Sticking Together May Be More Effective than Bear Spray or Firearmsįrom my conversation with Smith, I learned he had never actually set out to compare the efficacy of bear spray with that of firearms in bear deterrence, despite the titles of the two reports he produced: “ Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska” and “ Efficacy of Firearms for Bear Deterrence in Alaska”. So, I picked up the phone and badgered the famously reclusive researcher, Tom Smith, who’d studied the effectiveness of bear spray and firearms, until he agreed to talk to me. Īll the mean names people called me pointed in one direction: I wouldn’t succeed in getting my point across without also explaining why bear spray is often inadequate.
The point I was trying to make? Simply giving tourists a can of bear spray and letting them wander into the backcountry isn’t enough to prevent conflicts with predators. But, if someone is about to get their face ripped off by a bear, a gun may be a solid last-ditch option. I’d attempted to write a nuanced article explaining that knowledge-tools and training to prevent or deescalate encounters with wild animals-is powerful, and that avoidance is likely your best strategy. The criticism struck me as odd, since I too, am an animal lover. Adventure Journal ran a now-deleted piece on its website accusing me of being a n00b, with no real clue about bears, and I got a slew of hate mail from animal lovers. This course involves firearms, so the article proved controversial. And I ended up working with Orr to put together an article and video for Outside around a local course taught by a retired Navy SEAL that seeks to demystify bear attacks and prepare outdoor enthusiasts for encounters with them. This question sent me down a research rabbit hole about bears and their behaviors. His video selfie about the attack went viral, and it led me to wonder: if spray didn’t work for an experienced professional, why would it work for me? Forest Service employee, had his face ripped off by a bear, despite using bear spray. But five years ago, around the time my now-wife and I relocated to Montana, Todd Orr, a U.S. Tourists are advised to carry spray when they visit Yellowstone or Glacier, or when they go camping or hiking in other grizzly habitats. Like most people visiting grizzly country, I’d been informed that bear spray outperforms firearms when it comes to bear encounters. There are no easy, or convenient answers when it comes to sharing space with wild animals.
Wildlife and Human Interaction Is Complicated And learning to live alongside them in their habitat, in a way that keeps both my family and the wildlife safe, has been a fascinating journey that’s forced me to reconsider some of my previously held beliefs. As we talked, he corrected my assumption that the deer had been taken by a grizzly bear, and explained it was almost certainly hunted by a big male mountain lion.Įncountering predators like lions, bears, and wolves is my favorite thing about living in Montana. Initially disappointed we weren’t fresh quarry, he cheered up when I showed him a freshly killed doe I’d just found a couple hundred yards away buried under some brush. He hunts predators in the area, and had mistaken the tracks my three big dogs left as sign that the wolf pack had come down off the mountain. I met Runningwolf a few years ago in the woods above that cabin, just outside Glacier National Park. “Holy smokes, that’s a good one!”, our closest neighbor, Montana State Representative Tyson Runningwolf, responded when I sent him the photo above of a mountain lion climbing off of the back porch of our family cabin.
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