between a mama & he cub? I''m sure no guide, and don't live in Alaska, but we do have bears in Pa. where I grew up, and in Ga. where I now live. we were taught that bears are fun to watch, and bear cubs are even funnier, but NEVER let mama feel you're a threat to her cub! Bears mostly avoid people and unless you leave food accessible to them, they'll not be a problem for you.

How a guide didn't know that or abide by it baffles me.

I'm also surprised they weren't hurt worse. Mama Bear is usually very rough when protecting her kids!

and I'm sure those guides did too. Problem is, people can inadvertently be in the wrong place between a bear and her cubs, or a bear and a food cache, or they can be unlucky enough to get near a bear with a toothache, or one that was shot 10 years earlier and has never forgotten it.

I heard both of those last two stories when I lived in Alaska, and also heard the opinion that there is no such thing as an unprovoked attack...but you may not know what provoked it.

Stuff happens in bear country. Be prepared (like with pepper spray, as they were), make plenty of noise when hiking, don't do anything stupid (like running away)...and you still might get in a bad situation. I once walked into a clearing (while talking loudly to invisible bears and jingling my bear bells) only to be confronted by a sow brown bear ( same thing as a grizzly but bigger) to my left and two cubs to my right. Fortunately the cubs in this case were year-old juveniles and so momma was not as protective as with the little ones. I backed away slowly, they lumbered off, I eventually carried on ( oddly my voice was somewhat dysfunctional...). I was lucky. Not everyone is.

With someone slower than yourself.

Heh.

is a good way to survive bear attacks and the zombie apocalypse

I was out for a trail ride on my bike one day and almost ran into a moma and cub. I made a trun in the trail and they were right there 30 yards away.
Thankfully they just ran off.

Mama bear could have been off the trail behind them and the cubs nearer to the trail and in front of them.

It's happened to me on several occasions. Luckily, I wasn't attacked but the mama bear charged me a couple of times only to back off when she saw the cubs had run off in her direction.

COMPLETELY accidental, I assure you

believe it or not, youngsters can get in the habit of running around / not paying attention to mom

It could have simply been an issue of the cubs sleeping off the side of the trail under some cover and mama bear roamed off a bit to take care of some business and the guides simply came along and didnt know that they had gotten between the bear and her cubs.

Why in the hell would they jail the guides or the tourists? That makes no sense whatsoever. What crime did they commit?

Or am I misreading sarcasm? I really hope I'm misreading sarcasm.

Here - in your re-reading pay attention to the fact that the guides fucked up.

I'd put together a rebuttal, but I think it's clear that a) you're not interested in discussion, just in being snarky, and b) you're not worth that many keystrokes.

what they did and it could have simply been a case of the guides just not being aware that they had gotten between the bear and her cubs.

I was going to say much the same thing, but it was pretty evident that the person you're responding to is more interested in being a jerk than in having a discussion. And I have zero experience hiking in bear country. It just seemed pretty obvious that one might not know the bears are there until one is practically on top of them.

Especially since moose are powerful critters and easily capable of stomping predators to death, let alone squishy humans. Very glad no one in your family was injured!

Jailing people for inadvertently encountering bears while hiking just seems more than a little bizarre to me. Glad I'm not the only one who found that suggestion strange.

...the 500 lbs of cow charged us and we had to throw ourselves into a hedge to get out of the way.

NEVER get between a female animal and her baby.

I was once on a birding hike on a friend's ranch when we came across a group of cows with a couple calves. The only city person among us headed straight for "oooh, that cute little baby cow" even after the cow had pushed her calf behind her. The idiot didn't stop till I yelled "Who's your next of kin?"

... in the Winter now.

I also hate trying to sleep in the heat and dealing with mosquitoes.

I have good Winter gear with a double sleeping bag system (inside a waterproof bivy sack) to keep me warm at night.

Ohio leaves many of their parks open all year long, plus there's free camping in national forests with certain restrictions.

It makes complete sense to consider hiking when the bears are horizontal, and the bugs aren't gunning for you.

Didn't even know there were any double systems.

Best wishes on your journeys, and thank you!

out of Sitka (and also 3 other similar projects elsewhere on the Tongass NF) between 1992 and 1995.

The USFS contracts included Safety Plans that directly addressed bears.

Where brown bears were resident, field crews were required to be accompanied by a dedicated (only job was as look out and security) armed guard.

The Sitka project was at Ushk Bay on Chichagof Island is a brown bear area. The prime contractor provided the security and we did fieldwork in mixed teams. If we knew brown bear were active in an area, we adjusted plans accordingly. We worked from a floating camp and were ferried back and forth to work areas by helicopter. Part of the project was wildlife biologists engaged in accessing and mapping habitat and making population estimates so there was little danger of a surprise. The study area was 70,000 acres.

[img][/img]


The last project I worked on in SE Alaska was administered by the USFS in Petersburg and the location was Port Houghton.

[img][/img]

I had three employees resident on a floating camp from May to September and I made 5 trips 10 day to two week trips between April and September. There were about 40-45 people working from the floating camp at any one time. There never was an incident.

When only black bears were resident (and common), one could go with gun or pepper spray and could work (and we often did) alone. Pepper spray was required to be in one's possession while in the field. Similar to Ushk Bay, we hopped around by helicopter (the study area was 190,000 acres)

I was responsible for the Safety Plan for myself and employees. I provided a .358 Magnum (that belonged to my BIL) and a 16 gauge shotgun and we all had pepper spray. The fire arms never left the floating camp except once when we starting work we took part of a day to practice shooting the arms.

Our own Safety Plan was if they were working with me was to spray me hard with pepper spray and run like hell.

One thing different from now is that GPS units were not required nor in common usage back in the early 1990s.

Black bear photo (from internet) taken in Port Houghton study area.

[img][/img]

Brown bear photo (also internet).

[img][/img]

BTW The projects and EISs were for road building and large timber sale projects to serve then existing long term contracts the USFS had with pulp mills in Sitka and Ketchikan. The projects went to court and none of the large areas were ever roaded nor logged.

Come on DU

Please, stay safe indoors and we'll send you pictures...