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3 Bear encounters

Lyndon

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3 bear stories.‏ In Prudhoe Bay, at a run down, somewhat abandon camp that we used as a staging area, I had the folllowing encounter's with a Bear.

All 3 are true stories and I have pictures as well as co workers that can back them up: >

I had 1 electrician a carpenter and several painters dressing out a "Cat Train" unit at Happy Horse. For the uninformed, Happy Horse is the derilict run down construction camp, and a "Cat Train" is basically a House Trailer on giant Skiis that are on truck assemblies somewhat like a trains wheels. The assemblies can pivot just like a trains wheels and are cross connected by steel cables. A chain of these would be pulled across the frozen tundra as a winter camp. So this safety guy from a neighboring business, AIC, came buy and informed us that there are some bears in the area, to be on the 'look-out'. It was summer, a blistering 59 degrees, that's a tropical day in Dead Horse, and it's pretty common for every Grizzley for 200 miles around to make Happy Horse one of his stops.

Some years back people left food in an open dumpster so that attracted the Bears. Their scent, "Bear Sign" has been bringing them back ever since. This is why most of my bear encounters were at Happy Horse, which we sarcastically refer to as "Scrappy Horse". It's a real junk pit. It was originally a 1000 man camp with a chow hall, generator power plant, water plant, pool hall, weight work out room, a tire shop..... all the usual trimmings of an Arctic Construction Camp.

I was in sneakers, probably didn't have my hard hat on and had stepped in between this old Connex and an old ACCO Trailer to releive myself when I saw a bear run buy the other end of the narrow alley created by the two 40 foot structures. As I had a crew working less than 200 feet away I RAN to Warn them. This was a big mistake! The Bear, a 5 year old, what we would consider a "Cub" but weighing in at 350Lbs,(bigger than a man) had turned and was running along side of the ACCO construction office trailer. We collided at the corner, my nose was right up in the fur of a 350 lb Grizzley! It spooked us both. He went scratching off to his left, and I went scratching off to my right. His claw tracks in the dirt and gravel lay down yard were far more impressive than my measly sneaker tracks! One of the painters and my electrician had witnessed the whole thing and were laughing uncontrollably.

Our parts deliver guy walked over and laughignly said:"Good thing it wasn't 'Goldie Locks' ". He Was RIGHT! It's a good thing it wasn't Goldie Locks which leads us to my 2nd major Bear encounter.>

Goldie Locks is this GIANT Grizzly Bear. He probably weighs in at 600 to 800 pounds and has the most beautiful Yellow Gold fur. He's and old timer and not timid like the younger bears. If I had run into Goldie Locks I probably wouldn't be writing this story. I would have become a "kipper snack" for him. Goldie Locks knows how to open doors! He actually can turn door nobs!

So one day, Dave the parts expeditor, and I are in the Tire Shop, a tin building with 3 huge 20 wide by 20 foot high over head doors of which we have one open. Suddenly Dave yells out "Holy !*%#! here comes Goldie Locks!" I jumped to the overhead door push button station and the door started to close. It was going to be tight but Goldie slowed down and we both gave a sigh of relief. OH NO! the Personel door! it had a crappy lock. We both jump to the door. Within seconds Goldie is trying the door. Pretty soon he gave up and headed away. Major Adrenilin rush!

And finally.. " Hearding Bears". You've heard of Hearding Cattle, and Hearding Sheep, but I have yet to meet anyone else that can honestly say that they have "Hearded Bears"!

The owner of "Scrappy Horse" one day sends his architect and an engineer to look Happy Horse Camp over to evaluate it for possible reconstruction. It had been closed up for a long time and we had been robbing parts out of it for other camps. the Roof leaked everywhere. The architect and entgineer opened up lots of doors including the overhead door at the loading dock for the kitchen and several of the stairwell doors for the 2 and 3 story sections of the camp. There was no power so you had to shuffel around the huge complex with a flashlight. Bears had a habit of curling up in the stairwells as a place to get out of the snow, so ther was "Bear Sign" in all 11 of the external stairwells. That afternoon after the architect and engineer had flown back out to Fairbanks, we realized that we better go over and seal the camp back up. It wouldn't do to find a Wolverine or Bear trapped in the camp when you went in to salvage a closet or light fixture. They might be pretty hungry and panicky after being trapped in the camp for awhile. Sure enough right as we pulled up to the camp here come 3 bears, all brothers and one was the very bear I had run into in the first story. We carefully manuvered the crew cab truck in between the 3 bears and the first stairwell, while I jumped out and ran into one of the stairwells and closed the door, while another guy yelled out that it was safe to get back in the truck. The Bears headed to the next stairwell, again we cut them off with the drivers side of the truck while one of us ran in and closed the next stairwell door. You didn't want to get too far from the truck. We worked our way the full 360 degrees around the camp this way Hearding the Bears with the truck and sealing up the camp. We also got a bunch of pictures doing it! A Real 'One of a Kind' alaska experience for me.
 

Lyndon

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This isn't me, but happened in the same place to one of my coworkers at a near by camp. wave.jpg
 

Lyndon

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This is "Toby" another local resident that also knew how to open doors. He's not friendly, and he Does bite!

toby.jpg
 

fogtender

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And finally.. " Hearding Bears". You've heard of Hearding Cattle, and Hearding Sheep, but I have yet to meet anyone else that can honestly say that they have "Hearded Bears"!

In about 1992, I was in Pt. Barrow teaching some classes and the locals had taken about two or three whales and landed them in town (harpooned them). They butched them on the beach and had whale blood, bones and the like all over. When I got there, there was about 30 Polar Bear being herded out of town by a ERA Helicopter. Then they had to do a "sterile" cleanup of the beacj to keep them from coming back into town. The year before, a young local man in the next town to the West, was killed and eaten while trying to get his pregant girlfriend to go back in the house while he distracted the bear...
 
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fogtender

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There were some polar bears in Prudhoe Bay last winter and this last summer (ok, they are always there and we had them to deal with all the time). The one that is muddy had just swam ashore to dine on a few caribou and then swam back out the 60 miles to the sea ice (Those guys swim back and forth daily, didn't get Gore's note on "Golbal Warming" I guess).

We had to take our boat that we used for transporting the crews out to the drilling island and cruise for bears swimming in. If we found one with the spotlight, the guards would scare it off the island with noise, cracker rounds and other items, sometimes we would just get between the bear and the island to divert it to the mainland. Didn't want to get too close because they will climb on the boat in a heartbeat.... and we weren't approved for wildlive recovery....

The rest of the bears are at a Whale kill site a few miles out on one of the islands, the bears show up in large numbers for chow after whaling season is over, and sometimes during... The one looking in the window is REEEAAAALLLLYYYY big.... and can make your pants feel damp.... I didn't have my camera with me, a friend took them....

I posted a video I took this last summer at Olicktoc Point (about 50 miles West of Prudhoe Bay), the Air Force Early warning site is in the background. A polar bear jumped in though a window there about ten feet up off the ground and mauled a guy before it was shot by another tech. there that was cleaning a pistol and heard the screaming....

When the bear stood up and looked in the window, there were three guys standing there looking at him. One had a newspaper and swatted at the bear, the bear ducked and jumped up though the window, it went after they guy with the newspaper... Sounds like he knew who he was after.... kinda like the kids harrassing the tiger in the zoo.... animals aren't dumb...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOFMkKMMV48
 

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fogtender

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The National Park Service open the Denali National Park up for a lottery at the end of each season, the winners get to drive out to Wonder Lake and back in your personal car/truck.... We won about two years ago and took "Roughwoods" with us and his wife and another friend. This is about fourty miles South of where we live, but it is still neat to see the critters away from the house.....

There was a Sow with cubs walking down the road, so I backed into a gravel pit road and shut off the engine to watch them go by.... My wife took the following video....Mark, Mark, Mark....:4_11_9:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgS_F3jvAVg
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
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Every other year or so, I run into a Black Bear in the woods. We usually, just go in the opposite direction. Actually, I think my yelling at my dogs scares them away most of the time.

Not that exciting though.
 

fogtender

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Every other year or so, I run into a Black Bear in the woods. We usually, just go in the opposite direction. Actually, I think my yelling at my dogs scares them away most of the time.

Not that exciting though.

Exciting is when you are in the outhouse and you hear a loud "Snorting" though the knothole in the walls with a really big Grizzly on the other side checking out where that bad smell is coming from. Good thing you are sitting where you are at, saves the "blowing out of the shorts"...:shitHitFan:
 

Lyndon

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There's a definate "give-away" that Fogtender in the Bear video's that his wife made...Mark!Mark!Mark!.. are genuine Alaskan's. It's the cracked windshield. In any of the New England states they would arrest you for a windshield like that! You'd probably get Towed too! In the Western "Lower 48" the law might let you go for awhile, until your first inspection or the first time you got stopped. My Brand new Ford Crew Cab(actually BP's new Ford Crew Cab), that is less than a year old, I have some 20 cracks and chips. 2 cracks run top to bottom, and 2 more the entire width. Just kinda "goes with the territory". We have had some Bears here in Alaska that were very adept at pulling windshields out of the trucks with their claws. At Pump Station 4, this one bear would remove all the windshields from an entire row of trucks in short order. The Glass guy at Pump 4 had row upon row of windshields he had replaced. This one Bear would roll her claws into the rubber seal and often pull the entire windshield out intact in one piece. But the intact windshields that survived being removed this way never survived her kneeling on them while she was sniffing around in the cab looking for treats!
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
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My first bear encounter was probably 9 years ago. I had just moved to Washington State and was hiking up an old loggin road in some DNR land behind my house. My lab/weimaraner cross was doing his usual racing around and non-stop hunting when all of sudden out popped a black bear (not too big - luckily) in front of me. My dog had been chasing him up the hill side. The bear was about 10 feet in front of me and my other dog Spaniel/Fox Hound was about 10 feet in front of it.

I picked up a big stick which of course was rotted and useless and then I got really mad and just yelled for my dog (I figured he could perhaps deal with it while I left). Needless to say I have a loud voice and the sound of me yelling for my dog spooked the bear and he jumped up and 8 foot bank and carried on up the hill. That's when my lab finally popped up with a "Has anyone seen a bear around here" look on his face.

After that I started carrying a gun with me. I had one big black bear that wasn't too afraid of me or my dogs start coming closer so I let him have a warning shot with the .44 Magnum and that did the trick. The other bears have all been far enough away that we have all just turned and gone our respective ways.

I'm glad their are no grizzlies around here but there are rumours of some cougars - I haven't seen one yet - knock on wood.
 

fogtender

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Out at my rec cabin the view looks South accross the lake (Photo below), it is just North of Mt. McKinley Park (Denali National Park now), lots of bears and critters.

There is a couple of doctors that have property by mine. This last fall they were out there during Moose hunting season and were glassing accross the lake, they saw a grizzly standing up in about waist deep grass to the bear. They figured it was about five to six feet due to the grass depth was up to about their knees, so they took off around the lake to get there.

Both were carrying smaller bore rifles, one was a .270 and the other a .308. After getting to where they had seen the bear standing, they found a moose kill that it had buried (they do that to let the meat rot and allows it to develop a taste). The bears stay pretty close to a kill until it is just about completely eaten, so they figured it was pretty close by.

It was about then that one of them realized the grass was almost chest high and not the knee high like on the other side of the lake... that meant the bear was almost twice the size they figured...

After they reviewed the caliber of guns they were carrying, they got back to their side of the Lake in about a quarter of the time it took them to get to the bear's side....:thumb:
 

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MNoutdoors RIP

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Out at my rec cabin the view looks South accross the lake (Photo below), it is just North of Mt. McKinley Park (Denali National Park now), lots of bears and critters.

There is a couple of doctors that have property by mine. This last fall they were out there during Moose hunting season and were glassing accross the lake, they saw a grizzly standing up in about waist deep grass to the bear. They figured it was about five to six feet due to the grass depth was up to about their knees, so they took off around the lake to get there.

Both were carrying smaller bore rifles, one was a .270 and the other a .308. After getting to where they had seen the bear standing, they found a moose kill that it had buried (they do that to let the meat rot and allows it to develop a taste). The bears stay pretty close to a kill until it is just about completely eaten, so they figured it was pretty close by.

It was about then that one of them realized the grass was almost chest high and not the knee high like on the other side of the lake... that meant the bear was almost twice the size they figured...

After they reviewed the caliber of guns they were carrying, they got back to their side of the Lake in about a quarter of the time it took them to get to the bear's side....:thumb:

That is one beautiful picture ......Going to spend about a month in Alaska next year starting end of July maybe we can hook-up will be visiting in Palmer, Willow,and up towards Eagle Driving up and back ( Maybe with cats):thumb:
 

fogtender

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That is one beautiful picture ......Going to spend about a month in Alaska next year starting end of July maybe we can hook-up will be visiting in Palmer, Willow,and up towards Eagle Driving up and back ( Maybe with cats):thumb:

About three of use that post on here live in or close to Nenana, feel free to let us know when you are in the area...
 

fogtender

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There's a definate "give-away" that Fogtender in the Bear video's...Mark!Mark!Mark!.. are genuine Alaskan's. It's the cracked windshield.

The downside is that it is an 2004 that I bought new and have 113,000 miles on it already... Kept fixing the "Dings" with glass repair kits, but finely got a rock the size of a golf ball that put me out of the "Home windshield Repair" game.... With all the gravel they put on the winter roads here, it is almost impossible to keep a good looking windshield unless you live in town...
 

Bobcat

Je Suis Charlie Hebdo
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When I was working in remote places in AK like Lyndon, I had similar run-ins with the furry folk. Straying too far from a building and having a bear walk between you and safety, leaving a door open and a bear thinking you just invited him in for lunch, exploring an old scrap heap and finding you're not alone, etc. The biggest awe-shite/dumb-arse moment I remember was while I was working a pole line at the Indian Mountain LRRS near Hughes, AK. I'd walked almost 2 miles from the site, climbing every couple of poles to test the cables. I was wearing my gaffs and carrying all of my climbing gear and a messenger chair, as well as test equipment including a megger and PSM-6. The one item I wasn't carrying was the Model 12 because I thought it was too much gear and I probably wouldn't need it.
:pat:

So there I was, having just come off a pole and walking to the next, loaded down and staring at the ground to make sure I didn't trip while wearing gaffs. I'm about half way to the next pole when I happen to look up and see a bear sitting behind a bush, munching berries I suppose, slightly above me and maybe fifty feet away. We stare at each other for maybe a split second, but it seemed longer. Trying to keep calm and not freak out the bear, I turn back to my path and start for the next pole. I hear him rustling in the brush behind me and realize he's descended down to the path I'm on and is following me. The fight or flight instinct starts to kick in and I assure you it was in pure flight mode!. But I keep it under control and get to the next pole without breaking into a run.

I don't drop any gear or waste any time, it's straight up the pole I go. I was probably about twenty feet up when I see him reach the bottom of the pole. I continue to the top. When I get there, I look down and see him looking up at me. Just as I'm starting to feel safe, something whispers in the back of my head 'say, bears climb, don't they?'. Fortunately I brought the messenger chair up with me and string it out onto the messenger cable. If he starts up the pole, I'm going for a ride to the next pole. Now that my escape route is set, I take another look to see what he's up to. The b#$%@$d is sitting at the bottom of the pole! He's just sitting there looking around, and every now and then he glances up at me. He's either decided to wait me out or is considering coming up after me. I'm not sure how long I was up there, may have been 15 minutes or an hour, but my knees were beginning to wobble. That's a bad thing when you're on a pole and relying on locked knees to keep your gaffs in.

Just as I'm about to get on the messenger chair to give my legs a break, he gets up and wanders off into the brush. But I stayed up there for probably another 30 minutes listening to make sure he was gone. After I came down, although I'd only finished about 2/3 of the line, I decided that I'm heading back for the shotgun first. I could have taken a direct route across open country to the site, but I stuck to the pole line instead so there would be a safe haven every couple hundred feet.
 
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Lyndon

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In yesterdays (Sunday's) Anchorage Daily News a guy shot a monster Brown, estimated to be between 1500 and 1800 Pounds, from the pictures they may not be too far off. I suspect that they are on ADN's Web Page.
 

fogtender

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Here is a hyperlink to said article:

A few years back, one of the military guys was out deer hunting on Hinchinbrook Island in the Prince William Sound (Where the EXXON Valdez went aground), Alaska.

He shot a bear about the size of the one pictured in your post, maybe even a bit bigger. It made all the Anchorage newspapers, then the internet and it was passed off as a "Monster" bear that had killed a bunch of people and a load of other crap that they added to the story to make it more scary I guess..... Fact is that if you just see a bear that big within a stone's throw, you don't need to add anything to make it a scary story....just a new/clean pair of shorts...:4_11_9:

Basically what happened, the guy saw the bear, and shot it with about a .338 or .375. It was a record bear and it was really "big".

When I was in the Coast Guard Stationed in Cordova, we would see those bears a lot on the beaches when we did the Bouy and shore aids working the islands. Now and then we would be dropped off to do deer hunting, and we ran into the bears, most of the time they ran off or ignored us, a few times it took a shot in the air to get them moving...

When I was 16, I worked River Barges that ran the Kuskokwim River from Bethel to McGrath. One of the stops was a place called Sterling Landing, it was an Air Force remote relay station that was located about 13 miles from the river, but the fuel tanks were on the river. While we were off loading fuel to the tanks, I had a few hours off duty and went for a walk down the road towards the base.

I had gone about a half mile, heard a noise and turned around, a small black bear cub was sitting in the road that had been following behind me. At first I thought it looked cute, and about a milla second later it I figured "Mom" was really close behind it.... I was wrong, she was behind me. Now I had a cub bawling in front of me and a "PO'd" mom behind me. The only place to go was into the woods which is lined with about five foot high "Devils Club" which is a plant that has leaves about a foot accross and is covered from the ground up in nettles (thorns) about a half inch long...not a pretty sight! They pretty much covered most of the area for hundreds of yards in either direction.

Never felt a thing until I got back to the boat, even the bear didn't follow me though that stuff. Spent the next few hours pulling those needles out of my legs, arms and stomach, (the rest came out when they swelled up the skin a few days later) threw the pants and shirt away, too many "Nettles" in them to deal with...

During the EXXON Valdez oil spill, I worked for EXXON as a cleanup consultant (www.fogtender.com), I was working the Katmai National Park region. Spent most of the summer around where Timmothy Treadwell (The Grizzly Bear Man) got himself and his girlfriend eaten. We had really big bears daily come down to the beaches and had the crews go out in small boats to let the bears pass by the cleaning areas. The crews picking up the dead birds were allowed to carry a shotgun (National Park rules don't allow you to pack weapons, but they got special approval), and had to shoot a bear that charged them after following them for three days and being sprayed with the pepper spray a number of times.

Treadwell was a classic case of "stupid is as stupid does", by the way, he couldn't have been called the "Grizzly Bear Man", because there isn't any Grizzly's there, they were all Brown Bears. When they are within 60 miles of the Coast, they are Brown Bears, once they go inland past 60 miles, they become Grizzlies..... At best he could have been called the "Brown Bear Man", but that sounded too stupid I guess, which would have fit him better anyway....:thumb:
 
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XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
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I saw that documentary on that Timothy Treadwell guy. It was kind of funny waiting for the inevitable end but then again I'm a big believer in PONS.
 

fogtender

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I saw that documentary on that Timothy Treadwell guy. It was kind of funny waiting for the inevitable end but then again I'm a big believer in PONS.

Yeah, I watched a bit of his movie when it was on PBS, and couldn't stand to watch the whole thing. His claim/rantings that he was saving the "Bears" was totally insane, he was in a National Park! You shoot a bear there, and you will be in jail longer than if you murdered a person...

I think that the kid the Movie "Into the Wild" and Treadwell must have been related, not much common sense in either one of them. The kid died in the bus that had the tires still on it, rotton and flat, but still burnable and would have made a great signal fire. I flew over that bus a couple of times when he was there as well as many of the local pilots and could have spotted a bunch of black smoke coming up from there and reported it.... thus he could have been rescued if he wanted to be. That bus is about 30 miles from my house.
 

Lyndon

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When I first started working on the Trans Alaska Pipeline they put us thru alot of safety training. First some guy lectured to us for 20 minutes, then we watched a video, then we took a test. We did this 10 hours a day for 10 days. Including buying our arctic gear, the Bean counters at Alyeska figgured that they spent 33,000$ per person in the 10 days of training and orientation. This probably accounts for Oil Being almost 100 Dollars a Barrell! Of course we got paid the whole time, and fed, and put up in a nice hotel. >
During one of the breaks, between H2S awareness, incident/accident reporting, permitting, Hazwopper, first aid...... and whatever the next class was going to be, one of the safety guy's said he had this video of a bear attack we could watch,IF WE WANTED TO.(Optional).>
It starts with a brief narration:"This is the 'Late' Doctor Gilbert"
The 'Doc' is in the passenger seat of a Volvo Station wagon with a video camera filming his wife who is sitting in the drivers seat, feeding bread to a full grown Grizzly, out the window. The doc slips out the door, around behind the vehicle and is at the left rear corner of the station wagon, outside, video taping. His wife runs out of food, the doc makes some slight noise which spooks the Bear, and BAM the camera goes flying and is laying on the ground pointing up at the sky and all you hear is his wife screaming.>
Sitting less that 20 yards away was another vehicle and the tourists in this one were also vidoe taping. At this point the Doc is dead and the bear has him over behind some log and is pulling out his intestines and munching away, you can still hear his wife, now Widow, screaming hysteriacally in the background. It was a gruesom video!
The next day one of the 'recruits' (fellow Inspector-in-training), washed out of the program. Seems he gave his wife a 'play-by-play' of the video and She decided that he wasn't going to work in Alaska after all. >
If we went out of the fenced area around one of the Pump stations they would issue us BEAR SPRAY. This is an aerosol can of some high strength Pepper spray that was supposed to ward off bears. Man I wanted a Back Pack sized model! Something like they use for firefighting, not some 3 ounce squirt can! The rumor was that this stuff just generally pissed off the Bear so you were in serious trouble regardless.
 

fogtender

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If we went out of the fenced area around one of the Pump stations they would issue us BEAR SPRAY. This is an aerosol can of some high strength Pepper spray that was supposed to ward off bears. Man I wanted a Back Pack sized model! Something like they use for firefighting, not some 3 ounce squirt can! The rumor was that this stuff just generally pissed off the Bear so you were in serious trouble regardless.

During the EXXON Valdez Oil Spill on Kodiak Island, one of the EXXON guys at Larson Bay took a can of bear spray out to the town's dump where the resident brown bear dug though the garbage as if he owned the place.

To dump your truck, you drove to the far side of the dump from the bear and started to offload your truck, the bear wandered over to where you were parked. At a certian area where you felt you were pushing it, you jumped in the truck and drove past the bear back to the other side while he was going though what you just dumped out.

Anyway, this guy drove up to the bear and rolled his window down and with the bear sitting on it's butt about ten feet away snacking out on garbage, the guy hosed him down with the bright orange staining pepper spray... Before he could get the truck in reverse, the bear had broken the windshield and tore the tin on the hood and left front fender...

The locals were really pissed off and the guy was flown back to Houston, TX that day.... I think he needed new "Fruit-of-the-Looms" before he caught the flight home...

I have used the spray one time, and it really pissed the bear off, but we weren't allowed to carry any guns during the cleanup operations. Much rather have my .44 or 12 Gauge 870 pump...
 

79bombi

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I live in active black bear country. Generally have 2-5 encounters with them a year where I am not in a car, running, mt biking, or working in the woods. 85% off the time they hit the road. The ones that are acclimated to trash eye you up but generally take off with a lot of noise. Several years ago wife woke me up and asked me to check garage door without telling me she heard a noise. I am not sure who was more freaked the bear or me.

That huge grizzly looks like king kong.

79bombi
 
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