bear crashing through the brush to get into the clearing.

NP: Were you consciously thinking through how you were going to react at that point, or was it pure instinct?

Nelson: I was thinking through it enough to look around and see if was there anything I could use as a weapon. But after that, no, it was pure instinct. So the mother (a black bear Nelson estimates at about 300 pounds) came crashing through and I knew it meant business. This thing didn’t stop. It didn’t stomp. It didn’t snort. It just came straight at me. When it stood up and took its first swing with its left paw, it hooked my front shoulder and as I swung around I went to hit it but I missed because it hit me so hard. I hit it in the lip and teeth, which actually did a lot of damage to my knuckle. And it went down.

NP: Sorry, it went down or you went down?

Nelson: It did. It swung. It went down. I hit it. It came back up again. It swung again, this time with its right paw. And it just vaguely caught my back because I was trying to roll away from it. And that’s what gave me a second shot. This time I used my hand in an uppercut and hit it right in the snout. And it just sat down on its butt.
Related

NP: In that split second after you caught it with the uppercut, what were you thinking?

Nelson: That’s the first moment where I felt fear. Up until then, I just thought, ‘OK, I have to get ready, here it comes’. But in that moment, when it turned around and looked at me, I thought, ‘Ah, shit.’ You know? What’s it going do? But right then the cub called again. And the bear just turned around and walked away, like it had never even met me.

Nelson suffered some minor scrapes and one deeper cut in the fight. He washed his own wounds in a nearby stream and patched one with a bandage. He didn’t go to the hospital. He doesn’t blame the bear, he said. It just did what came naturally.

Nelson: Honestly, a bear attack like I was in, that’s a perfect storm. You just couldn’t get a worse scenario. Just like I was protecting my dog, it was protecting its cub.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

• Email: rwarnica@nationalpost.com | Twitter:
Theodore L. Hatch via AP/File

This is going to change the book on "What to do when accosted by a bear" advice. Note to self: find boxing gym.

Great yarn, score one for the old guys*!

* A relative term.