Brown Bear Charge on Montague Island

In Sepember of 2006 John and Shanna were hiking up Montague Island to the high country when a Brown Bear sow charged. This video was taken immediately following the charge and shows the aftermath of the mauling that never happened.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Brown
• Bear
• Montague
• Island
• charge
• attack
• mauling

[cleidllc]

Thanks for documenting this for educational purposes. Your lines of defense were well thought out ahead of time. You did only what you were forced to when the bear spray did not give the desired outcome. And getting the hide and skull to F&G as required is commendable. Carey (Kingwood)

[AKJournal]

Thanks for the comments, we never felt there was a different choice, except to stay at home and watch the nature shows on TV.

The F&G biologist who interviewed us with a state trooper was NOT a fan of bear spray. We still carry bear spray to this day and my wife feels that if she hadn't had a bottle of spray, she might have tried to run away, which is supposed to be the last thing you do when being charged by an angry bear.

[Itruepk]

wow i feel bad for the cubs

[AKJournal]

we did too.

[aliensunderground]

i think if you would have shot off a couple of rounds that wouild have scared the bear off.i have had it happen to me and a couple of shots stopped the charge.

[jan1761]

you did the right thing. sorry for the bear cub but the universe will take care of them

[7mm08man]

As I'm sure you found out. Once you spray that stuff you need to be real careful. I see that you put rubber gloves on. If you get any of that spray on your hands and rub your eyes boy does it burn! I pepper sprayed a black bear in our carport this summer and some of the overspray got on the handlebars of my wifes bike. Had to scrub hard with soapy water to get it all off. Glad I noticed it before she did.

[sunluvinbum]

@CyprusHot Oh, and a quick FYI... Ester Schwimmer, 5 month old baby girl. August 19 2002. Black bear attack Fallsburg, New York. A bear knocked Schwimmer from her stroller, which was near the porch of her family's vacation home. Then, the bear carried the infant in its mouth to the woods. Schwimmer died of neck and head injuries

How old is the study by Prof Rogers?

[sunluvinbum]

I am fully aware of the problems the Polar bears are facing. But that has really nothing to do with people just going out and shooting them. It has to do with warming climates, and if you go down that road, then all big corporations should shut their doors. Stop any manufacturing, close the plants, fire all the workers and start spending all their money on reversing the global impact that modern industry has made on the earth.

[sunluvinbum]

Just because this couple had a bad encounter with a bear dose not mean that you should chastise them. Honestly, here in Alaska, we don't go looking to kill bears. There is a very small population up here that goes "trophy" hunting. And even then, a person is only able to shoot one bear every 4 years in places. In others, no bears are to be taken at all. And yet even others you can not even carry a weapon.

[sunluvinbum]

Also, and this is not being said to start an argument but just to state a fact. The "wilderness" dose not belong to just the animals. As humans, we too started off in the wild. It is just as much ours as it is the animals. We have just gone beyond sleeping in caves and moved on to building houses. We started using the things around us to make life easier, and by doing so, we never drew a line that we should not cross and have doomed the earth.

[sunluvinbum]

As a race, we fail. We have done nothing but rape pillage and pretty much use and abuse the earth. And about 75% of it has all been for profit. But such is the way of the human race. We do something until we realize that it is not good then we take 5 steps back and try to fix what we messed up and by doing so mess it up even more. What it all really comes down to is that pretty much every animal species on the planet is shrinking in number in one way or another.

[sunluvinbum]

Respond to this video... We can either toss accusations and ill gotten words at people for their actions, be it shooting a bear that they thought was going to kill them, or dumping waste oil into the ocean. Or we can step back and figure out how to really solve the bigger issues. One thing is for certain. No world issues will ever get solved at the rate we are going. We are not a "human race" as a whole. We are like little cave man clans fighting over scraps of a dead animal.

[sunluvinbum]

@CyprusHot Until the human race learns how to get along as a whole there will be no change in anything. No amount of talking will make that change until people learn how to look outside of their 4 little walls that they have built up around them. Until then we can but hope that people will do what is best for the future generations. We need to strive to save what we can. And not dwell on what is non-saveable. 

[CyprusHot]

@sunluvinbum Its a moot point, for the simple reason that the risk of bears killing a human being is insignificant to the risk of them becoming hunted or lost due to global warming. Research into how many great white spirit bears there are. Research into how polar bears are having to swim for 5-6 days NON-STOP because there is less ice. Research into how black bears are hunted. Europe has killed them all, there are non left apart from some in zoos. It will be a shame in N.A goes the same way.

[sunluvinbum]

@sunluvinbum Oh, and seeing that the link will not post, just go to wikipedia and look up List of fatal bear attacks in North America and it will give you a list starting in 1870 of bear attacks that were reported. Both lethal and non-lethal.

[sunluvinbum]

@CyprusHot To be honest, I did not give a position in the matter. I simply stated that the figures that Prof Rogers put out were incorrect.

[CyprusHot]

@sunluvinbum Your position is illogical. Bear populations are decreasing. Deal with that fact.

[sunluvinbum]

@sunluvinbum Oh, and this was taken straight out of the Denver Post.

[sunluvinbum]

August 1993: Logger Colin McClelland, 24, is mauled and killed by a bear in his trailer near Cotopaxi in Fremont County. McClelland's body was discovered Aug. 13. Two days later, wildlife officers trapped and killed a bear outside the trailer. Human remains were found in its digestive system.

[sunluvinbum]

This is for those who think staying out of "nature" will keep bears from attacking....

Colin McClelland, 24, male

August 10, 1993

Species Black

Fremont County, Colorado

A bear tore open the door to McClelland's trailer and attacked him at Waugh Mountain, Colorado. The bear was later killed by game wardens.

[sunluvinbum]

@AKJournal I have lived in Alaska all 37 years of my life, with a good portion of it being on Kodiak Island. I would need a second set of hands to count the times I have been charged, and out of all those times, I have only had to put a bear down once. It was quite similar to what you experienced. I did pop off a few warning shots, but when she did not stop I had to put 3 rounds from my 30-06 into her and she dropped 4 feet from my daughter.

[sunluvinbum]

I was blessed tho, in the aspect that my father taught me to always have my bear tags up to date. Not that I ever went hunting, but for the fact that if I ever had to take a bear in such a manor that I could retain the meat hide and skull for myself. In the one incident that I did have to drop a bear, I did keep all the meat for consumption. Bear stew is mighty good. And I was also blessed that the cubs looked to be about 2 years old and ready to be on their own.

[sunluvinbum]

@CyprusHot You may want to recheck those numbers. I would say take a look at this web site. It has the documented attacks, both fatal and non-fatal. The site lists all reported attacks, out in the bush and in rural areas. Even one that was a fatal attack at a Zoo by a Polar Bear.

[sunluvinbum]

@lewandlo A.D.F.G here in Alaska will not fine you for a kill of this nature. It was done to protect ones life. By state law, he is required to bring both the hide and the skull to the local ADF&G office so they can measure the hide and also do post-mortem tests on the skull to get approximate age.

[CourtyardPigeon]

She had cubs, she wasn't going to stop.

[lewandlo]

I don`t understand why you would skin it out and take the fur to the fish and game. I am thinking that is procedure. Over here in Canada we would be charged for sure . You would just hide it in the bush or bury it and say nothing. The just charge you no matter what the reason why you shot it. Hey thanks for sharing your experience. Good luck on this years season.

[mavrick3904]

Did you get find

[CyprusHot]

@MagnusonX 1. Watch the programme, it is on the internet before you form your judgement. 2. In the past 50 years, only 1 person has died from a bear attack. 3. In the past 100 years, humans have killed each other in excess of 200 million (famine and wars). 3. Human beings are unpredictable. That is why more are killed, raped, injured and suffer abuse than ANY animal in this world. 4. THINK, bears DEFEND themselves. I side with humanity, ones that realise we should respect bears. I am not a hippy