Bear attack, Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, successful use of handgun

DirtNap – why are so many people you know having difficulty using bear spray? Everyone I know carries it – even hunters with guns here in AK – and I’ve not heard of a single incident of them going off when dropped, or deploying in a pocket, etc. Are people carrying them without the safety on? I have heard of canisters leaking if they are much abused/old/worn out. My bear spray travels in the car in a ziplock, and gets stored in one at home, just in case. But on trips, I’ve never heard of anyone having issues.

I agree with your advice on training with it. There are training canisters too, with inert ingredients so you can really practice your aim without getting any draft. I use old outdated ones for training.

I personally know 4 people who have been mauled by coastal/southcentral Alaska brown bears (3 in Kodiak and 1 in Eagle River; all recovered and are doing fine). Half of them were named Don. We may not be able to agree on much, but an inescapable conclusion is that if you are named Don you should not leave the cabin.

AK Granola, I have no idea. I have never had a false deployment myself but a companion on a trip was stupidly carrying in his pocket in the Swan Range last year. I was off bagging a peak and came back to pure and utter chaos. They evacuated and all of their gear was still, er spicy this spring. Another time a person on Elkhart Park trail in the winds dropped it on a rock and it doused his whole crew right in front of us. It is not rare at all, no matter how skilled you or I are. It’s a pressurized aerosol canister. They can and will fail if mishandled.

So if they can’t properly handle a bear spray canister, do you really want those people toting guns? Just food for thought. There was a gal up here a few years ago who borrowed a gun to go backpacking solo and ended up shooting herself in the leg. Thankfully, she had an inReach to get help. With whatever weapon you’re carrying, know what you’re doing! I guess that’s preaching to the choir here.

AK Granola, predictably, this is exactly where these threads always go. Use what you are comfortable with and godspeed.

YMMV, FWIW, Deja Vu all over again…

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/sos-text-bear-attack-bad/page/2/#post-3790801

I respectfully suggest the following search:

“peer reviewed papers about bear spray vs guns”

Much better information than anecdotal evidence.

Please see my above link pointing to 2

@DavidD
Gotta bite. Can’t control myself. Thomas Smith has himself vehemtly distanced himself from the prevailing media narrative, a vast misunderstanding, about his studies that everybody who is deathly afraid of guns has clung to. He did so to my face when I met him at the Outdoor Expo in Sandy a few years back. Any attempt to use his data to “prove” anything is bullucks. Not enough data and too many variables. This article gets to the root of the problem. Most people conflate both of his studies when they had completely different goals.

Wes Siler of Outside Magazine seems to be the only mainstream journalist interested interested in exploring this issue deeply. His article is here.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2401248/does-bear-spray-work

Anybody interested in knowing more about bear encounter behavior should read it along with all of us “idiots with guns”.

Here is a telling paragraph and quote from Tom Smith:

“Yet in public opinion, media reports, and public-safety messaging, we have an overwhelming impression that bear spray is the one-stop solution to safely recreating in bear country. Dave Smith calls this, “propaganda” and says he fears that it leads to misinformation and misunderstanding about what it takes to stay safe around bears”.

Bear attacks are rare and reporting, lack of reporting and variables are full of noise. I personally think bear spray is probably the right choice for the vast majority of people and certainly for people who are not properly trained with firearms. It also has its risks, as accidental deployment and misuse are RAMPANT. Both have their use cases where they shine. When taking a deeper look into the numbers you link to, they are not as great as they seem. In fact they are the opposite. We need more study, more understanding and, most importantly, more education on prevention.

Also remember that when you are wandering around the deep backcountry of Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Utah et al, please show respect for other people’s choices. After all, in many of these places you’re the “unusual” one without a gun.

DirtNap, I’m glad you bit, that Outside article was a great read.  Thanks for sharing it.

“The bear-spray study looked at 14 close encounters with aggressive brown bears. Of those, the spray was successful at stopping the bear’s aggressive behavior in 12 incidents. The firearms study found that 31 of 37 handgun users were successful at defending themselves from an aggressive bear attack. That’s an 85 percent success rate for bear spray, and 84 percent for handguns.”

There’s almost no data on the efficacy of bear spray on a charging brown and what is available isn’t encouraging.

In hindsight I’m not surprised the CBC article I shared cherry picked its interpretation of the data (they’re not a very objective news outfit, or very adept at interpreting stats) but I’m surprised Smith didn’t ask for clarification or correction to the way the data was presented in the Trek interview.

I don’t want to get into the gun culture debate but I personally respect others people’s choices and expect them to respect the responsibility of those choices.

Anyway, thanks again for adding more solid information to the discussion.

Dave, thanks. I typically don’t like the nature of these arguments about bear defense online. But I do love a lively and open conversation. The forum is being funky so I can’t edit my post to clarify a mistake in my post. I wrongly attributed the quote to Tom Smith, when the quote came from Dave Smith, the Author of “Backcountry Bear Basics: The Definitive Guide to Avoiding Unpleasant Encounter”, which I highly recommend. It’s a deep dive into bear country best practices.

When I spoke with Thomas Smith a few years back he echoed those sentiments and was very clear about the common misinterpretation of his studies. He mentioned he’s working on additional studies and working on updating his original studies as more data becomes available. Data, alas, is hard to come by but has become much more available recently. I personally would love to see a database of of encounters in North America of encounters, both lethal and non with detailed explanations of the circumstances. Something akin to Utah Avalanche Center’s avalanche database. One of the best features of that database is that it includes narratives from people involved in the incidences.

Cheers and stay safe out there!

I’ll bite too. “After all, in many of these places you’re the “unusual” one without a gun.” – I don’t disagree that I have to respect other folks’ choice to carry a legal gun, but I also don’t have to hike with them and generally don’t, unless I know them and think they’re capable of firearm safety. I challenge your notion that it’s unusual to hike without a gun in Alaska. I’ve lived here 30+ years and most of the people I know do not carry a gun while hiking. Most of the people I encounter while hiking are not carrying guns. There are places in the state I would hesitate to go without a firearm, however, on most railbelt trails I don’t worry about it.

@AKGranola

Heard and valid point. My experience is quite different in my back yard ranges of the Wind Rivers and Uintas. Especially off the beaten path on the east side of the Wind Rivers, where grizzlies are now documented. “Cattle slaughter events” have been documented in the Trail Lakes/Whiskey Mountain and Bull Lake Creek drainages (ack!). We had a supply drop booked last year in the Wilson Creek drainage (North Fork of Little Wind River) that was cancelled after the Reservation closed the drainage due to an aggressive male Griz boar rampaging through the area, showing no fear of humans.

I’ve become friends with some of the outfitters on that side. The Arapaho outfitter who has exclusive rights for drops on the Res related a really scary encounter with the bear that led to the closure. Washing his face with his son at Tygee Lake without his spray or sidearm, they got bluff charged. He thought they were dead. He was ordered to kill and cape by the tribal FG authority, but the bear moved on. My guess a straggler from the Bull Lake bear clan. Scary stuff for sure!

Main thing to remember is the “why” the bear had no fear: dirty camps.

As it happens I was just hiking in the general area of the attack (not the Resurrection Trail but one close to it).

The first thing I noticed was multiple bear scats along the trail. Most were more like grizzly/brown bear size. We saw one grizzly track on the trail, scuff marks and later another grizzly track on a very obvious game trail we followed to hike up a mountain.

So it would appear that the bear was using the trail as the logical way up a valley that had fairly dense brush (and few moose to make other trails).

Hiking out the next day we saw a new grizzly track and scuff marks that looked like possible claw marks headed off the trail. It looks like the bear came back up the trail (or another grizzly of the same size came along). For some reason it ran off the trail, maybe to avoid us.

In some areas bears seem to use human trails pretty frequently. In Wyoming I followed a set of tracks for miles on a trail.

I can’t prove it but people and bears using the same trail would seem to up the odds of an encounter. I’ve been in other areas where I just didn’t see significant bear sign along the trail. Either bears didn’t find the area interesting or possibly they had other routes they used.

same here, I’ve seen signs of black bears walking on trails in Oregon and Washington.  Scat.  Prints.

I’ve watched a bear on a trail eating berries.  I was above so he didn’t see me.  Some humans walked along on the trail.  The bear took off on the trail in the opposite direction.  The humans never saw it.

Also deer.  The deer were walking on the trail in the opposite direction.  When they saw me, they got off the trail a respectful distance.  After I passed, they got back onto the trail and continued going wherever they were going.

In the Olympics a goat and kids were just laying on the trail.  They did nothing when I came along.  They were at a switchback so I just cut the switchback to get by.  They later closed the trail because that goat was threatening people.

A couple times I’ve seen a bear laying near the trail and watched humans walk by.  For some reason, the bears in the Olympics don’t fear humans.

It’s nice that humans actually do some things that help wild animals.

Moose use human-created trails, roads, and railroad tracks all the time. So much easier than walking through snow, or even brush. We skiers yield to moose, always. If they won’t move off trail, we turn around!

Another example. A hunter told me he watched a black bear approach hikers on a trail (through binoculars ). At about 10 yards the bear stepped into the bushes and waited for the oblivious hikers to pass. After the hikers were gone the bear kept going.

The concern is if you quietly walk up on a grizzly in that type of situation. Making noise seems to work.

<p style=”text-align: left;”>This year I came around a bend 20 feet away face to face with a big bull moose on a trail in Algonquin then a few months later came across a momma black bear and 2 cubs eating berries on a human trail but not frequently used and out of the way in Quebec.   The moose just stared at me for a minute (I purposely froze) and then sauntered off trail and the bears left the trail after I made some noise, momma standing on hind legs in the side bush waiting for me to pass.  So different strategies depending on the situation</p>

Seems like carrying both isn’t a bad idea?