Speaker 1: As a guide an hunter, I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics. They'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. Now picture this. You and
Speaker 1: your buddies are in the middle of Alaska on a hunt.
Speaker 1: You're thick into bear country. You got an animal down
Speaker 1: the day prior, and we're able to pack half of
Speaker 1: it out. You hung some of the meat in a
Speaker 1: tree nearby, and you went back to camp. Now you're
Speaker 1: coming back for the last load. What do you do?
Speaker 1: How do you proceed? What's the way to make sure
Speaker 1: that you're safe because you are approaching a meat site
Speaker 1: in the thick of bear country. Now, I've had my
Speaker 1: fair share of showdowns with both black bears and brown bears.
Speaker 1: Honestly a few too many stories to recount all in
Speaker 1: one sitting. But bears are concerned for many hunters, and
Speaker 1: honestly rightfully so. It's because they can kill you, maim you,
Speaker 1: leave your gear and shambles. Now, acting appropriately in bear
Speaker 1: country can honestly save your life. What I want to
Speaker 1: cover is the motives for attacks and understanding bare behavior
Speaker 1: why would a bear attack you in the first place.
Speaker 1: I also want to go over a few of the
Speaker 1: best practices for preventing an encounter in bear country, and
Speaker 1: then I also want to finally get into possible defense
Speaker 1: options just in case you do one day find yourself
Speaker 1: in a really shitty situation. Now, I really want to
Speaker 1: share a story with you first about a bear encounter
Speaker 1: that actually went wrong, because I think this is a
Speaker 1: great example of things to learn. Now, luckily everybody was
Speaker 1: okay in this particular instance, but it was a good
Speaker 1: learning experience if you ever have to have a bear
Speaker 1: learning experience in the way that this one panned out.
Speaker 1: One thing, my major takeaway from this entire event was
Speaker 1: we did right and we did ten percent wrong, and
Speaker 1: that ten percent wrong is what literally could have bid
Speaker 1: us in the ass on this trip. So to take
Speaker 1: you back, now, many of you maybe have heard this
Speaker 1: story before, but I just have to go through it
Speaker 1: because we're gonna look at it through the lens of
Speaker 1: what to learn and what you should do in bear country.
Speaker 1: We were in a fog knack Island. I was with
Speaker 1: Steve Ronnella and we're filming one of the episodes for
Speaker 1: the Latest Meat Eaters on Netflix. Now. Fog Nack Island
Speaker 1: is off of the coast of Alaska. It's off of
Speaker 1: Kodiak and it's just as some of the largest bears
Speaker 1: brown bears in the world. And you gotta also remember
Speaker 1: the time of year is later in the fall the
Speaker 1: salmon run. The salmon is still running, but it's not
Speaker 1: like it was during the summer. There are not a
Speaker 1: really good barry crop this time of year, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of large bears. Now. I have hunted
Speaker 1: this area before, and the first time I hunted with
Speaker 1: my brother, we were as bear aware as you could get.
Speaker 1: We were there by ourselves, just the two of us,
Speaker 1: and we saw large bears daily and it generally was
Speaker 1: that these bears were around the herd of elk that
Speaker 1: we were actually hunting. Now, when you're seeing the bears
Speaker 1: all the time, you're really thinking bear safety, bearware, don't
Speaker 1: keep any food near camp. We actually had a bear
Speaker 1: fence around our tent because we are camped pretty close
Speaker 1: to the water and what would be almost a natural
Speaker 1: corridor for movement of the animals. Because of this, the
Speaker 1: hill came down behind our camp that time, we didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot. They wouldn't have a lot of room
Speaker 1: to get around, So you know, we took every precaution
Speaker 1: that we really could. That trip, we did everything right
Speaker 1: right because we did not have a bad encounter. Now,
Speaker 1: on the follow up trip, at the point where we
Speaker 1: had shot an elk, we had seen zero brown bears.
Speaker 1: I told everybody how many bears we were seeing and
Speaker 1: how bad the bears were here, and heard so many
Speaker 1: stories from friends of mine, Yet when you don't see anything,
Speaker 1: it's on the back of your mind. Now we had
Speaker 1: bad weather and couldn't see much anyways, but bears were
Speaker 1: not really a concern for us at this point because
Speaker 1: we've gone so long without seeing him. So as I
Speaker 1: tell this story, just keep thinking of if I was
Speaker 1: doing everything by the book and little things that are
Speaker 1: chipping away to create that ten percent that could really
Speaker 1: go wrong. Now, Steven shot a bull elk, and these
Speaker 1: elk are huge. I mean, you are not going to
Speaker 1: pack one of these out in one trip, and we're
Speaker 1: a long ways from camp. We actually had a mountain
Speaker 1: he had to climb up over the top from camp
Speaker 1: and then dropped down into the valley. Took about half
Speaker 1: a day to get there. So he shot a bull
Speaker 1: just before dark in the evening, so we quarter it out.
Speaker 1: The first thing we gotta do get the get the
Speaker 1: meat away from the carcass. We put it up in
Speaker 1: a tree uphill where we might have a view from
Speaker 1: other areas. When we come back, we get the meat
Speaker 1: hung in a tree up high enough where a bear
Speaker 1: couldn't reach it. We then load up our packs with
Speaker 1: some meat and hike out. We hike out all day
Speaker 1: or all night, essentially get back the next morning, and
Speaker 1: by this point we're fairly tired, so we actually gave
Speaker 1: it a day in between because the meat was fine.
Speaker 1: It's either hanging there or hanging in camp. And then
Speaker 1: we go back the following morning. Takes us half a
Speaker 1: day to get there. We get to where the meat was.
Speaker 1: Before we go up there, we glass into the area.
Speaker 1: We don't see any bears. We go in with our
Speaker 1: bear spray. I had my pistol drawn. We make noise
Speaker 1: on our approach. We search around the tree and there
Speaker 1: did look didn't really look like any bear sign. However,
Speaker 1: there was like this scat like bear crap that somebody
Speaker 1: had stepped in. But we thought I actually thought, um,
Speaker 1: maybe that was something that someone stepped in before I
Speaker 1: got there. So at this point everything the coast is clear.
Speaker 1: We looked in there pretty good. We didn't see anything,
Speaker 1: but it is thick around that area. And then we decide, well,
Speaker 1: it's been a half a day hike. Everybody's hungry before
Speaker 1: we load up our packs and get out here, why
Speaker 1: don't we just make a quick lunch. So we're sitting
Speaker 1: in a semi circle making lunch. There's actually six of
Speaker 1: us and we are sitting in kind of like the
Speaker 1: semi circle. Everybody's getting ready to have lunch. We decided
Speaker 1: to make some coffee at this point. For bear protection,
Speaker 1: I was bow hunting, so I was carrying. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'd like to have a firearm just in case I
Speaker 1: needed it. So I had a forty four mag pistol
Speaker 1: on my belt of my pack, as well as bear
Speaker 1: spray on the other side. Now, when I took my
Speaker 1: pack off, what I had been doing was switching my
Speaker 1: pistol to my holster on my belt and then leaving
Speaker 1: the bear spray on the pack. Just that way. I
Speaker 1: always had at least some form of bared trent on
Speaker 1: me at all times. And I think I may have
Speaker 1: even had a way to switch the bear spray quick
Speaker 1: if I wanted as well. So we're everybody, we're deciding
Speaker 1: we're gonna have some coffee. So I decided, well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna round up water so put into the kiddie so
Speaker 1: it's not just one guy's water getting boiled for coffee
Speaker 1: for everyone. So I go around the circle collect water
Speaker 1: for the pot. When I go back to my pack
Speaker 1: where my pistol was sitting, I had laid out so
Speaker 1: when I was sitting on my pack, it was just
Speaker 1: right there. Someone was sitting there. So I just thought, okay,
Speaker 1: well I'll just sit down on the bank right here
Speaker 1: across from it. Now at this point, we're b s
Speaker 1: sing as things go. We're you know, joking around, having
Speaker 1: some sandwiches. One of the guys in the back I
Speaker 1: heard something. He heard a bear, a brown bear. When
Speaker 1: I looked up, that bear was already charging. I had
Speaker 1: a pretty good view of him coming in and it
Speaker 1: just felt like his eyes were locked. I could see
Speaker 1: the hair shaking and he was running fast. Now Steve
Speaker 1: was across from me where my pack was. My thought
Speaker 1: was I need to get my pistol, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: even probably two arms length in front of me. But
Speaker 1: by the time I got to my pack, it was
Speaker 1: like the bear was already on me. I did what
Speaker 1: I consider a football juke, move left right, had no
Speaker 1: clue which way to run, turned left. My back was
Speaker 1: now to it. I thought, oh, man, he's gonna grab me.
Speaker 1: And I turned around to look and he was wheeled
Speaker 1: around and going the other way. On my mind, of course,
Speaker 1: I thought my football juke refused to ship out of
Speaker 1: this bear and made him run. Little did I know,
Speaker 1: just as I had done that, Janice, who was sitting
Speaker 1: just to my right, had grabbed his trekking pole and
Speaker 1: hit the bear in the face. Now, when I turned around,
Speaker 1: I now saw somebody with the bear, So I thought
Speaker 1: I had no clue who he grabbed, but somebody in
Speaker 1: the bear were going down the mountain. I grabbed the pistol.
Speaker 1: At this point yelled like who's missing? Count off, and
Speaker 1: everyone starts like one one, what, no, who, who's not here?
Speaker 1: Which it ended up being old dirt myth writing on
Speaker 1: somehow back to back with this bear. Now the bear
Speaker 1: ran off into the brush. We all circled up around
Speaker 1: the tree. The bear kept circling out of range of
Speaker 1: where we could see, and we could hear him huffing
Speaker 1: as he moved around. I think he charged in a
Speaker 1: couple more times, but not to not fully in. You
Speaker 1: could just hear sticks breaking and other things. Then it
Speaker 1: got quiet for a while. We assume that he was
Speaker 1: still there but had moved off. We then went up
Speaker 1: the tree, grabbed the meat, made a formation to where
Speaker 1: we could get into the open and then load up
Speaker 1: our packs and move on. I think when we talk
Speaker 1: about bear attacks, we first have to understand bear behavior.
Speaker 1: You have to know why would a bear attack you
Speaker 1: in the first place. Well, it can be broken down
Speaker 1: into a couple of different categories. I think the first
Speaker 1: category would be a defensive attack. Now, that's the bear
Speaker 1: defending itself or something that it cares about. It especially
Speaker 1: comes into play when it's defending it's young, as far
Speaker 1: as a sow protecting her cubs or food. Now, if
Speaker 1: you get between a bear and its food, that's a
Speaker 1: bad place to be. Another type of defensive attack is
Speaker 1: a surprise when you surprise a bear, just like a
Speaker 1: prizing a mule deer. If you if you come over
Speaker 1: the ridge and you spook a deer out, well, that
Speaker 1: deer is probably gonna run. But a bear has fight
Speaker 1: or flight instincts, so if you surprise it in the
Speaker 1: wrong scenario, it has the option to run or charge,
Speaker 1: and it may charge. Now, the other kind of attack
Speaker 1: would be a predatory one. This one is bad news
Speaker 1: for you. That a predatory attack can be seen is
Speaker 1: where the bear is actually hunting or moving in a
Speaker 1: way that is aggressive as a predator. So it could
Speaker 1: be something like if you're attacked while in your tent,
Speaker 1: that would be a predatory attack. If a bear is
Speaker 1: following you and then attacks, that's a predatory attack. It's
Speaker 1: not surprised, it's not protecting, it's young, it's not you
Speaker 1: messing with something that it's eating. It's seeing you as food.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, that's a very dangerous situation. I
Speaker 1: honestly believe that the attack that happened to us in
Speaker 1: a fog nack was a predatory attack in nature the
Speaker 1: way that the attack happened, because when a predatory attack happens,
Speaker 1: it's more that animals coming in to kill something and
Speaker 1: it's a full charge. I have surprised bears. I have
Speaker 1: been bluff charged by both brown bears and grizzly bears,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those are more defensive in nature,
Speaker 1: but a lot of those stopped before becoming a full charge,
Speaker 1: especially with I've had that happen with a bear and cubs,
Speaker 1: or surprising I actually have surprised a couple of bears
Speaker 1: on kills and they get aggressive, they wolf, they run in,
Speaker 1: but they see you, you see them, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times that that charge stops. Now when it comes
Speaker 1: to a predatory charge or attack, that's a little bit different,
Speaker 1: and those are probably the kind that you have to
Speaker 1: defend yourself from, or just surprising a bear in a
Speaker 1: way that it believes I have to fight, not run away.
Speaker 1: Now that we understand a little bit about the behavior
Speaker 1: of bears, we have to understand what we can do
Speaker 1: to avoid inciting that behavior. And I'm just gonna call that,
Speaker 1: say best practices in bear country. There's certain things you
Speaker 1: can do. Now. While it won't work add percent of
Speaker 1: the time, it will work most of the time because
Speaker 1: you are preventing yourself from getting into a situation where
Speaker 1: that bear is going to have to incite that fight mode.
Speaker 1: A lot of it revolves around let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: the first thing. Food. Now, when you're in bear country,
Speaker 1: bears are so food centric. They're about to go into hibernation,
Speaker 1: especially in the fall. They're just trying to fatten up,
Speaker 1: and they are hungry. Now, that doesn't mean that they're
Speaker 1: hungry and looking to hunt you. That just means that
Speaker 1: you do not want to put yourself in proximity of
Speaker 1: a hungry bear. That means you don't want to provide
Speaker 1: food for that bear. So in your camp, you need
Speaker 1: to make your camp what I call a clean camp.
Speaker 1: What I do is I generally hang. Now this is
Speaker 1: if you can hang something, I like to hang it
Speaker 1: ten ft off the ground and then at least four
Speaker 1: ft away from a tree, because a black if you're
Speaker 1: in black bear country, bears can climb trees and then
Speaker 1: get out to your food. You don't want to feed
Speaker 1: any bear and you don't want to bear to think
Speaker 1: that this place what was your food is now the
Speaker 1: bears food, because as soon as a bear eats food,
Speaker 1: it's his food and he will then defend that food.
Speaker 1: So by providing food for a bear, you actually put
Speaker 1: yourself in a really bad situation. Now, think about when
Speaker 1: you're hunting, you're gonna have game down. Game meat, once
Speaker 1: claimed by a bear becomes that bear's food, and he
Speaker 1: can be very defensive over that food. So you have
Speaker 1: to do things to prevent a bear from getting the
Speaker 1: meat that you've just taken. The first thing that I
Speaker 1: do when I get something down is I will quarter
Speaker 1: it out and move the meat away from the carcass.
Speaker 1: That way, I give the bear the carcass, but I
Speaker 1: move the meat away and hang it in a tree
Speaker 1: or place where he can't get it. That just lessens
Speaker 1: the possibility of that bear trying to claim something that
Speaker 1: I'm going back to now. Another thing is avoiding surprise.
Speaker 1: When you know that there is somewhere a bear might
Speaker 1: be likely to be, say the tree that you've hung
Speaker 1: meat or your meat or food that you have at camp,
Speaker 1: you don't want to surprise a bear in that area,
Speaker 1: So you want to make noise. You want to let
Speaker 1: the bear know that a human is coming and give
Speaker 1: it time to take the option of a flight response
Speaker 1: as opposed to a fight response. When you surprise a bear,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a fight response more than you
Speaker 1: would have a flight response. When you're hunting, obviously you're
Speaker 1: gonna be quiet. You don't want to be wearing bear
Speaker 1: bells and talking, so sometimes that's hard. You might just happen,
Speaker 1: And that's where probably most hunters get attacked is by
Speaker 1: surprising a bear in through the course of hunting. That
Speaker 1: may end up triggering a defensive response. But in times
Speaker 1: that you do not need to be quiet, like if
Speaker 1: I'm packing something out, I've got meat on my back,
Speaker 1: I'm encumbered, things are awkward, I've got heavy weight. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna actually talk to whoever I'm with. I'll make noise.
Speaker 1: If I'm by myself, I'm making noise. I'm not walking
Speaker 1: out because I want the bear to know that someone's
Speaker 1: coming and give it time option to run away. And
Speaker 1: then don't beliebor. Don't mess around and hang around in
Speaker 1: areas where bears might be, where you could or have
Speaker 1: a higher percentage of encountering that bear. We did everything
Speaker 1: right up until the point that we hung around that tree.
Speaker 1: Now things could have been worse had we been messing
Speaker 1: with the meat and that bear attacked. It just happened
Speaker 1: to work out in our instance. But I would say
Speaker 1: that the thing we did wrong was we dropped our guard.
Speaker 1: The number one thing you don't want to do in
Speaker 1: bear country is drop your guard. Always be on the ready,
Speaker 1: because the time that you need to defend yourself is
Speaker 1: the time you're at least prepared for it. So if
Speaker 1: you're always prepared, you'll always have a slightly better chance
Speaker 1: of making it out in one piece. Now, let's say
Speaker 1: that the worst possible thing happens. A bear does attack.
Speaker 1: It's charging. There's a few things. I mean, I could
Speaker 1: say you hear these things. Well, if it's a black bear,
Speaker 1: then you fight it off. If it's a brown bearer,
Speaker 1: you play dead. If it's a defensive attack, you don't run.
Speaker 1: If it's a predatory attack, you fight back. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it is going to boil down to
Speaker 1: the scenario. In the situation, my thought is make noise.
Speaker 1: Let that bear no. You're a human and you are
Speaker 1: going to defend yourself. I think that one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to survive a bear attack is by having
Speaker 1: some form of defense, because you really do feel completely
Speaker 1: helpless when an animal with claws and teeth and muscles
Speaker 1: that is super fast is bearing down on you you
Speaker 1: and you have nothing in your hand. It's the worst
Speaker 1: feeling you can ever feel. I know from experience that
Speaker 1: I never want to have that happen again and feel unprepared. Now,
Speaker 1: whether your defense system works or not, you're gonna feel
Speaker 1: a health of a lot better if you have it
Speaker 1: with you. I think it. There's two main two main
Speaker 1: defenses for bears will go spray and firearms. There are
Speaker 1: limits to both, and there really isn't a perfect situation
Speaker 1: or scenario. I think both sides of the fence will
Speaker 1: argue for which one is better, But I honestly don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to which one is better because it
Speaker 1: might be situational in a lot of in cases. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to just go over the limits of both.
Speaker 1: So the bear spray is really good because you don't
Speaker 1: have to be as precise with it. Bear spray is
Speaker 1: essentially a large canister of pepper spray that can shoot.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's high pressure. You can spray it on the
Speaker 1: grasses even if you miss, or you can spray a
Speaker 1: barrier the bear will run into that fog of pepper
Speaker 1: spray or get it coming in. You also don't have
Speaker 1: to be as precise like you would with a pistol.
Speaker 1: A pistol you have to make a kill shot on
Speaker 1: a running animal. That can be very difficult, and a
Speaker 1: pistols can be problematic. There's other people around. When ship
Speaker 1: goes down, you gotta make sure you don't shoot the
Speaker 1: guy next to you as he's running away from the
Speaker 1: bear the opposite direction. That's a lot to take in
Speaker 1: in a short amount of time. Now, the drawback of
Speaker 1: the bear spray is if the wind is the wrong direction,
Speaker 1: or that bear gets sprayed and continues to attack, you
Speaker 1: have very little way to recover from that. When we
Speaker 1: did get attacked, the bear actually was running with a
Speaker 1: very stiff wind. I don't think that bear spray actually
Speaker 1: would have worked in our scenario, which is a scary thought,
Speaker 1: but in a lot of scenarios it would have worked.
Speaker 1: Now a pistol, on the other hand, you have to
Speaker 1: be a pretty damn good shot. But if the bears
Speaker 1: on top of you or of friends being attacked, I
Speaker 1: feel like that that's a good way to deter the
Speaker 1: threat by eliminating the threat. When you talk about pistols,
Speaker 1: I generally carry a light Smith and West and forty
Speaker 1: four mag but I have also a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends and other people have moved to a semi automatic UM.
Speaker 1: I actually just picked up a sig ten millimeter, which
Speaker 1: it has more rounds, less recoil, and is just more accurate.
Speaker 1: But if you are going to carry a pistol, I
Speaker 1: truly believe that you need to practice with it a lot.
Speaker 1: I carry a pistol. If I'm bow hunting, I actually
Speaker 1: carry a pistol and bear spray, but I practice with
Speaker 1: my pistol a lot. Now. If I'm rifle hunting, I
Speaker 1: often just carry the rifle and bear spray, So I
Speaker 1: like to have both options. It just depends on where
Speaker 1: you are. The type of bears you might encounter. If
Speaker 1: you're an area that you probably won't encounter a bear,
Speaker 1: you might be better with just the bear spray and
Speaker 1: the rifle. But whatever you have the number one thing,
Speaker 1: whether it's bear spray, whether it's a pistol, whether a
Speaker 1: rifle is could be very hard to get off your
Speaker 1: shoulder or um. Even a shotgun is a pretty good
Speaker 1: if you aren't if you're just hiking in bear country,
Speaker 1: A shotguns a great defense. Loaded with slugs or yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say just slug. Some people put a warning
Speaker 1: shot in there. I don't know if I would do that.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna go lethal force. Use lethal force. That's
Speaker 1: my that's my theory if it comes down to that.
Speaker 1: But no matter which method you choose, I've learned that
Speaker 1: the best thing is it needs to be on you,
Speaker 1: be ready, and you need to have it at hand
Speaker 1: at all times, because if you actually are attacked, the
Speaker 1: time between getting to your defense and that bear being
Speaker 1: on you is a matter of seconds. You can never
Speaker 1: anticipate how fast it actually happens, and so you have
Speaker 1: to constantly be thinking about that, practice drawing whatever you're
Speaker 1: using while you're out there, and just know that in
Speaker 1: the times you're least expecting it is probably the times
Speaker 1: that it will happen. So be ready. My final takeaway
Speaker 1: with bear country is just give them the respect that
Speaker 1: they deserve. Maybe you haven't had an encounter with them,
Speaker 1: maybe you never will, but as long as you don't,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. So when you're out there, just
Speaker 1: be cognizant of the threat, constantly try to prevent anything
Speaker 1: from happening, and if something does happen, have whatever defense
Speaker 1: you're gonna use at hand. Now, I think that that
Speaker 1: was a good overview of entering into bear country, and
Speaker 1: those are just a lot of the things that I
Speaker 1: think about when I'm out there. Now, that's not everything
Speaker 1: that there is to know about hunting amongst bears. However,
Speaker 1: it's a good start if you want a little bit
Speaker 1: more information or are going to be hunting in bear
Speaker 1: country a lot. You really just have to continually think
Speaker 1: about ways to prevent encounters and then also having the
Speaker 1: back of your mind, what do I do if it
Speaker 1: comes down the pipe. There's a lot of great resources
Speaker 1: on the meat eater dot com. As always, love to
Speaker 1: hear your feedback. You can email me at Remy at
Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com. Let me know any comments
Speaker 1: or what you like, what you don't like, maybe some
Speaker 1: things you'd like to learn in the future. Also with
Speaker 1: love it if you give us a good five star
Speaker 1: review wherever you're listening, and right in the comment hopefully
Speaker 1: a positive comment. If you've got bad comments, just email
Speaker 1: them to me. I'll junk mail. Just kidding, but honestly,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you guys listening. Would love to hear
Speaker 1: your feedback. And yeah, that's the sign off. I gotta
Speaker 1: think of a cool sign off one of these days.
Speaker 1: I'll have one, not today though, until next week. Catch
Speaker 1: you later. Don't get eaten,