The Grizzly Man  by Janice L. Green      

I recently watched the movie, The Grizzly Man, about a man named Timothy Treadwell who went to Alaska for 13 years during the summertime to observe and film Grizzly bears, up until Timothy and his female companion, Amie Huguenard, were mauled, and devoured in 2003.

While watching the movie Timothy made several interesting remarks regarding bear’s behavior.  He said, “if he didn't hold his ground, or if he turned around and looked at the bear too often, the bear would attack him".  While watching the movie I was astounded by Timothy’s unnatural ability to understand a wild bear’s behavior.  At the end of the movie, the narrator said Timothy was killed by a bear, he wasn't familiar with, which made me wonder if Timothy’s theories held true with wild bears who never encounter humans, or if they only applied to wild bears that were familiar with him.

While kayak camping, I have observed a distinct difference in the behavior between bears that infrequently interact with people, and those that do.  It has been my experience bears who rarely encounter a human, flee, and those that do, do not scare off easily.  Those are the bears that I am more concerned about; the bears that have become comfortable around people, and who have lost their fear of us.

I wear a device around my neck to scare off bears while I am on a kayak camping trip, which releases a loud piercing, shrieking noise when you pull out a metal ring.  I used it while I was camping at San Antonio Lake, located in Bradley, California.

At night while I was asleep in my tent, I was awoken by what I assumed was the deer I saw earlier munching on the food the other campers left out on the picnic tables.  It wasn’t until I unzipped my window flap, and I came face to face with a bear, that all my rational sense disappeared, and my instincts kicked in.                          

With my heart racing a million miles a minute, I grabbed my car keys, pulled my bear whistle ring out, and leaped a few feet from my tent to my car. It is kind-of comical thinking back to it now. It was like a scene from a movie, when your hand shakes uncontrollably because you’re scared silly, that it’s nearly impossible to insert the dang key in the key hole. The whole time I was trying to insert the key, I was wondering if that one second delay would cost me my life. 

The remainder of the evening I watched the bear mosey from campsite to campsite, and demolish the coolers of other unsuspecting campers, who woke to find what looked like a tornado hit. All night long I flashed my car lights, and beeped my car horn when the bear approached my car, which contained my cooler with all sorts of tasty delights, and me, the sweetest morsel of all. 

 I recently saw a flyer warning about bears in the area, posted on the campground restroom door, which showed a photo of a bear tearing off a door of a vehicle in search of food, so I didn’t feel too particularly safe in my vehicle. My second concern came about when the bear had apparently awoken another camper, who earlier in the evening had been quite intoxicated, and I heard his wife ask him where he was going with the gun.  Now I am thinking, “oh great, he’s drunk off of his gourd, and I am in between him and the bear.”  Like greased lightning, I swiftly became more concerned about being shot than eaten and ducked down low in my seat waiting in suspense for the sound of gunfire.

Early the next morning, after the bear was long gone, when I went to retrieve my clothes out of my tent, I found a pack of raisins in my bag, which broke the Golden Rule: Never store any food in your tent.

After that experience, I spoke to several forest rangers about precautions to take if you encounter a bear. Ron Cummings District Wildlife Biologist with the Sierra National Forest Service in California had this to say: “There have been few, aberrant, documented cases in the United States of black bears stalking humans as prey.  In this case, “playing dead”, is not an effective defense.  The current wisdom for defending yourself in the very unlikely chance that you become the victim of any black bear attack is to FIGHT for all you are worth with any weapon at hand.   Punching  the  bear’s  sensitive nose,  poking it   in  its  eyes,  kicking, hitting  it with  sticks,  rocks, etc. have all  been  successful  at  fighting off a black bear.  The idea  is  to let the bear  know you  are  not  “easy   prey”,  and if the bear feels that  it runs the risk of becoming  injured,  it  generally  flees.  Black bears can climb trees very well,  trying to escape  up  a tree  is  not  too effective, unless you get  a  head  start and are wearing heavy boots  that will offer some protection to your feet.”

Grizzly bears however are the opposite of black bears.  They don’t want anything to do with humans and they usually only attack if they feel threatened. When bears stand on their hind legs it is to get a better look at something they are not sure of, but woofing, swaying, laying ears down, and jaw popping by the bear is an indicator it feels threatened. In nearly in every case when a hiker has been attacked by a Grizzly, once the victim lies down and remains quiet, the Grizzly bear has gone away.

So going back to my original train of thought, was Timothy only able to survive for as long as he did, because he only dealt with a group of bears, who had become familiar with him, and he was killed by a bear who he had only encountered a few days prior? My experience has been the opposite.  Bears in popular destinations like Mammoth Lakes, Donner Lake and in Yosemite, to me are more of a dangerous type of bear, because they have lost their fear of humans.

While camping at Lake Mary, in Mammoth Lakes, I witnessed a huge black bear calmly step out of the forest, in front of a vehicle just ahead of mine perhaps 20 feet away. I didn’t see the bear until it stepped out of the woods which gave me a quick reality check: Even though I am always extremely aware of my surroundings, I can still get caught by surprise.

I blasted my car horn to try to scare the bear away, because it was heading down to the lake where children were playing.  The bear didn’t miss a beat and kept right on walking as though it didn’t have a care in the world, most likely because it had become accustom to the sound of a car horn. On the other hand, while I was up at Sugar Pine Reservoir, driving on a back dirt road, as I came around a bend I encountered a bear.  All thoughts of ever out running a bear quickly vanished from my mind at that point.  I never saw an animal move so fast, as it ran off into the woods.  I repeatedly have encountered the same behavior.  Bears familiar with humans don’t run away, and those that aren’t, flee.

Even though I know you’re not suppose to look a bear in its eyes, or run away because they perceive this as a threat and triggers its natural instincts to attack, my instinct was to run like the dickens when I heard the distinct grunt sound of a bear directly behind me at Echo Lakes.  I took off up the steep, rocky embankment so fast, I was amazed I didn’t fall and break my leg. It happened in a fraction of a second, I didn’t have time to think; I reacted. Thank goodness the loud crashing through the underbrush was the bear running in the opposite direction.

Timothy says, to hold your ground, otherwise if you retreat the bear interprets that to be you are subservient, and you can be overpowered easily, which will trigger the bear to attack.  Timothy used smoothing words to calm the bear…I have seen other people shout at a bear to scare it off. I can’t imagine telling a bear “I love you”, like Timothy did, but for the group of bears he dealt with, it appeared to work, at least for a while.  A horseback fisherman guide I spoke to while kayaking at Butte Lake, said he put bells on the horses, to let the bear know you’re coming.  He said it’s when a bear gets startled that it will attack, which I’d like to also add to, “If the bear is hungry it will attack”.

Ranger Cumming’s theory to fight for all you are worth didn’t work for Timothy and his girlfriend Amie. Six minutes of video tape still in the camera bag, found by one of the rangers, had captured the sounds of the attack, but thankfully, the lenses cap was left on. Timothy yelled to Amie to hit the bear on the head with a frying pan, which she most likely did according to the audio tape of the attack.  Maybe she didn’t aim for its sensitive nose, because it had Timothy’s head gripped in its mouth, which bears often go for during an attack.

Is it all the luck of the draw, and what works for one situation, may not work for another?   Or is there a good rule of thumb to follow if you find yourself in a similar predicament? And who can really say for certain whether they can lie down and play dead if attacked by a Grizzly bear?  I guess you really never will know until you encounter one.

© 2005 Janice L. Green  All Rights Reserved.