Grizzly toll of our 'Bearanoia'

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Grizzly toll of our 'Bearanoia'


Officially listed as a vulnerable species in B.C., grizzly bears are often shot
simply because of needless confrontation when a hunter returns to his kill

Larry Pynn
Vancouver Sun

Wednesday, July 20, 2005


The setting is September in a remote valley near Fort Nelson, where a big-game
hunting guide and his foreign client come across a pack of wolves feeding on a
moose carcass.

The client shoots one of the wolves at a distance 200 metres and the two men
walk over to claim the trophy, only to be confronted by a much larger and more
dangerous species, a predator even whose Latin name -- Ursus arctos horribilis
-- can instill fear in the most hardened outdoorsman.

"Once at the wolf, we spotted a grizzly bear just 30 to 40 yards away coming
towards us," the guide wrote in a statement to conservation officers. "I fired
one shot into the air to scare the bear away and the grizzly was still coming at
a charge. Both my hunter and I realized that the bear was not going to stop and
began to shoot ... The grizzly bear finally fell and came to a stop, dead at 15
yards."

Those rare times that grizzly bears kill or maim humans, the incident is
guaranteed prominent news coverage. But conservation officers' reports obtained
by The Vancouver Sun through Freedom of Information legislation show there are
many more unreported instances in which grizzlies attack humans and are shot
dead in their tracks a split-second from human tragedy.

According to the B.C. environment ministry, 58 grizzlies and another 672 black
bears were destroyed in the province in 2004 in defence of people or property,
compared with 49 grizzlies and 867 black bears a year earlier.

Grizzlies are officially listed as a vulnerable species in B.C. compared with
the more numerous black bear. The province estimates there are 17,000 grizzlies
and at least 120,000 black bears.

Grizzlies were shot in 2004 for killing livestock and pets, for feeding on grain
or alfalfa, and for generally getting too familiar around rural farm properties,
often in the Bella Coola Valley.

But the real life-and-death encounters tend to involve hunters -- mainly in the
Kootenays and in northern B.C. -- who put themselves at risk by skulking through
the wilderness for prey, or who inadvertently find themselves in face-to-face
competition with grizzlies over freshly killed game.

Big-game hunters are known to regale each other for hours with embellished
campfire tales about the size and dangerous beasts they have stalked. FOI
documents show that the most dangerous part of the sport can simply involve
returning to the kill the next day to finish packing out the meat.

That's when hunters stand a good chance of confronting a grizzly that has laid
claim to the carcass; if not then, perhaps back at base camp where the grizzly
shows up for its fair share.

Which raises the question: which is to blame, the hunter or the bear for such
encounters?

Wayne McCrory, a consulting bear biologist from New Denver, argues that hunters
and their remote hunting camps are a leading causes of the needless shooting of
bears every year in B.C.

His report for the province in 2003 found that none of 31 camps investigated in
the northern Rockies were bear-proof. Hunters recklessly placed groceries, game
carcasses, garbage, and horse feed at their campsites within 20 metres of their
tents. Game hung from cross-poles typically was within a bear's easy reach, in
some cases less than a metre from the ground.

And while McCrory recommended the use of portable electric fences as a deterrent
to grizzlies -- the cost can be as little as a few hundred dollars -- the
province has failed to act on the recommendation, saying it prefers to use
education rather than the hammer of legislation.

"If hunters became responsible and implemented the recommendations of this
report things would be much safer out there for both species," McCrory said in
an interview.

While McCrory notes it is illegal to kill a bear in defence of a game carcass in
B.C., the law is quickly blurred when a hunter who approaches a carcass is
surprised by a bear, and forced to shoot in self-defence.

McCrory believes that the media's concentration on bear attacks has led to an
unjustified fear of the animals, a sense of "bearanoia" in the public's mind.

"People need to be better educated on what best to do in different bear
situations," he said. "It is important to continue the effort to remind people
that simply carrying red pepper spray will most often help deter a bad bear
situation."

The B.C. Vital Statistics Agency puts the risk of grizzly attacks into
perspective. In 2003, the latest year for which detailed death statistics are
available, 11 persons died in the province from falling out of bed, seven
persons drowned in swimming pools, and six died in avalanches.

No one died from a bear attack in B.C. that year -- a fact that also could be
weighed against the thousands of dog bites each year in the Lower Mainland
alone.

Gary Shelton, a best-selling author of bear-attack books and a bear-safety
trainer for 14 years in the Bella Coola Valley, takes a different view of
statistics. He says that between 1985 and 1996, 12 people were killed by bears
in B.C., more than 40 injured, and countless more bear attacks deterred by
pepper spray or gunfire.

"The attack rates on people from bears and cougars between the '80s and '90s
more than doubled," he charged. "Attacks and conflicts are increasing
dramatically because bear and cougar populations have increased significantly."

Still, he concedes that the chance of being attacked by a grizzly remains small
compared to other activities, but grows for people who spend a good portion of
their lives in the bush.

Book sales are one barometer of the public's fascination with bear attacks.

Alberta grizzly researcher Stephen Herrero has sold more than 105,000 copies of
Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, which seeks to take a scientific
approach to the subject but, with its gruesome description of claws and teeth
tearing away at skulls, has probably done more to discourage people from the
woods than any other publication.

Shelton has sold 55,000 copies of his three bear-attack books: Bear Encounter
Survival Guide, Bear Attacks, the Deadly Truth, and Bear Attacks II: Myth and
Reality.
He attributes the insatiable public interest to an innate desire to step away
from the trappings of modern society and feel a connection with the dangers
experienced by primitive humans thousands of years ago. Humans, he argues, would
actually be poorer without the occasional grizzly attack, and the knowledge,
however remote, that anyone could be next.

"In modern culture, we're insulated from reality in so many ways," Shelton says.
"We go to the store, we don't see that the cow's been knocked on the head and
slaughtered. We just see the nice tidy steaks, with the thing underneath to
absorb the blood.

"But, by golly, when you're out there fishing or hunting or camping, that
insulation wears off, and there is something out there that could do you real
damage.

"We want the encounter, but to survive it without injury. We want to tell the
war story. We do not want to come home with our face ripped off."

FOI documents are filled with just such sordid tales of hunters shooting
grizzlies attracted to their kills.

Which prompts the question: how to prevent such incidents, for the sake of the
hunter and the bear?

Shelton supports McCrory's recommendation of cheap, portable electric fences to
keep bears away from hunting camps, and urges hunts be conducted earlier enough
in the day so that all the meat can be hauled back to camp without having to
return the next day, when the potential for bear encounters are increased.

And at all times meat should be be hung far enough up a tree that it's out of a
bear's reach.

Despite best hunting practices, Shelton continued, grizzlies are still going to
be shot because the species is a powerful and potentially aggressive animal with
a natural inclination to defend or take a carcass against other predators such
as cougars and wolves.

"With grizzly populations increasing, if you don't have any mortality, they
start becoming boss again," he added.

The FOI documents show that one hunter who claimed he shot a grizzly in
self-defence near Dease Lake "exercised extremely poor judgment," wrote a
conservation officer, by returning to retrieve a moose carcass a full six days
after it was shot in early October.

By any definition, a stupid act. "You're supposed to practice safe hunting and
safe retrieval," said Tony Toth, executive-director of the B.C. Wildlife
Federation. "Six days? What did he want to do, go back and get the maggots?"

One hunting party in April 2004 east of Cranbrook had released its hounds, which
is legal in B.C. for hunting black bear and cougar. One of the hunters, even at
a distance as close as 20 metres, could not accurately identify the species, and
shot a grizzly by mistake.

His written account only hints at what must have been a horrific scene: "I
thought it was a black bear so I shot it. The bear ran so I took another shot at
him and hit him again. The bear kept moving away from me and when I got back in
on the bear he was laying there trying to fight off the dogs. I took two more
shots and finally killed him."

The hunter only received a verbal warning from conservation officers.

One hunting outfitter in the Prophet River area of the Northern Rockies last
September claimed his guides were forced to shoot numerous marauding bears: one
grizzly shot at Grizzly Lake "by guide as it charged her," even though there was
no meat in camp; another grizzly shot at "the sloughs" after it fed on horse
oats and was deterred by warning shots; and an aggressive sow, with yearling
cub, shot at Beaver Creek camp.

One remote camp in the area reportedly was visited by five different bears, the
conservation officers wrote, and the outfitter's "five Mexican hunters are
afraid to go out and they are having to move these hunters to a different
location ...."

During a sheep hunt last October near Gatho Creek in the Northern Rockies, a
guide and his client quietly crested a hill and spotted a sow and two cubs just
80 metres away.

"I waved my arms and yelled but she wouldn't stop, her ears back ... without
time for a warning shot and scared for our lives," the guide wrote. The hunter
shot the sow at about 30 metres (even though bears are often known to
bluff-charge within that distance). The bear's two young cubs were also shot, on
the belief they would not survive on their own.

In an incident near Fort Nelson in August, two hunters on a fly-in hunting trip
to Lower Prairie Creek encountered a sow grizzly with two cubs in a tall grass
field.

The bear charged at about 100 metres, and was shot just five metres from the
hunters. The bear ran off a short distance and died. The two cubs ran off.

Last September at Brule Creek, two hunters were walking on an old horse trail
when they encountered a grizzly 15 metres away. "It laid its ears back and
charged," one hunter wrote. "I shouted at the bear but it still came at us. At
about five yards, I shot as well as my partner."

Also in September, three hunters near Morrisey in the East Kootenay returned the
following day to pack out the remainder of an elk carcass. Seeing no bear on the
carcass through binoculars, they walked to the kill site talking loudly to
discourage any potential bears in the area.

When they were just five metres from the elk, a sow grizzly charged from their
left side. One hunter shot the bear when it was only three metres away. Just
then the sow's cub also charged: it was shot at a distance of five metres. One
hunter suffered a broken ankle trying to flee the bears and was taken by
helicopter to hospital in Fernie.

In September, also in the headwaters of Gatho Creek, hunters seeking moose and
elk were approached by a large grizzly that was not deterred by a warning shot
at 150 metres.

The hunters made it back to camp only to have the bear approach them "at a rapid
rate," one member of the party told conservation officers in a recent statement.
The bear, which had taken meat earlier from the camp, was shot dead. "I really
believed we were in mortal danger from the bear, that it seemed wholly unafraid
of humans."

lpynn@...
The Vancouver Sun 2005