by Phil » Tue Sep 29, 2015 5:43 am
Bear spray is intended to be used as a fog between you and a charging bear, primarily against Grizzlies. In almost 40 years, I've never seen a black bear resort to this level of aggression, EVER. To spray it would be a gross overreaction and cruel on your part. I've been huffed at and bluff charged to where the bear stomped its front paws and advanced a few feet only a couple times before turning tail and running because her cubs were secure and I was no longer the threat to THEIR safety...these were both cases where I stupidly surprised them, of me being perceived as the aggressor. I was keenly aware, and yes, afraid. My fault entirely, and I can't say that any animal, including me, would have reacted any differently.
Bear spray is capsicum, a powerful version of very concentrated pepper spray. It hurts them by burning the mucous membranes of their eyes, nose and throats and choking them. It's a last resort for Grizzlies, it's only a deterant, and it might not work. Before you deploy spray, or an air horn, you have to assume you've already made a lot of noise that's been disregarded. You've been sized up, the assessment made, the threat or irritation processed and acted on. In other words, the Grizzly is really pissed off, and it's not in the mental place where it cares what you throw at it, except maybe a bullet. Black bears are of a completely different mindset than that. They want food, not a fight. You are not a safe and easily obtainable, viable food source.They may come back from a different direction just to test out Plan B, but that's tenacity, not aggressive behavior. WE need to learn to differentiate.
Yes, some black bears are big and could hurt us if it wanted to. They're smart. They live beyond the light from our campfires, and they're tenacious opportunists, but they fear people above all else unless we've conditioned them otherwise. Our irrational fears are machinations of our own perceptions of all these elements coming together in what a black bear MIGHT be to us, not the reality of what the animal is really about.
Example: A few years ago, at LYV, a bear (no doubt massively conditioned by obtaining human food) ripped into a tent where a couple kids were sleeping. They had left candy in their pockets and the bear smelled it but didn't know how to operate a zipper, so it went in the only way it knew how. Terrified, the kids woke up and screamed...the bear was more terrified...it ran away. End of story.
If you really want to fear something that lives in California, fear bull elk in rutting season.
Last edited by
Phil on Tue Sep 29, 2015 6:00 am, edited 1 time in total.