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Bear Charges
Posted by art on Mar 30 2006
I've been charged three times by brown bears in SE, the first time I was walking up a salmon stream in August or September on Admiralty Island (Bear Creek to be exact). I had my dog with me. I saw a bear upstream with a salmon in its mouth. The dog ran towards bear and out of sight around a corner. My brother and I had time to get in a kneeling position with our .30-06's locked and loaded. Next thing I knew here comes my dog full speed downstream with a BIG old brownie hot on his tail. I was waiting for my brother to fire and he was waiting for me to fire. Bear got to about 20 yards, saw us, stood on his hind legs for a second to get our scent then did a ninety degree turn and went over the bank of the river and we never saw him again.
The second time I got charged was also on Admiralty Island in late September/early October on the Glass Peninsula in an Alder Chute coming down Tie Mountain. I was with two or three other guys, I was in the front coming down the mountain dragging a dead deer. I heard a noise and looked in front of us and saw brush moving quickly toward us. I yelled bear, dropped the deer and took up a firing position just as I could make out a bear in the brush about 10-15 yards down hill. One more step and the bear would have been in the open and I would have fired. But once again bear recognized me as a human with other humans around me and the bear turned around and hightailed it out of there.
The third time I got charged was about three, maybe four years also on Admiralty Island in November. I was hiking in from the beach to get to a Muskeg. I had just entered the woods, and I heard a big racket and saw what I thought were two huge porcupines climbing a spruce tree. It was barely light out and the closer I looked I realized the porcupines were really two brown bear cubs. My first thought was "Neat, I didn't know Brown bears could climb that good", My second thought was "Oh Shit, where's Mama?". Sure enough I looked closer and saw Mama with her ears back, lips back and bunching for a charge. I was only about twenty yards from the beach and I knew there was a cliff between me and the beach about twenty/thirty feet high. I said to hell with it and ran as fast as I could to that cliff and did a Carl Lewis jump off the cliff onto the sand. I could hear the bear breathing and running but didn't turn to look, for all I know she was headed the other way. I hiked down the beach and re-entered the woods and tried to get to the Muskeg. Wouldn't you know it I had entered the woods perpendicular to the way the bear had retreated and cut her off. I had know idea she was around but she let out a growl/roar that my wife heard across a bay a half mile away. I never saw the bear that time but she was close. I turned right around and headed back to the beach. I finally got to the muskeg around 11am that day and blew my deer call. I heard a noise behind me and I was sure it was that damn bear. It wasn't, it was a nice buck that I shot between the eyes and I never cleaned a deer so quickly as that one.
My experiences have shown me that most charges are bluffs. My experience has also shown me that I could probably get off one good shot. But my bear hunting experiences have also shown me that I rarely have seen a bear go down with one shot and those are under ideal conditions. My experience has also shown me that black bears are more likely to run when they see a human but when they don't run they are more unpredictable than brown bears. I have had two run ins with blackies that were scarier than my encounters with brownies, although one of those black bears was a wounded one that I was recovering.
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