If you’re roaming bear country, your best protection against an unpleasant encounter is a can of bear spray, not a gun, according to Brigham Young University wildlife biologist Tom Smith.
Smith’s team, which included Stephen Herrero, a world authority on bear attacks, has studied 600 bear encounters in Alaska over two decades. In 72 incidents in which bear spray was used properly, the bear stopped charging more than 90 percent of the time, according to a study Smith published in the April edition of the Journal of Wildlife Management. People using guns, by contrast, stood a one-in-three chance of failing to deter the bear, according to an earlier study.
“The probability is the bear spray will outperform a firearm and it’s easy to see why. The spray is easy to deploy. The rifle is just difficult to use,” Smith said. Stopping a charging bear with bullets required, on average, four hits.
Most of the 72 bear spray deployments Smith studied involved grizzly bears; the rest were black and polar bears. His team studied newspaper accounts, anecdotes and reports from wildlife agencies to determine the bears’ activity before being sprayed, the distance involved, time of day, wind effects, mechanical problems and dosage of spray.
Of the 150 people involved, just three injuries were reported and none required hospitalization.
“We need a similar study done for the Intermountain region with inland grizzly bears who tend to be more aggressive because they don’t have the salmon runs,” said Chuck Bartlebaugh, a vocal bear-spray advocate who leads the Center for Wildlife Information in Missoula, Mont.
Smith’s findings should debunk common reasons given for not carrying bear spray, which Smith calls “an olfactory assault weapon.” Although wind can interfere with spray accuracy, wind rarely reduced the spray’s effectiveness, probably because most discharges occur in wooded areas and the spray exits the nozzle at 70 mph. His team found no instances in which the spray malfunctioned and only two instances in which the sprayers incapacitated themselves.
Every fall in the lands around Glacier and Yellowstone national parks, elk hunters kill grizzly bears in self-defense. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, between 1980 and 2002, 49 grizzlies were fatally shot by people protecting themselves around Yellowstone, accounting for nearly one in six of all known bear deaths. Another 23 were shot around Glacier.
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