Guest Post by Kazumi Igus - Bear Safety

July 26, 2017

Being a native Angelino brings with it certain expectations when we think of being in nature. Even though Los Angeles has its fair share of plants, insects and carnivorous mammals, these are mostly things that are controlled; becoming a ubiquitous, innocuous experience or so extraordinary it is news worthy. Besides, the people and the traffic are quite enough to deal with. You can probably imagine my thoughts stepping off the plane in Kalispell, Montana and seeing a sign in the airport that reminded people to not board the plane with their bear spray. "Bear spray?!? That's a thing?" Or, it's a "thing" enough that the airport would have reminder signs? I was not in LA anymore.

You might think that it may have occurred to me that I was in Montana to collect data examining the relationship between huckleberries and grizzly BEARS, but it didn't really sink in until the first official day of our hitch. I was more concerned with if I had packed the appropriate gear for bush whacking. A bear encounter was the furthest things from my mind. But before we could even leave our lodging for the first day of our field work, our team needed safety training. That training included, and heavily emphasized, bear safety, and that included bear spray.

Bear safety is serious business despite its almost ridiculous presentation. The key to bear safety: no matter what's going on the first, and foremost, thing one must remember when encountering a bear is to remain calm... remain calm. Imagine you are hiking through the woods and you see a bear. A bear! In the wild! No cage, no fence, no hologram. A living, breathing, free-willed bear. Your first response could be a myriad of things, but calm is not one of them. But fake it 'till you make it (calm) and then say "Whoa bear." Why say "whoa, bear"? Because, that's what the safety video told us to do, and to be honest, what else is going to pop into your head that isn't a slew of swear words. Then you have to fight the urge to run. Seriously?!?!? Back away calmly and don't turn your back to it. Yes. That's easy. With adrenaline pumping through your body while staring down 250-600 lb wild animal, stay calm, back away, and hope you don't have to draw your weapon.

Did I mention the bear spray? 

In the event that your acting is awful, and you manage to panic yourself and the animal your staring down, your last line of defense is the spay that I mentioned. It comes in a nifty holster as well. The safety training instructed us to properly deploy bear spray. And, in case you were wondering, bear spray is a highly compressed aerosol canister of the worst pepper spray you could imagine. It's so potent that if you were unlucky enough to leave it in your vehicle on a hot day, and it exploded, your vehicle is officially totaled. That last line of defense (before rolling on to your stomach so that your soft, important bits aren't clawed out and consumed (very rare that this would happen)) requires you to unholster your spray, unclip the safety, and attempt to make a cloud barrier that will make the bear back off. This seems easy, but there are times when this won't work at the first spray. Again, seriously?!?!? At this point my first reaction would be to run, but no! If you run, the bear has a reason to chase you. So, really, you just calmly keep spraying until the bear backs off. 

Now the question is: why bear spray and not a gun? If you have ever shot a gun you would know that your accuracy is not at its best when you're under duress, unless you have some military training or are just a weapons badass. But, for the rest of us normal folk, if a bear was coming at us in the forest, our shot accuracy would significantly decline and probably just upset the bear. For that reason, bear spray is the most effective method of deterring a bear attack. 

Hopefully, for both the bear and myself, I will never have to use any of my bear safety techniques. Although, if I were to encounter a bear I'm going to have to rely on my Los Angeles bred acting skills and try to stay calm.

Bear Safety Training Video