[Closed] A question about fighting off bears, including polar bears

Does It have to be Lynx? I don't like Lynx. Is right guard ok.

if a bear is close enough for you to use the momentum of its attack will kill you even if it then runs off then it will return as an angry bear.
Using this instantly may be difficult as it will require a good safety system

Bear spray more effective than fire i reckon but less dramatic

As you extend your lighter hand, the bear will just bite it off. So all you can do then is spray lynx in its eyes, which'll really piss it off, bruce. So you'll still die horribly, but at least you'll smell nice when you do.

OK maybe it would be harder than shooting it if you were wriggling about in the tent with it

But if it were charging at you from a distance, I bet spraying a flame about would get rid of it sharpish

A plume of flames won't scare off an angry bear, really. I don't think you know what you're dealing with! When I do the Tour Divide I think I will be sleeping with a machete under my pillow, that's probably the best I can do. Maybe a sawn-off shotgun would be good too.

Why don't you just try and put a rubber band around its muzzle. Probably be about as effective.

Surely if you sprayed linx in its face it would be too busy fighting off all the female bears who want to shag it to bother eating you.

Personally I'd try and beat it to death with a fop.

I bet spraying a flame about would get rid of it sharpish

Like in Alien: all animals run from fire. Especially big fast fire accompanied by whooshing roar.

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😆 Brilliant - is it real?

excellent

WTF is a fop?

Machete seems like the answer

stick a finger up its bum? i reckon that would also work with sharks

Posted on another forum earlier this year:

Had some polar bear funtime in Greenland in April. Before we left, our logistics guys were talking us through the pepper spray, the 4 types of marine flares, the rape alarm perimeter (bearimeter) fence and the .308 rifle with the hollow point rounds, saying "you won't need any of this, though. You'd be very unlucky to see a bear, chances are less than one percent."

4 days in, I looked out of the tent door, Bear about 100 yards from the tent, coming straight for us. Couple of pen flares did nothing to faze Mr Bear, he just kept coming. Next up was the pistol flare, had no clue how far it would go, but guessed right and it landed right by him. He broke away from us into a run for 10 seconds, then slowed to an amble, looking back at us. Couple of rifle rounds over his head and he hurried off down the valley.

Then he just lolled about in the sunshine for ages, rolling in the snow, about a kilometer away. Seemed he knew the range of everything we were firing at him! Then he started back up towards us, more boomstick, off again, more lolling, back towards us again, more boomstick.

This was over the course of a few hours, and it was a beautiful day with great snow. We wanted to get up something, but we didn't want to get up and watch Mr Bear tear our tents up, looking for the tins of mackerel fillets in hot chilli oil (they had pull rings, he'd have been straight in with a deft flick of a claw!)

We got kitted up for touring, each of us packing heat of some sort, and started moving towards him, couple more rounds when we were a bit closer, then waited and watched while he headed off up to a col. We skinned up to where we could see his tracks to see if he was good and gone, and he was. We had a good run down the newly named "Bear Face", and had a slightly less good night's sleep that night!

When we got back to the airstrip at the end of the trip, the guys said "You were so lucky to see a bear, chances are less than 2 percent!" We were the second group in 20 years and 170 expeditions they'd done the logistics for who'd encountered a bear, so we'd just doubled the stats!

Back to STW: given the guidelines for shooting to kill a polar bear: ie: wait until they are 6-10 feet away (bolt action rifles, so if you miss, you might not get another shot), I might stick to the flares and the rifle. I was never that keen on the idea of the pepper spray!

Magnum .44, hollow-nose slugs. Glock 9mm whole magazine, at a pinch.

Or just lie still on the ground and play dead. Mind you, if it was a really hungry bear like the one on Stavanger, that would probably just make you look like take-away...

Stavanger? Svalbard?

Rad, rad story. when you say it was coming at you - you mean running? teeth bared etc.? was it just ambling about in that "ooh, berries" way that bears do, or was it charging?

Sounds full on

Oh yeah, Svalbard... 😳

jhw, it was walking. When we got a bit of altitude, we could see its tracks. It had come over a col from the south, and we could see exactly where it had seen our tents about 3.5km away and made a bee-line straight for us. By chance, I happened to poke my head out of the tent to check the weather and saw it when it was 100m away. If I'd rolled over instead, or put my MP3 player on, it would have been outside our tents in 2 minutes.

We were pretty haired out at the time, especially when it wouldn't go away and we didn't know what to do. 4 guys put a bit of bravado on things and it became an experience that added to the trip. Reading abou the guys in Svalbard story shat me up all over again. Really could have been us. We'd made the decision to disarm the beary-meter the night before because the storm force winds would have set it off anyway, and we figured any bears would have been holed up somewhere too... 😐

WTF is a fop?

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The rather amusing gun forum on ridemonkey suggests a 9mm isn't really loaded for bear. 12 gauge with slugs FTW.

.308 with hollow point rounds is de riguer.

When I was working near Fairbanks, Alaska many years ago, one of the guys I worked with asked me to go out help him pick wild blueberries. On our way hiking a trail to the location, we encountered an Alaska Fish & Game Warden.
He warned us about Grizzly bears being in the area wherever there were ripe berries and asked us if we were armed.
My friend answered and showed him a .38 pistol he was carrying. The warden said 'if you are attached by a Grizzly, you probably would be best to just shoot yourself as the .38 would only really make the bear madder'. (the warden was carrying a .300 Weatherby and a .44 magnum revolver).

play some dubstep at it through some portable iphone speakers.. it will either cover it's ears and howl something about 2step and pure 4step garage or it will 'get down'

When I had to draw the pepper spray my hands were shaking so much (from adrenalin etc) that there is no way I could have had the presence of mind to also find and use a lighter aiming in roughly the right direction. Didn't actually have to use the spray (luckily) but coming around a corner to see a full grown grizzley 10m away is still the closest I'll ever want to get. In reality we looked at each other for about a minute and then it ambled off... I had made lot of noise during the descent so it wasn't spooked (a good thing) but at the same time it clearly knew who was boss (a bad thing)

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This is all you need. I was going to suggest a .50 cal Desert Eagle but if a round were to fail, you could be in the shit. At least with a revolver you just keep pulling the trigger to bring a fresh cartridge around. 2300 ft/lbs of energy into the target at close range. Enough to stop ANY bear.

A few years ago here in New Mexico I was hiking with my German Shepherd and we dropped down off a mountainside into a small stream bed with a lot of thick brush. The Shepherd started growling and a black bear stood up about 30 feet in front of me. Damned near had a heart attack-so many thoughts went through my head in a couple of seconds. The dog started barking and the bear took off. I was carrying a .357 magnum revolver, but if that bear had come at me, I honestly don't think I could have gotten the pistol out of the holster in time. It was just an average sized male black bear, maybe 350 pounds, but in that instant he stood up he sure seemed a whole lot
bigger to me at the moment.

At least you had a German Shepherd with you to bark at it, if it had been me my Lurcher would have been half way to Canada by the time I realised what was going on!!

Another great story

Can you tell me more about New Mexico? I'm really keen to visit and have the whole Cormac McCarthy experience. I know someone with a small ranch there. It's just something I've always had in the back of my mind - I've not looked into it in any detail - but it's something I'd very much like to do. Exactly because of stories like that.

I was listening to an old Desert Island Discs with the explorer Pen Haddow. He heard something outside his tent one night and opened the flap to come nose to nose with a Polar Bear. He went to pick up his rifle but it was the wrong way round so instead he picked up a frying pan and ****ted it. He reckoned it wasn't so much the pain he caused but the ringing noise that scared it off. Don't know if the story was true but it made me laugh.

Can you tell me more about New Mexico

Kind of hard to do quickly, but will give you an overview:
It's a very large state, 121,000 sq. miles, with geography ranging from low desert to major mountain ranges 12,000 ft+.
Major mountain ranges in the Norther 1/3 of the state, a mountain spine running down the middle of the state and another moutainous area in the southwest quadrant. Eastern 1/4 of the state is pretty flat, grasslands (ranching, farming, oil & gas).

about 2 million people, so figures out to about 16 people per square mile, but when you figure 1.4 million are in 3 major cities and a handful of smaller ones, it figures out to considerably less than 1 person per square mile for 90% of the state.

Lots to do, obviously good mountain biking, hiking, camping and skiing. If you like to expore out of the way, remote places then this is the place to be. I can go out camping on a weekend and never see another human being. Lots to explore in the way of history, i.e. the state is covered with historical ruins, large and small (Chaco Canyon, for example)--When I hike or bike up in the Jemez mountains, I pass by dozens of archeological sites in a single ride.

Lots of wildlife across the state, including the larger like deer, elk, antelope, bear, cougar, coyotes, grey wolves down to a lot of desert-life like rattlesnakes, lizards, etc.
Not a lot of water--a few larger lakes, a few larger rivers, but mostly arid---water is a scarce and precious commodity. The mountains get a lot of snow in a good winter (Taos will usually have 70-100 inch base).
Major cities are Albquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe. Basically a tri-cultural state including Hispanic, Native American and anglos.

I could, of course go on and on, but a good website is: http://www.newmexico.org/ which has a lot of info.

Bottom line is if you like the outdoors, exploring, not a lot of people (except for the 3 cities mentioned) it's a great place. Oh, and the weather is absolutely grand most of the time. 300+ days of sunshine a year and blue skies that go on forever--on a normal day, you can see mountain ranges 70+ miles away.

I'd probably get eaten if I encountered a bear, angry dogs are enough to make me keek my drawers never mind a bear!

Thanks - that's really interesting. I shall start planning a trip to this corner of the US, perhaps next Spring, I think. That's a really helpful introduction. Cheers.

I saw a guy at an Iron Maiden gig wear an Albuquerque Rattlesnake Museum t-shirt, which is the best t-shirt I've seen in some time.

If you get this part of the world, try to see S. Utah and S. Colorado as well--more wide open space than you could explore in a lifetime.

Thanks - that's really interesting. I shall start planning a trip to this corner of the US, perhaps next Spring, I think. That's a really helpful introduction. Cheers.

I saw a guy at an Iron Maiden gig wear an Albuquerque Rattlesnake Museum t-shirt, which is the best t-shirt I've seen in some time.

Spring is usually a good time, fall is better (weatherwise)--spring here is usually pretty windy (April & May especially). If you are going to try to get some biking in, many of the higher mountain trails aren't accessible until at least May 1st and in a heavy snow year, some not available until June.
Fall weather is generally gorgeous (Sept through Oct). Temperatures have dropped, nights cool and very little in the way of rain or wind in a normal year.

In a walk in the woods Bill Bryson recalls the advice he was given at the outdoor store regarding differentiating between a black bear and a grizzly. If you see a bear climb a tree to get away- if the bear climbs the tree and eats you it's a black bear if it shakes you out of the tree and eats you it's a grizzly.

Another bit of sage bear advice: if you are in a group that is attacked by a bear, only run if you are faster than at least one other person in the group

I always thought that the "don't climb a tree cos he can climb faster than you" advice was a bit over the top- until I saw a bear absolutely launch itself up a tree, properly digging his claws in and leaping his way up like a squirrel!

When in Canada we were advised against bear spray as it's 10x stronger than regular pepper spray but often results in you getting a good dosing too. As for the bear bells, I think they're just souvenirs- although maybe if all the bears wore bells then we could hear them coming!

Bearbells are a definitely no-no in my experience, and I think some of the literature now is saying the same thing. More like a dinner bell for a skinny bear. You want loud sharp noises (at distance) to make a bear aware of your presence without startling them and that you're likely a threat to avoid, not tinny bells like a Morris dancer that make you sound delicious.

Bearspray, my colleagues and I do carry it, but if we were getting stalked by a black bear (which does happen, especially on cutlines - for pipelines, seismic lines and so on) I would be alot happier with my machete/bowie knife in hand and/or two bits of 2x4 to knock together to make enough racket to scare a bear off. In any event, that bear can move a damn slight quicker than you can in the same environment, however fast you can run, so you're better off standing your ground (atleast with a black bear, with a grizzly, just hope it doesn't feel hungry)

You can have rifles with you in the field, but frankly if a bear is stalking you and you're distracted, you will see it i.e. close, charging, before you hear it coming, better off with a bat than a gun.

The environments I work in (Alberta Boreal) is often peatbog, very quiet underfoot for all the mosses, and with the dense black spruce there - see the last photo, the bear is walking around the berm of a well (oil) pad, you could be working feet from a bear and never know it, which is why you tend to look for the signs (scat, entrails) etc and use common sense. More scary was one site I worked on last year where a peatland was surrounded by a massive sand bar esker....covered in blueberry and saskatoon berry bushes...walking around in there in late summer with the berries out (delicious!)...I was expecting to walk into a bear at any minute.

Oh and bear bangers, from vivid experience, [u]USELESS[/u] 🙄

Have some bears from last year.

First was likely a yearling, decided to have a go at the recycling containers SEVERAL times, bit of a retard, kept climbing rotten trees to escape when we shouted at it. The second appeared as I was having lunch sat on the bonnet of my truck, not in the slightest bit interested in me but to give you perspective, the berm it's walking around is close to 2.5m tall. It was one big adult!

As for polar bears...a friend of mine has just moved to Paulatuk, NWT (shores of the Beaufort sea) where her boyfriend is to start teaching Science to the kids up there. They bought matching rifles before they left and have applied for a .50 licence for a hand cannon. Although being in an enclave of Inuit, they're pretty safe.

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Really excellent post - thanks

Time to watch Grizzly Man I think (what an asshole)