SOS text: ‘Bear attack bad’

[Ken Larson]

The two campers who died in a grizzly bear attack in Banff National Park in Canada were able to send a desperate message before succumbing to their injuries.

The dire message was sent over a Garmin inReach satellite communicator last Friday night. It was received along with an SOS signal, triggered by someone holding the device’s emergency button for three seconds.

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/06/1203928437/couple-grizzly-bear-attack-banff-sent-message

 

[Henry Shires / Tarptent]

This hit me/Tarptent really hard as Doug and Jenny were long time Tarptent customers and were likely in a Double Rainbow Li when this occurred. Doug and I have had multiple correspondences over the last several years including a phone conversation and its just so brutal to contemplate what happened.

-H

[Dan]

I read about this last night, such a terribly tragic event.

[Jerry Adams]

wow!  tragic

nice that they could get a message off so the rescue people could find them, even if it didn’t help them.  At least love ones got closure

they had bear spray.  I wonder if there are any lessons learned to prevent in the future

[Eugene Hollingsworth]

I read the article – it’s very sad and troubling. As Jerry said, they had bear spray. The can was  found empty by the rescue team, and the bear charging them also? Though attacks are rare according to the article this still really bothers me because there isn’t a good answer.

[Murali C]

The article says – old bear with bad teeth and lower than expected fat! most likely a hungry bear looking for food and must have investigated tent which they left in a hurry as they didn’t have time to put on shoes etc As the articles says – wrong place at the wrong time. They did everything right – hanged the food, bear spray – am sure they ate at a different place than where they camped.

[Bill Budney]

I have always wondered whether the single-shot capacity of many bear sprays is adequate. What if you don’t get the bear full in the face on the first blast? What if the bear returns during the same trip? What if you encounter more than one bear?

Tough way to get an answer. But… now what?

[Murali C]

Stephen Herrero’s book says sometimes the bear will return after being sprayed. So, the same bear can come back if it has not felt the full wrath of the bear spray. If you managed to scare the bear away, best to move camp immediately. I guess bear spray is a deterrent to spook the bear and hope it doesn’t come back. Of course once you exhaust the spray – you got to get another one quickly…..maybe you are so spooked that you will end your trip soon. But, yeah, if you are 5 days or so from resupply point and your spray is empty – it is not a good situation in grizzly area. But, most of the time, you don’t use the spray as encounters are so rare. If there are two of you, then you would have two sprays – so some extra insurance.

I wonder if the dog had anything to do with aggravating the encounter in this instance. I mean my beagle would have gone nuts with a bear nearby which would have made the bear go nuts.

Stephen Herrero also says that using one of those air horns are also pretty effective. He talks about grad students working in grizzly area kept using the horns randomly every few minutes and they never saw any bears and once they stopped using the horns, they started seeing bears. Don’t know if the air horn would have kept the bear away..

[Jerry Adams]

I bet an electronic alarm would be as loud as an air horn, and would last longer for the same weight

Maybe this is a rare enough event you don’t need to worry about it.  There is a risk of being killed in auto accident going to and back

[David D]

Canadian news said that both their e-readers were in use so they must have been surprised while laying down for bed.  Very tragic and sad.

Justin outdoors was charged by a surprised bear on the GDT in ’21 and discharged his spray in the bear’s face from what he thinks was about 10′ away, thankfully successfully.

[Luke Schmidt]

Very sad. Hard to imagine.

Late fall bears seem to be more interested in food and less cautious. My only bad bear experience involved bear just before hibernation. Not sure if the bear was predatory or just taking risks looking for food.

Regarding the bear spray. I won’t speculate on what happened here. But it’s pretty easy to dump it all out in one bear encounter. Another can is a good idea. If you need it once you might need it again. When I hiked solo in Canada I had two cans.

[Terran Terran]

Sounded like a hungry bear. Underweight.  It was still there when rescue arrived.

[Dan]

I wonder if the dog had anything to do with aggravating the encounter in this instance. I mean my beagle would have gone nuts with a bear nearby which would have made the bear go nuts.

What makes you think that a dog barking in a tent makes a grizzly go nuts? Do you have first-hand knowledge of this or is this just wild speculation and victim-blaming? I think that the condition of the bear provides enough of an explanation for this extremely sad event.

[Daryl and Daryl]

Murali,

I think your dog question is a reasonable one.  Learning from tragic events requires looking at all factors.

[Terran Terran]

Using 2 e-readers in a DCF tent illuminating the victims in very vulnerable positions. I don’t know. It’s unfortunate and sad.

[Jerry Adams]

I don’t think identifying dog or e-reader as bear attractant or fall is a bad time of year is blaming the victim, but is just trying to find anything we might do to avoid being eaten by hungry bear : )

Maybe the risk is slightly higher in the fall before hibernation, but then people could make the decision whether to take that risk.

[Ken Larson]

In Bear Country with the wife OR grandchildren,  I always had two or more cans of  bear spray for the groups protection. This addition might have made a difference in this case.

[Jerry Adams]

maybe practicing with an extra can before hand would improve effectiveness in a real situation

[Murali C]

From this article – https://www.yahoo.com/news/bear-attack-bad-final-message-153652443.html

“The Parks Canada team found the tent had been crushed with their e-readers inside. But the couple were found outside the tent; neither was wearing boots.”

So I guess, the bear did attack them and that is why they went out of the tent…..

[SIMULACRA]

Sad and terrifying I’m sure.

And “they” want to re-introduce grizzlies to the Cascades.

[Matthew / BPL]

I removed a few comments that got personal and argumentative. Please keep it civil, everyone.

Don’t Press Submit Quite Yet:Our core community value is generosity: be kind, give freely, and be inclusive. Does the message you’re about to post reflect those values? (Argumentative posts, sarcasm, and negativity will be moderated in accordance with the Forum Guidelines)

[bjc]

Thank you Matthew!

[John S.]

“Since bear spray became commercially available in 1986, seven individuals have been killed by a bear or bears in an incident where bear spray was sprayed. Of all the incidents we have been able to document of handguns being fired in defense against bears, one person was killed by a bear.”

https://www.ammoland.com/2023/06/bear-spray-is-human-seasoning-take-a-gun-if-you-want-to-survive-a-bear-attack

[Jerry Adams]

statistics is tricky

If 7 times more people carried bear spray than guns then the ratio of 7 deaths to 1 would indicate equal probability.  Bayes theory

is this a large enough sample size?  we need to repeat the experiment multiple times to get more confidence

Not that people shouldn’t make their own decisions about this.  If you feel more comfortable with bear spray, a gun, or both – there’s logic to any of those

[Jerry Adams]

“Bear Spray is Human Seasoning; Take a Gun if You Want to Survive a Bear Attack”

hmmm… that sounds like an objective source of information… not… : )

[Author]

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