Ep. 2: The Bear Attack on Afognak and Being Safer in Bear Country
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Now picture this, you and your buddies are in the middle of Alaska on a hunt. You're thick into bear country. You got an animal down the day prior and were able to pack half of it out. You hung some of the meat in a tree nearby and you went back to camp. Now you're coming back for the last load. What do you do? How do you proceed? What's the way to make sure that you're safe? Because you are approaching a meat site in the thick of bear country.

Now, I've had my fair share of showdowns with both black bears and brown bears. Honestly, a few too many stories to recount all in one sitting. But bears are a concern for many hunters, and honestly, rightfully so. It's because they can kill you, maim you, leave your gear in shambles. Now, acting appropriately in bear country can honestly save your life.

What I want to cover is the motives for attacks and understanding bear behavior. Why would a bear attack you in the first place? I also want to go over a few of the best practices for preventing an encounter in bear country. And then I also want to finally get into possible defense options, just in case you do one day find yourself in a really shitty situation.

Now, I really want to share a story with you first about a bear encounter that actually went wrong. Because I think this is a great example of things to learn. Now, luckily, everybody was okay in this particular instance. But it was a good learning experience if you ever have to have a bear learning experience in the way that this one panned out. One thing, my major takeaway from this entire event was we did 90% right.

And we did 10% wrong. And that 10% wrong is what literally could have bit us in the ass on this trip. So to take you back, now many of you maybe have heard this story before, but I just have to go through it because we're going to look at it through the lens of what to learn and what you should do in bear country. We were in a Fognac Island. I was with Steve Rinella and we were filming one of the episodes for the latest Meat Eaters on Netflix.

Now, Fognac Island is off of the coast of Alaska. It's off of Kodiak, and it just has some of the largest bears, brown bears, in the world. Now, you've got to also remember the time of year is later in the fall. The salmon are still running, but it's not like it was during the summer. There are not a really good berry crop this time of year, and there are a lot of large bears.

Now, I have hunted this area before. And the first time I hunted with my brother, we were as bear aware as you could get. We were there by ourselves, just the two of us. And we saw large bears daily. And it generally was that these bears were around the herd of elk that we were actually hunting.

Now, when you're seeing the bears all the time, you're really thinking bear safety, bear wear. Don't keep any food near camp. We actually had a bear fence around our tent because we were camped pretty close to the water in what would be almost a natural corridor for movement of the animals because the hill came down behind our camp that time. We didn't have a lot. They wouldn't have a lot of room to get around. So, you know, we took every precaution that we really could that trip.

we did everything right 100 right because we did not have a bad encounter now on the follow-up trip at the point where we had shot an elk we had seen zero brown bears i told everybody how many bears we were seeing and how bad the bears were here and heard so many stories from friends of mine yet when you don't see anything it's on the back of your mind now we had bad weather and couldn't see much anyways

But bears were not really a concern for us at this point because we'd gone so long without seeing them. So as I tell this story, just keep thinking of if I was doing everything by the book and little things that are chipping away to create that 10% that could really go wrong.

Now, Steve had shot a bull elk and these elk are huge. I mean, you are not going to pack one of these out in one trip. And we're a long ways from camp. We actually had a mountain he had to climb up over the top from camp and then drop down into the valley. Took about half a day to get there. So he shot a bull just before dark in the evening. So we quarter it out.

The first thing we got to do, get the meat away from the carcass. We put it up in a tree uphill where we might have a view from other areas when we come back. We get the meat hung in a tree up high enough where a bear couldn't reach it. We then load up our packs with some meat and hike out. We hike out all day or all night, essentially, get back the next morning.

And by this point, we're fairly tired. So we actually gave it a day in between because the meat was fine. It's either hanging there or hanging in camp. And then we go back the following morning. It takes us half a day to get there. We get to where the meat was.

Before we go up there, we glass into the area. We don't see any bears. We go in with our bear spray. I had my pistol drawn. We make noise on our approach. We search around the tree. And there didn't really look like any bear sign. However, there was like this scat, like bear crap that somebody had stepped in. But we thought, I actually thought maybe that was something that someone stepped in before I got there.

So at this point, everything, the coast is clear. We looked in there pretty good. We didn't see anything, but it is thick around that area. And then we decide, well, it's been a half a day hike. Everybody's hungry before we load up our packs and get out of here. Why don't we just make a quick lunch? So we're sitting in a semi-circle making lunch.

There's actually six of us and we are sitting in kind of like the semi-circle. Everybody's getting ready to have lunch. We decided to make some coffee. At this point for bear protection, I was bow hunting. So I was carrying, I thought, well, I'd like to have a firearm just in case I needed it. So I had a 44 mag pistol on my belt of my pack, as well as bear spray.

On the other side. Now, when I took my pack off, what I had been doing was switching my pistol to my holster on my belt and then leaving the bear spray on the pack. Just that way. I always had at least some form of bear deterrent on me at all times. And I think I may have even had a way to switch the bear spray quick if I wanted as well.

So we're everybody we're deciding we're gonna have some coffee. So I decided well, I'm gonna round up water So put into the kitty so it's not just one guy's water getting boiled for coffee for everyone So I go around the circle collect water for the pot when I go back to my pack where my pistol was sitting I had it laid out. So when I was sitting on my pack, it was just right there. Someone was sitting there So I just thought okay. Well, I'll just sit down on the bank right here across from it now

At this point, we're BSing as things go. We're, you know, joking around, having some sandwiches. One of the guys in the back heard something. He heard a bear, a brown bear. When I looked up, that bear was already charging. I had a pretty good view of him coming in and it just felt like his eyes were locked. I could see the hair shaking and he was running fast. Now, Steve was across from me where my pack was.

My thought was I need to get my pistol and it wasn't even probably two arms length in front of me. But by the time I got to my pack, it was like the bear was already on me. I did what I consider a football juke move left, right, had no clue which way to run, turned left. My back was now to it. I thought, oh man, he's going to grab me. And I turn around to look and he was wheeled around and going the other way. Now in my mind, of course, I thought my football juke confused the shit out of this bear and

and made him run. Little did I know, just as I had done that, Giannis, who was sitting just to my right, had grabbed his trekking pole and hit the bear in the face. Now, when I turned around, I now saw somebody with the bear, so I thought I had no clue who he grabbed, but somebody and the bear were going down the mountain. I grabbed the pistol at this point, yelled, like, who's missing? Count off. And everyone starts, like, one, one, one. No, who's not here? Which it ended up being Giannis,

old dirt myth riding on somehow back to back with this bear. Now the bear ran off into the brush. We all circled up around the tree. The bear kept circling out of range of where we could see, and we could hear him huffing as he moved around. I think he charged in a couple more times, but not to not fully in. You could just hear sticks breaking in other things. Then it got quiet for a

We then went up the tree, grabbed the meat, made a formation to where we could get into the open and then load up our packs and move on. I think when we talk about bear attacks, we first have to understand bear behavior. You have to know why would a bear attack you in the first place? Well, it can be broken down into a couple different categories. I think the first category would be a defensive attack. Now that's the bear defending itself or something that it cares about.

It especially comes into play when it's defending its young, as far as a sow protecting her cubs, or food. Now, if you get between a bear and its food, that's a bad place to be.

Another type of defensive attack is a surprise. When you surprise a bear, just like surprising a mule deer. If you come over the ridge and you spook a deer out, well, that deer is probably going to run. But a bear has fight or flight instincts. So if you surprise it in the wrong scenario, it has the option to run or charge and it may charge. Now, the other kind of attack would be a predatory one.

This one is bad news for you. A predatory attack can be seen as where the bear is actually hunting or moving in a way that is aggressive as a predator. So it could be something like,

If you're attacked while in your tent, that would be a predatory attack. If a bear is following you and then attacks, that's a predatory attack. It's not surprised. It's not protecting its young. It's not you messing with something that it's eating. It's seeing you as food. And when that happens, that's a very dangerous situation. I honestly believe that the attack that happened to us in a Fog Knack was a predatory attack in nature. The way that the attack happened, because when a predatory attack happens...

It's more that animal's coming in to kill something and it's a full charge. I have surprised bears. I have been bluff charged by both brown bears and grizzly bears. And a lot of those are more defensive in nature, but a lot of those stop before becoming a full charge.

especially with, I've had that happen with a bear and cubs or surprising. I actually have surprised a couple of bears on kills and they get aggressive. They wolf, they run in, but they see you, you see them. And a lot of times that, that charge stops. Now, when it comes to a predatory charge or attack, that's a little bit different. And those are probably the kind that you have to defend yourself from, or just surprising a bear in a way that it believes I have to fight, not run away.

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Go to fishingbooker.com today. That's fishingbooker.com. Now that we understand a little bit about the behavior of bears, we have to understand what we can do to avoid inciting that behavior. And I'm just going to call that, say, best practices in bear country. There's certain things you can do.

Now, while it won't work 100% of the time, it will work most of the time because you are preventing yourself from getting into a situation where that bear is going to have to incite that fight mode. A lot of it revolves around, let's talk about the first thing, food. Now, when you're in bear country, bears are so food centric. They're about to go into hibernation, especially in the fall. They're just trying to fatten up and they are hungry.

Now that doesn't mean that they're hungry and looking to hunt you. That just means that you do not want to put yourself in proximity of a hungry bear. That means you don't want to provide food for that bear. So in your camp, you need to make your camp what I call a clean camp. What I do is I generally hang. Now this is if you can hang something. I like to hang it 10 feet off the ground and

and then at least four feet away from a tree because if you're in black bear country, bears can climb trees and then get out to your food. You don't want to feed any bear and you don't want a bear to think that this place, what was your food is now the bear's food because as soon as a bear eats food, it's his food and he will then defend that food. So by providing food for a bear, you actually put yourself in a really bad situation. Now think about when you're hunting, you're going to have game down.

Game meat once claimed by a bear becomes that bears food and he can be very defensive over that food So you have to do things to prevent a bear from getting the meat that you've just taken the first thing that I do when I get something down is I will quarter it out and move the meat away from the carcass and

That way I give the bear the carcass, but I move the meat away and hang it in a tree or place where he can't get it. That just lessens the possibility of that bear trying to claim something that I'm going back to. Now, another thing is avoiding surprise. When you know that there is somewhere a bear might be likely to be, say the tree that you've hung meat or your meat or food that you have at camp.

You don't want to surprise a bear in that area. So you want to make noise. You want to let the bear know that a human is coming and give it time to take the option of a flight response as opposed to a fight response. When you surprise a bear, you're going to have a fight response more than you would have a flight response. When you're hunting, obviously you're going to be quiet. You don't want to be wearing bear bells and talking. So sometimes that's hard. You might just happen. And that's where probably most hunters get attacked is by surprising a bear and

in through the course of hunting that may end up triggering a defensive response. But in times that you do not need to be quiet, like if I'm packing something out, I've got meat on my back, I'm encumbered, things are awkward, I've got heavy weight, I'm going to actually talk to whoever I'm with, I'll make noise. If I'm by myself, I'm making noise, I'm not walking out because I want the bear to know that someone's coming and give it time option to run away.

And then don't belabor, don't mess around and hang around in areas where bears might be, where you could or have a higher percentage of encountering that bear. We did everything right up until the point that we hung around that tree. Now, things could have been worse had we been messing with the meat and that bear attacked. It just happened to work out in our instance. But I would say that the thing we did wrong was we dropped our guard.

The number one thing you don't want to do in bear country is drop your guard. Always be on the ready because the time that you need to defend yourself is the time you're least prepared for it. So if you're always prepared, you'll always have a slightly better chance of making it out in one piece. Now let's say that the worst possible thing happens. A bear does attack. It's charging.

There's a few things. I mean, I could say you hear these things. Well, if it's a black bear, then you fight it off. If it's a brown bear, you play dead. If it's a defensive attack, you don't run. If it's a predatory attack, you fight back. I think a lot of it is going to boil down to the scenario and the situation. My thought is make noise, let that bear know you're a human and you are going to defend yourself.

I think that one of the best ways to survive a bear attack is by having some form of defense. Because you really do feel completely helpless when an animal with claws and teeth and muscles that is super fast is bearing down on you and you have nothing in your hand. It's the worst feeling you can ever feel. I know from experience that I never want to have that happen again and feel unprepared.

Now, whether your defense system works or not, you're going to feel a hell of a lot better if you have it with you. I think that there's two main defenses for bears. We'll go spray and firearms. There are limits to both, and there really isn't a perfect situation or scenario. I think both sides of the fence will argue for which one is better,

But I honestly don't know the answer to which one is better because it might be situational in a lot of cases. But I'm going to just go over the limits of both. So the bear spray is really good because you don't have to be as precise with it. Bear spray is essentially a large canister of pepper spray that can shoot maybe 20, 30 feet. It's high pressure.

You can spray it on the grass. Even if you miss or you can spray a barrier, the bear will run into that fog of pepper spray or get it coming in. You also don't have to be as precise like you would with a pistol. A pistol, you have to make a kill shot on a running animal that can be very difficult. And a pistol can be problematic if there's other people around. When shit goes down...

You got to make sure you don't shoot the guy next to you as he's running away from the bear the opposite direction. That's a lot to take in in a short amount of time. Now, the drawback of the bear spray is if the wind is the wrong direction or that bear gets sprayed and continues to attack, you have very little way to recover from that.

When we did get attacked, the bear actually was running with a very stiff wind. I don't think that bear spray actually would have worked in our scenario, which is a scary thought. But in a lot of scenarios, it would have worked. Now, a pistol, on the other hand, you have to be a pretty damn good shot. But if the bear is on top of you or a friend's being attacked, I feel like that's a good way to deter the threat by eliminating the threat.

When you talk about pistols, I generally carry a light Smith & Wesson 44 mag, but I have also... A lot of my friends and other people have moved to a semi-automatic. I actually just picked up a SIG 10mm, which it has more rounds, less recoil, and is just more accurate. But if you are going to carry a pistol...

I truly believe that you need to practice with it a lot. I carry a pistol. If I'm bow hunting, I actually carry a pistol and a bear spray, but I practice with my pistol a lot. Now, if I'm rifle hunting, I often just carry the rifle and bear spray. So I like to have both options. It just depends on where you are, the type of bears you might encounter. If you're an area that you probably won't encounter a bear, you might be better with just the bear spray and the rifle. But whatever you have,

The number one thing, whether it's bear spray, whether it's a pistol, whether a rifle is, could be very hard to get off your shoulder or, um, even a shotgun is a pretty good. If you aren't, if you're just hiking in bear country, a shotgun is a great defense loaded with slugs or yeah, I would say just slugs. Some people put a warning shot in there. I don't know if I would do that. If you're going to go lethal force, use lethal force. That's my, that's my theory. If it comes down to that.

But no matter which method you choose, I've learned that the best thing is it needs to be on you, be ready, and you need to have it at hand at all times. Because if you actually are attacked...

The time between getting to your defense and that bear being on you is a matter of seconds. You can never anticipate how fast it actually happens. And so you have to constantly be thinking about that. Practice drawing whatever you're using while you're out there. And just know that in the times you're least expecting it is probably the times that it'll happen. So be ready. My final takeaway with bear country is just give them the respect that they deserve.

Maybe you haven't had an encounter with them. Maybe you never will. But as long as you don't, that's a good thing. So when you're out there, just be cognizant of the threat. Constantly try to prevent anything from happening. And if something does happen, have whatever defense you're going to use at hand. Now, I think that that was a good overview of entering into bear country. And those are just a lot of the things that I think about when I'm out there.

Now, that's not everything that there is to know about hunting amongst bears. However, it's a good start. If you want a little bit more information or are going to be hunting in bear country a lot, you really just have to continually think about ways to prevent encounters and then also have in the back of your mind, what do I do if it comes down the pipe? There's a lot of great resources on TheMeatEater.com.

As always, love to hear your feedback. You can email me at remy at themeateater.com. Let me know any comments or what you like, what you don't like, maybe some things you'd like to learn in the future. Also, would love it if you give us a good five-star review wherever you're listening and write in a comment, hopefully a positive comment. If you got bad comments, just email them to me. I'll junk mail them. No, just kidding.

But honestly, I really appreciate you guys listening. Would love to hear your feedback. And yeah, that's the sign off. I got to think of a cool sign off. One of these days I'll have one. Not today though. Till next week. Catch you later. Don't get eaten.

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