Before visiting Yellowstone National Park or “bear country” familiarize yourself with safety precautions in order to avoid bear encounters. “Run for your life” may seem like common sense if a grizzly approaches you, but such action is highly unlikely to foil an attack. The recommended steps are not easy to follow, but they offer the best chance for survival. Here’s what the experts say:
If you encounter a grizzly, do not run.
Avoid direct eye contact.
Walk away slowly, if the bear is not approaching.
If the bear charges, stand your ground (you cannot outrun it).
Don’t scream or yell. Speak in a soft monotone voice and wave your arms to let the animal know you are human. If you have pepper spray, prepare to use it.
If the grizzly charges to within 25 feet of where you’re standing, use the spray.
If the animal makes contact, curl up into a ball on your side, or lie flat on your stomach.
Try not to panic; remain as quiet as possible until the attack ends.
While in bear country, be aware that you may encounter a bear at any time.
Be sure the bear has left the area before getting up to seek help.
 While in bear country, be aware that you may encounter a bear at any time. |
Some other interesting things about grizzlies:
- Most human injuries from grizzly bears are caused by females acting aggressively to protect their young.
- Grizzlies are omnivores; they will eat almost anything. Although a large part of their diet is vegetation, grizzlies will also kill and eat large and small animals.
- Fewer than 1,100 grizzlies exist in the lower 48 states, in 5 populations in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington. An estimated 500 to 600 grizzlies populate the Greater Yellowstone area.
- Grizzlies are North America’s slowest reproducing land mammal. A female may not have her first litter until she is 5 or 6 years old, after which she will then typically produce two cubs every 2.5 years. Cubs from the same litter can be from different fathers. Grizzlies have a natural life span of 30 years or more.
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“If the bear charges, stand your ground (you cannot outrun it).”
I can’t imagine the act of will required to do this.
Fewer than 1,100 grizzlies exist in the lower 48 states.
How does this compare to the number of humans?
grizzlies are not like black bears, in the fact, they won’t actively hunt you. They are protective and territorial.
where are they to go humens seem to keep takening the land
those damn humens and their takening of things!
kill the humens!
He-llo Hu-men! Do you want to play hu-men tetherball?
Can bears climb trees? I would climb a tree and then if it tried to pursue me up the tree I’d kick it in the face from above, how’s that for survival tactics.
And don’t forget, they’ll steal your pic-a-nic baskett
Just get one of these… http://www.waspknife.com/
I’ve actually had a black bear charge me in Washington State. I already knew about standing still and was sure to avert my eyes. The bear actually stopped the charge a few feet away from me and sniffed me. I didn’t wave my arms as the article suggested, nor did I speak in a monotone. I remained motionless and quiet. The bear grunted a few times, bounced it’s front legs up and down a few times, but eventually left without ever touching me.
That said, I’d rather encounter a Grizzly before encountering another black bear or worse still, a Cougar.
Alternatively you could just move to England [ or Ireland, Scotland or Wales if you really had to ] and about the scariest thing you’ll run into is a drunken teenager with a knife….has anybody wrote a piece on surviving a drunken british teenage knife attack?
http://www.steeley.co.uk
With brown bears, 6 hollowpoint shots from a 44 Ruger Magnum takes care of the problem. Never ran into a grizzly, so I have no knowledge of what to use.
If the bear charges, stand your ground (you cannot outrun it). — Its not the bear that i have to outrun, but rather the other guys i am camping with.
Oh man…Lance, that is about the best comment ever!!
“Can bears climb trees? I would climb a tree and then if it tried to pursue me up the tree I’d kick it in the face from above, how’s that for survival tactics.”
Dude, that’s awesome! Why didn’t anyone ever think of that!
Seriously…climbing a tree and kicking a grizzly in the face?? You nuts? The bear would either climb the tree and rip your foot off with it’s 200lb arm and 4 inch claws. Or, if the tree was too small to climb, it would simply knock it down.
Climb a tree and kick a grizzly in the face…unreal…
To #7 “Can bears climb trees?” Yes the can climb trees very well, and they are excellent swimmers as well. The speed of a male grizzly is 30 MPH.
“With brown bears, 6 hollowpoint shots from a 44 Ruger Magnum takes care of the problem. Never ran into a grizzly, so I have no knowledge of what to use.”
Brown bears are Grizzlies. Black bears are the other kind in North America.
“If the bear charges, stand your ground (you cannot outrun it).”
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.
What about kiss your sorry ass goodbye?
“Grizzlies are North America’s slowest reproducing land mammal. A female may not have her first litter until she is 5 or 6 years old…”
Aren’t we forgetting humans?
If you have to run, run downhill. Bears are so fast that they’ll actually trip and fall past you.
I love how the first thing some people think about is how to “kill” the bear; how many bullets it takes to kill a brown bear. I think people need to start realizing that when they enter any wilderness inhabited by wild animals such as bears, cougars, etc. they are at the mercy of these great animals. If people think they need a gun, because they are so afraid of a bear attack, then stay out of the forest and go back to the city.
Bears eat beats!!!
Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica.
I’ve been close to bears in the woods, and I’ve been in some bad parts of Baltimore. I was less worried when I was with the bears.
*beets
To #16
Actually brown bears and grizzlies are not the same. Brown bears are actually bigger than grizzlies, and have a more pronounced hump on their upper shoulders. Alaska is home to both grizzlies and browns. As far as I know, there are no browns in the other states.
“Can bears climb trees? I would climb a tree and then if it tried to pursue me up the tree I’d kick it in the face from above, how’s that for survival tactics.”
As stupid as it sounds, it actually makes sense. If you’re choice is to climb a tree and kick the bear in the face as defense, aim for the nose. A hit to the nose for a bear is said to be 10,000X more painful than a man getting hit in the nuts.
I couldn’t begin to imagine that kind of pain…
hi bryan..i think its funny
to maggie:
High talk, wait until your kid is being charged by a grizzly and let’s see where your “Tread Lightly” rhetoric is located. I Bet you’d want to have some way to protect them. I’m sure you’d consider that pepper spray woefully inadequate then.
“If the bear charges, stand your ground (you cannot outrun it).”
You need to be mentally veeeery strong to do this. Nice advices!
http://www.nanomedicinecenter.com
If the bear charges, stand your ground and shoot. Believe or not you are more important than the bear. If you feel guilty after killing the bear and you think that you should have gotten mauled or killed. You can donate money or time to protect and preserve animals.
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I’m not worried. The bear would just eat Maggie first.
I think Maggie would love to be “at the mercy of these great animals”. It would be a honor for her to be eaten. The concern she has about the amount to bullets it takes to kill a bear is laughable. Just go into the woods with a large caliber firearm and 1 well placed shot and a bear will drop like a rock. If your a poor shot empty the firearm and kick the bear several times. Start a fire and eat some well deserved bear meat. Also drop a chunk of at Maggie’s house.
Lance(#7) and Jonathan (#20) are the “real deal” when it comes to outdoor surivival. Perhaps they saw these evasive manuevers in the movies.
Like previously posted, you would only have to outrun the idiot playing Kick The Bear In The Face or the other fool playing Trip The Grizzly Bear.
Oh, and grizzlys ARE brown bears, as are kodiaks.
What to Do if You Encounter a Bear | Deliggit.com…
\r\nRun for your life? may seem like common sense if a grizzly approaches you, but such actio…
I grew up in the Smoky Mountains, right at the edge of the park, and there are loads of black bears. Never once did I hear of one “hunting” anyone, as suggested above. Plenty of people hunted them, and in the summer boneheaded tourists fed them, and even under that circumstance hardly ever was anyone injured …
Begs the question…what CAN beat up a bear?
Wait a minute .. do I have to know what KIND of bear is about to kill me?
What should a bear do when it encounters a human?
@ #20, The reason a bear tumbles downhill is their front legs are smaller and weaker than their back legs and cannot support their body weight at a steep downward angle. I don’t think it has much to do with how fast they are.
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I once woke up on the river bar with a black bear between us and our boat. My brother stood up and yelled at it and it stood up and yelled back. Finally it seemed to get bored and dropped back down on its feet, waded into the Klamath and pulled out a steelhead with one foot, waded back out, and ate. If I had known urban-speak at the time I would have told my brother “He’s clowning us”.
“Grizzlies are North America’s slowest reproducing land mammal. A female may not have her first litter until she is 5 or 6 years old”
I guess humans are not land mammals???
If a bear charges you, get behind a tree. If the bear goees around the tree, you go around the tree. IF the Bear rears up – this is your opportunity to turn the tables in your favor – before the bear can swipe, rush in and kick the bear in teh nutz.
This one time at the band camp I was attacked by a black bear while picking up berries. He slapped me a couple of times after I got really mad and decided to break his arm. I learned how to do an arm bar from the UFC fights that ended up saving my life. Right after that every single bear was scared of me. I don’t fear bears anymore.
great information. I’m going camping in Denali this week. I love how its the complete opposite for black bears though!
If you are going to woods.BRING shotgun!!! =)
a lot of comments on Brown, Grizzly and Black Bears.
In Ontario we have a smaller bear that we call a “brown bear”. They may not actually *be* brown bears… but that’s what we call them.
They are not as aggressive and you don’t hear much in the way of attacks on humans (although they are still large enough for it). You can typically seem them in towns with forest around them or at garbage dumps.
Something clarifying the difference between grizzlies and black bears. Be sure and read to the end (you may have to cut and paste the link)…
http://www.outdooroddities.com/2008/07/23/grizzly-bear-warning-sign/
A read a true story about two women who accidentally startled a mother grizzly. The bear began charging the women from across a field. The first woman climbed up into a tree. (Whether or not that would have deterred the grizzly is unknown.) The second woman ran to the base of the tree in time to climb the tree, but she was so scared that she could not lift her arms to climb even though the first woman was reaching down to help her and screaming for her to climb. The grizzly bear caught the second woman as she stood paralyzed under the tree… and ate her. Terribly sad, but true. Poor woman.
There is a difference between grizzlies and Brown bears. Look it up.
Oh and since I’m already so loved on here, I thought I’d respond to the comment about my kids. If I had any I wouldn’t be taking them into bear country. To clear up any mis-understanding I just think people shouldn’t shoot first and think later – nine times out of ten the bear won’t attack and is just threatening, as in a mother bear.
Brown bears, grizzly bears, and kodiak bears are all brown bears. All three are Ursus arctos. However grizzlies and kodiak are both sub-species, so grizzlies and kodiak are brown bears but brown bears aren’t grizzly or kodiak… So everyone is right. Hopefully that clears things up. Oh and I have been charged by a black bear, and to stand still is one of the hardest things to do in the world… it takes all the courage in you. Your first instinct is to run like hell. But I did stand still and raised my hands. Luckily it worked.
I happen to bump into this site and feel I should make mention of this often mis-informed fact. There are are two species of Bear in North America. Black Bear and Grizzly Bear. Black bear come in many color-phases as do Grizzly. The distinction between Grizzly Bear and Brown Bear is geographic location. It is well known that the bears of the Islands off the coast of Alaska (Kodiac being just one) and the AK peninsula grow to enormous size due to their high diet of fish caught during the salmon runs. In fact Black Bear from this area too are much larger than other locations. However, because of this geographic line (you might know this was primarily designed by the hunting community) a bear could be considered a Brown Bear one day and that same bear travel over land to interior AK and now be considered a grizzly bear (common) The size difference is severe. A coastal Grizzly AKA “brown bear” can get as large as 10′ or more and weigh over 1000 lbs while an interior grizzly are around 6-7′ maybe 8′ and between 400-600 lbs.
as Paul Harvey used to say: “and now you know the rest of the story”
Yes there are only two species of bear in North America, but there are sub-species of those two species. This is called a scientific term. It doesn’t really mean anything in reality; it is just what us humans use to classify life. Kodiak and Grizzly bears are both sub-species of brown bear!!! So kodiaks and grizzlies are both brown bears, but if you say brown bear, it isn’t specific enough, because there are different kinds of brown bears. Oh, and yes, these different sub-species are different. That is why we have classified them differently. So what Desmarais is saying is that if a German moves to Russia he is now a Russian… So the question is how do we classify???
Sure I’m well aware of sub-species and of different races of human too. Take Caribou for example, there are 5 actually 6 subspecies but all are scientifically from the same pool. Where as the two bear; Ursus americanus and Ursus arctos horriblis are slightly different in that context. In the off chance you might not be a biologist. I want to assure you whether its called by its numerous common names: brown bear, kodiak island grizzly, kodiak island Brown bear, an ABC Island brown bear (the 3 lesser known islands next to Kodiak) or coastal brown bear, a peninsula brown bear, an interior grizzly, an arctic grizzly (grizzly in the Brooks Range) or a grizzly in BC, TYT, NWT oh excuse me (British Columbia, The Yukon Territories, or North West Territories) or grizzly the lower 48 even Russia it’s still only Ursus arctos horribilis. The only things different are location and physical size which I said was due to diet. So to answer your question they are classified as either a Black bear or a Grizzly bear. I should hope you were not quoting the following copied text from the web? You do know not everything you read on the www is accurate, right?
___________________________________________________________
Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis)
Kodiak brown bear (Ursus arctos middendorfi)
In general the coastal bears are brown bears, the interior bears are grizzlies and the Kodiaks live only on Kodiak Island. Coloration varies greatly, from black to the famous blondes of Denali Park.
No!!! They are classified as black bear or brown bear. Grizzlies are a subspecies! Both Kodiaks and Grizzlies are brown bear, but both are subspecies. The Russian brown bear is a subspecies as well, which isn’t U. arctos horribilis, and isn’t called a grizzly.
The discussion wasn’t even about black bears, it was about brown bears, and the question was rhetorical. The point is that classification is in the eye of the PhD. We classify humans only as Homo sapiens sapiens, whereas there are many different subspecies of brown bear. Why isn’t there a subspecies for every different human??? Oh, and that’s another rhetorical one.
wild stuff…wanna do a shout out to the other Doug McFall.
Despite what this article says, if a bear is going to attack you, you NEVER play dead! If you do this, the bear will attack you, guaranteed! You are supposed to act fearless, wave your arms, yell, act as threatening as you can! The bear will usually get scared off if they think you’re threatening enough.
I love all animals but bears can be very dangerous.YES we all know if a mama bear attack you or try to attack you, their protecting heir babies. Well, actually not all mama bears just do that, they can also attack you at the ZOO! Well as I was watching television a lady wanted to take a picture of a bear, and she decided to get a better view so she climbed over the gate and some how the bear snatched her arm and it had been a couple of hours and people try helping her but they couldn’t but finally the bear yarn and had let her arm go. SO EVERYBODY BE CAREFUL WITH BEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To #50..that is freaking hilarious! Thanks for a good laugh!
Wow! Impressive to see so many macho easy-trigger killers walking around this site. Actually, somebody should put a page to advice bears on how to keep away from these humanoids, not because of the threat they represent with their big guns (what would they do without them?), but because of the stench they make.
And now that you mention it, Eric, I would prefer to see you becoming meat for some hungry bear than the other way around… There are so many like you around that you won’t be much missed…
I AM GLAD I FOUND THE SITE. I DO ALOT OF FISHING IN COLORADO. AND HAVE ONLY ENCOUNTER A BLACK BEAR AND HE JUST RAN AWAY. BUT THIS YEAR I AM GOING TO WYOMING AND IT’S A WHOLE OTHER THING WITH THE GRIZZLY BEAR. BECAUSE I REALLY DON’T KNOW TO MUCH OUT THEM. THANKS
I not sure but i know that if you play dead it works before i went to bear country i had a game of sleeping lions every night
I think bears arent that dangerous if you dont bother them. And if you do it’ll hurt bad.
Great information.
Best, most leading informatio I have ever found
I loved the comment about climbing a tree and kicking the bear in the face.Very funny.Posting comments it fun
what are you people talking about? Grizzleys are harmless if you dont mess with them trust me i know.
I had one charge me at Yellowstone last week. I did not invoke an attack or anything. It charged me until about 15 feet and ran away. Grizzleys are not harmless if you don’t mess with them – trust me, you don’t know.
http://cbs4denver.com/wireapnewswy/Wyoming.man.recounts.2.1102781.html
I’m not for just going out and mowing down bears, in the woods, but boy would I feel fortunate to have a firearm handy, heaven forbid, a ferotious bear (10 times stronger than me) should present a real threat. I wouldn’t want to depend on kicking it in the face, trying to play roll the bear down a hill, kicking it in the nuzt or standing still (helplessly), hoping the son of a b. isn’t going to follow through with ripping you to shreads.
As an outdoor educator in Black Bear country, I can tell you that ANY bear encounter is not unprovoked. It might be because of food, territory, young, or any number of reasons. Maybe not reasons that we, as humans, understand, but perfectly good reasons to the bears themselves.
Bears have a sense of smell 1000s of times more powerful than us. That alone puts THEM at an advantage. They know we are coming long before we would even think there is a bear in the area. If you just ate, drank, or got out of a car where food was stored – they know it. They will track you for miles because they think they are tracking food – nothing more.
I spent the summer of 1973 backpacking w/inflatable kayak through Glacier Nat Park, Yellowstone, and the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The hot, dry conditions forced many grizzlies down to lower altitudes where they treed back packers in numerous campgrounds in Glacier that summer. That made for some very tense fishing conditions. Caught many cutthroat trout in cirque lakes and surrounding streams. Those destined for dinner had to be eaten immediately so as not to attract bears and the skillet had to be charred to destroy odors. Tent was pitched with the entrance against a tree for quick retreat. Kayaked the Gallatin River canyon north of West Yellowstone. A bear forced a backpacker to make hasty escape from his secluded campsite, cross river and sleep in my campground. By far, the densest pop of grizzlies in lower 48 states is in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Actually lost the trail crossing Spotted Bear creek and was later told by elk & bear hunting lodge that agitated grizzlies were knocking down trail markers. I saw bears several times but had no encounters. Word to the wise…dangle a small noisy cowbell on your belt and backpack at all times so as not to startle bears, leave no food odors anywhere, & never try to run away!!
Dont ruin away because THE BEAR might eat your LUNCH.
ALWAYS stay BEHIND the bear….. that ways they’s confused, they can smell yer, but can’t see yer. SO run towards the crittter, real fast, and then veer t one side and rush past (keeping outta range of dem big clawrs) and then stay behind until bear falls over from dizzyness or wanders off in frustration. Only do this if yer fit and agile…… or suicidal! lol!
Bear attacks in the US and Canada are extremely infrequent, averaging about 4 per year. Last year 400,000 people visited Denali National Park, and probably half of these at some point saw a Grizzly. Number of attacks? None. It’s the old story: the only time you read about a bear is when he attacks someone. I’ve seen 40 grizzlies in the wild. Half ran away, the other half ignored me. While an attack by a black bear is an improbable event, If one does attack you, stand your ground and defend yourself, as you may be able to discourage a black bear. On the other hand, never fight back if a grizzly attacks, as you’ll have no chance, and may enrage it through resistance. Go into the fetal position, grit your teeth and hope for the best. Most people attacked by Grizzlies survive, as killing you is not necessarily the bear’s intent. Attacks are generally caused when a sow thinks you’re a danger to her cubs, or when you unwittingly pass near a grizzly who is guarding a food cache.