Last Blogger

This article over at the CBC reminded me of a former co-op student of mine from South America who had never lived anywhere with bears. The topic came up one day and he asked what to do if a bear were to attack you in the wild. A co-worker and I shrugged our shoulder and explained how bears are pretty scared of humans and generally don’t attack unless you’ve done something to make it angry or there’s a mother bear protecting her cub. Besides, we only have tiny brown bears here on the East coast, nothing like a Grizzly of Kodiak. Still though, his curiosity persisted.

We explained that you can’t outrun a bear because they’re pretty fast. What about climbing a tree? Nope, they’re better climbers than they are runners. Jumping in a river/lake? Actually most of them swim better than they climb. So his final question was, “couldn’t you just shoot it?” My co-worker and I looked at each other again with skepticism. We concluded that if you were to take a shot at a bear, you had better not miss (e.g. hit the bear anywhere but between the eyes), because then instead of having a bear attacking you, you’d have a very angry, wounded bear attacking you.

Such was the unfortunate case for John Shorter as detailed over at the CBC. He shot the bear in the chest and it doesn’t sound like it slowed the bear down one bit. Now some of you may think that the horrible injuries this man has suffered are a true tragedy, but I would remind people that most bear attacks, particularly with Grizzlies, have a far worse ending for the humans involved.