Hostile bear encounter WWYD?

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Alx98

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I was wondering about this today and decided to ask you knowledgeable folk about this. I've heard different ways to approach it and was wondering what you guys would do.

Here's the scenario: You're out deer hunting and you're walking to your post, and a large mother brown bear confronts you. You see one of her cubs out of the corner of your eye so you know she's protecting them. She starts to charge..What do you do?

Let's say you're carrying a 30-06.
 
If a bear is charging you then you're in pretty serious danger. One hopes to be aware enough of their surroundings that bears can be avoided. Bears typically want as little interaction with you as you want with them. If a bear's charging you, and you have a 30.06, well I hope it's iron sighted and semi-auto; or I hope you can point shoot your scoped rifle well and work its bolt quickly. Either way, if it's charging it needs to be shot.
 
Hopefully you have some large bullets or lots of them with a semi-auto. A large brown Female will be over 600 pounds. If charging she would also likely be very close.

I have never hunted UP. Are browns common up there?
 
protecting her cubs or not i dont want to end up in a pile of bear crap in the middle of no where.

i would shoot her till she was no longer a threat to myself. after cleaning my britches i would contact the gamewarden and let him now what happend and about the cubs. i would defently want a claw or something lol
 
don't know much about bears/bear charging. do they go right to "charge"? will they posture at all first, do a mini charge, back down, see what you're going to do? I guess it'll depend how close you've gotten to her/cubs.

I guess i'd say that i'd shoot... i might try a warning shot low and into the ground away from the bear assuming i knew there are no other hunters/people close by. hope maybe the bear will have experience w/ the "boom stick". if not, my life over the bear's.
 
what would I do? ........ :what: ill use this one as there is no picture of someone crapping themselves...


reminds me of the story of some alaksan hunters. while cleaning a moose (I think) they had a nasty encounter with a bear. they hung the pistol/belt on a tree limb and while one was being beaten about the other tried to attract the attention of the bear as it was between him and the pistol

as I rememeber it they left the rifles at the truck when they went back for the packs


was in an e-mail from a friend up that way?

had a pic of a nice moose then some picws of a VERY BIG bear! \

if anyone has seen that e-mail Id love to see it again
 
Impossible to give you a pat answer on this as every bear will have a different response. I can tell you that once I was above treeline on Kodiak Island hiking actross a pass to fish. It was a glorious day and I was walking along obviously not paying that cose attention to what was coming up in front of me. At about 30 yards a very large bear stood in my path and the bolt action .308 I carried immediatetly seemed very inadequate. I shouted and screamed and it dropped to four and started walking toward me. I began slowly backing up and fired a round past its head. It stood again and it was at this time the two cubs with their mom showed themselves between her legs. I figured this was it, I was bear breakfast. I shouldered the rifle and put the front sight on her head figuring if she dropped to all fours and made one move forward I would get one shot and that was it. I also realized the 180 gr bullet if not making an immdiate kill would just piss her off anyway and I would still be breakfast.

Lucky for me and who knows why, she dropped and turned and took off down the slope to my left with her two cubs in tow. Only thing I could figure is I had the sun at my back and it was low enough that it was right in her eyes and she could not get a fix on me.

I had several other close encounters with bears through the years in Alaska and never had to fire another round or shoot a bar in self defense. I did however change one thing, I began carrying a semi auto 30/06 with 220 gr after that.

Bears will avoid contact with humans if given the slightest chance to do so. Most of the bears shot in self defense are by inexperienced hunters/fishrmen. Every year fish & wildlife officers cite people who fired in self defense at a charging bear because all the entry holes were in the back half of the carcass.
 
In my dreams, I coolly take the bear down with a single well-placed shot from my handy anti-bear rifle. In real life, I'd most likely scream, run headlong into a tree, and get a free tour of the bear's digestive tract.

I suppose that trying to shoot it is probably the best thing you can do, if it is actively trying to put you in its mouth. If you can disengage from it without prompting an attack, then that's what I'd try. I've heard that "escalating" (i.e., trying to look bigger and/or more threatening), while it supposedly works on other predators sometimes,* is not something to try with bears.


* So I've read in certain places. Do not take this as fact, though. I'm a city boy.
 
Been there.

Bears are as differant from each other as people are. You can never predict what one will do.

As far as playing dead goes it's no guarante you will survive. Yes maybe she will just swat you a bit, determine you're no threat and leave you with minor injuries. Or that first swat may kill you, a full grown Bear can swat pretty damn hard.

I can guess what you're thinking. Do I shoot her and orphan her cubs to probably die on their own? Or "play dead" and hope to live through it?

On my third solo trip into the Brooks Range in NE Alaska I climed out of my tent one morning to find a Sow Grizzly (a stunning honey blonde ) staring at me with 2 cubs behind her. I could type pages on how much can go through your mind in the time it takes a Bear to charge 50yds, she was about 200yds away. Shoot, Spray, Shoot, Spray??????

God had other plans. Turns out she was fixed on the ground squirrels in front of her. She chased them to a colony about 125 yds from me and spent the next 30 minutes putting on a real dig-em out show. Got some great pics of her butt.

Bottom line? At least for me it's Shoot. If given the option I will spray. But a sudden charge at close range shoot. Ya nobody wants to orphan cubs, but God can make more Bears easier than make a new Dad for your kids
 
I find a scope on 2 power is faster than irons could EVER be on target. Give me a low power scope or aimpoint (there's a sale on 'em at Midway) ANY day over iron sights. Irons suck in low light, too.

I would only shoot after I fired a warning, assuming an auto or a revolver. Most times a black bear will spook away if you just holler at 'em, show aggression. A shot in the ground in front of 'em will normally send 'em packin'. With a bolt gun, if he charged, he's dead. I ain't takin' the chance.

Most black bear incidents happen at night. They smell food in your tent, often times, but they're scrounging for food and don't know there's danger in that cloth thing. You startle 'em up close, they fight. I don't know if there are too many charges in daylight. Not something I worry about a lot, anyway, but then, I don't hunt in bear country too often. Haven't had the chance to get to New Mexico to hunt in about a decade.
 
If you've got a protective brown bear charging you, you had better shoot quick and hope for a good shot placement. Forget about the warning shot unless you're willing to gamble that your gun won't malfunction (jam) when you go to chamber another round.
 
No titan, there aren't many (if any) brown bears up here. I was just wondering how you would approach a brown bear attack. The black bears up here are pretty mild and won't do much usually.
 
Brownie or black

Black Bear- Shoot

Brownie (depends on distance) I would be less inclined to shoot. A round from a 30-06 may do the trick, but if it was a bluff charg, as brownies are known to do, you may convince her to charge for real.
 
It depends on the circumstances. Where you are also makes a difference. A salmon stream with lots of bears and fishermen trying to avoid each other is very different from the tundra. Fishing bears only want you out of their territory, with some rare exceptions they have zero interest in wasting calories chasing you down and killing you. Plus they all seem to have some kind of mood shift during the runs that makes them less prone to attack people or each other. The ones I've run into fishing have ambled off in one direction and I've gone the other. But if it's a sow griz with cubs in open ground you'd better shoot!

It happened to these guys, looks like not many options available:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LZnsL7-UdGc
Click to expand...

That's a good example of where you must shoot. They were seconds away from having her on top of them. The hilarious thing is how many of the people commenting think the sow was the boar's "wife bear" or something absurd. An old boar like that will track down a female, EAT HER CUB and try to get her back into season so he can mate with her. Or sometimes just for the heck of it. They're really mean. He was probably poking around there to find her, and she likely had her dander up already because she could smell the boar and was prepared to fight him. The humans just got caught up in the drama. But as far as bear populations go, one of the best ways of increasing the population is to kill off the old boars. They don't breed as much and they're a natural check on the population because of the younger boars, sows and cubs they kill. Not to mention their impact on the food supply.
 
this would be my strategy :evil:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dopLg4SqzpA

really though, if a black bear around here charged at me i'd kill it, black bear will usually take off if you yell at them, but it seems that usually when they charge they mean it.

I'd do what those guys did in the Cabelas video with a brown bear in open country, I'd want to make sure if at all possible, that it was really charging before I shot it, I'd make some noise and stuff first if i had the time,the bear making direct eye contact is a good sign to shoot imho, and i'd definitely be carrying something bigger than a .308 or 30-06 ,regardless of what I was hunting, so it could be used as a defensive gun, in brown bear country, at least a .338 magnum with some stout bullets if i needed a scoped rifle, or a guide gun in 45-70 with iron sights. If I was in thick woods and stumbled upon a brown bear at close range and it acted aggressively I'd shoot first and ask later.
 
Personally, I would run screaming in circles while uncontrollably ejecting feces. Hopefully, the bear would find me disgusting enough to just find a better meal. A circle of feces is a powerful weapon, friends.

In all seriousness, my first response, if I had time, would be to scream and be as loud and as big as possible. With no time, I guess I would quickly discover how good my point shooting skills are. What I would not do, regardless of how scared I was, is run. Nothing sets off the predatory instinct like prey running away.
 
You can always put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye!

What I'd do is wake up Charlie. Who is Charley? He is my hunting/camping buddy. Why wake him up? So he can see what is eating us for dinner!
 
i always open carry a 44mag desert eagle with me along with my deer rifle, so you could bet that i would be attempting to put 9 240 grain hollow points in her.
 
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