Minnow's Guide #4: Bears in the woods, the mountains, on the trail

"You ought to write something about the sporting goods stores around here, hon," Skip said to me yesterday afternoon." I want to," I said, "but I think I'd better talk to our visitors about the bears in the woods first." I can't decide which of the most recent encounters I should tell you about. The most recent encounter involved a 15 year old girl in Anchorage, but before that there was the brown bear that had been shot several times--illegally, I might add-and was dying on the side of the road. People were lining up to take pictures of it and one individual was even throwing rocks at it to get it to move so he could take a better picture. He didn't take too kindly to official suggestions that he stop. Or how about the woman picking mushrooms near Skilak Lake (near Cooper Landing--a small community on the Kenai Peninsula) who came across a brown bear sow and her two cubs. The Kenai Peninsula has a healthy population of brown bears and black bears. Which of these bears do we worry about most? The brown bears. Good old Ursus arctos horribilis. The brown bears are not endangered, but are on the list of the Alaska species of special concern. According to research done by Smith and Herrero, brown bear-human encounters are much more dangerous--as much as 22 times more dangerous than an encounter with a black bear. So keep in mind, if you come across a brown bear, you are dealing with a whole different kettle of fish. In the summers, the bears, like humans, are attracted to berry patches and the rivers, where they can feast on an abundant source of salmon. There is a reason why Governor Palin proclaimed April to be "Bear Awareness Month." Bears are not particularly concerned about where their food comes from. The Kenai Peninsula is one big grocery store for them. They have a good olfactory sense, so the garbage sacks outside the tent or the RV or the dog food left on the porch or the chickens in the coop smell wonderful to them. They are willing to work hard to get to these sources of food, but usually they don't have to. In a number of cases, people have been with their dogs when they were attacked. It's not clear why this happens, really, especially in the recent case when the dog was on a lead. It would be easier to understand if the dog were off lead, curious, encountered a sleepy bear, and then came running back to the owner at full speed, with the bear following behind.

Another tough situation is when you encounter a sow with her cubs. In some cases, all you see is the cub. Back away. Slowly. Where there is one cub, there can be two. And you do not want to run into the sow, I promise you.

We have encountered bears while hiking on a number of trails on the Kenai Peninsula, some of them very heavily travelled. You'd think that this would frighten the bears away, but with the burgeoning bear population, some of the bears have nowhere else to go. They get used to being around humans.

One of our strangest bear encounters took place last year when we were hiking near Hope, Alaska, which is on the northern edge of the Kenai Peninsula. We were heading up the side of a mountain covered with rock and grass and low brush when we flushed a young bear. Fortunately, it didn't have any interest in us, and took off at incredible speed. The difference between bears and humans is that bears can sprint up a 45 degree slope, as this one did, using the four paw drive, and dislodging large rocks that bombarded us and the narrow trail that we were on.

I have lived in Soldotna for years and never once seen a bear in town. I've seen many moose, and been charged by them a few times. You aren't really an Alaskan if you don't winter here and if you don't have a story or two about coming face to face with a moose. I suspect that the reason we don't see bears has to do with good avoidance techniques. We keep our garbage can in the garage, the dogs in a fenced yard (rather than tied up--you have to think that bears really appreciate it when their prey can't get away), the dog food in a storage shed out back and we don't have chickens, although sometimes I think it would be nice to have a couple of laying hens. A couple of friends with chicken coops have had them broken into by bears, even after reinforcing the structure. Those little chickens are just too tempting for words. Makes you wonder what a little rural electrification would do to a hungry bear.

The important thing is to know that whether you can see the bears or not, they are all around us on the Kenai Peninsula. They are in the woods. They wander through town. The absolute best thing you can do for yourself and for them is to minimize how attractive a source of food you provide. Learn about when bears feed on the river. Like Skip always says, "The bears own the Russian River after dark."

Will bear spray help? In some cases, clearly, bear spray (as opposed to pepper spray) has been useful, and people, including wildlife biologists, have been able to deter attacks. In 1998, Smith published a study in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, Volume 26, pp 92-94, which showed that brown bears were attracted to pepper spray residue. This would be your call. We've been through similar although unintended experiments with pepper sprays on our two dogs, Geyser and Budger, and the results are not what you would think at all. I'll try to do some bear spray research for you and report back.

Another suggested deterrent comes from my friends who hike through bear country. They use bear bells, reasoning that if you can make enough noise to alert the bears that you are coming, there won't be any surprises for you or the bear.

Finally, the experts say, don't ever run from a bear, which is easier said than done. For more information on this, check out the Brown Bear Project website.