Grizzly vs Black Bear and Other Thoughts
It is interesting to me that people not familiar with grizzly and black bear always think that the grizzly is vastly different. This is not true. Unless you are experienced, grizzly and black bear are difficult to distinguish and equal in capability. The color of the fur means nothing, they can look the same and both bear types can reach 300 pounds so weight is not distinguishing. The grizzly has a scalloped face, small round ears (big difference, black bears have long pointed ears) and a distinguishing hump at its shoulders. The hump is due to the grizzly digging more and its muscles are more developed in that area. There are other differences but you can't see them at a distance, i.e. the claws of the grizzly are long (easily seen in the track) and for digging and the black bear's are short, i.e. when tracking a black bear you see no claw tracks usually but their footprint is much bigger than a grizzily. The scat is also different but only to the experienced tracker, this is because the diet of the grizzily (it digs for food, i.e. the claws) is different. In this case the hunter mis-identified the bear as a black but this has nothing to do with the counter attack, which a wounded black bear would also attempt if it was motivated. Everyone knows in Montana that hunts black bear, (like me), that black bear and grizzly are so difficult to distinguish, even with binos, that you pass on the shot if you are not 100% certain. Further, the shot that wounded the bear was a bad shot, period (I know the details of what happened as many hunters in Montana do). These bears will drop dead like a rock if shot with the appropriate rifle, (they are taken with bow and arrow here too). These animals (i.e. black bear and grizzly) are thin skinned and not cape buffalo by any means and black bear go down easier than many big tough bull elk in my experience. As Craig Boddington has said, "if bull elk had the disposition of cape buffalo they would be hunted with the same rifles used to hunt buffs." I have a lot of experience with hunting bears and close encounters with them, (by close encounters I am talking where I kicked a 300 pound black bear in the **** to drive it away from my dog, my boot had goo on it from where I kicked the bear, fish and game documented this. The fish and game officer laughed and said, "that bear won't come back and he will tell his friends to keep away too") I just posted on a different thread here on bear spray, which I have used many times and received free cans from UDAP. Note that in Montana you have to take a test to distinguish a grizzly from a black bear to get a certificate to hunt them. However, it is a lame test where if you score 80% you get the certificate for life. You can take the test yourself here:
http://fwp.mt.gov/education/hunter/bearID/default.html. However, just because you pass the test doesn't mean your "the great bear hunter" LOL. Note: I am not talking about the bears in Yellow Stone or Glacier, i.e. the land of the condition white. Around where I live, (just like wolves know what a human with a gun is), the bears run for their lives when they see a hunter.
:banghead:
