I was on the road to Sudbury, and CBC Radio was keeping me company.
Claire Cameron was a guest on The Current, a daily show on CBC. Claire is the author of a book, actually a memoir, entitled “How To Survive A Bear Attack.” It certainly got me thinking.
She worked as a teenager in Algonquin Park, so when she heard about a young couple being killed in the park by a black bear a couple of decades ago, she took an extraordinarily keen interest in the story and began what she would call her “investigation.”
People manage to die in Algonquin Park every year, mostly as a result of their own negligence, and sometimes as a result of extreme health events, like heart attacks. For the most part, though, park fatalities will come from health failures, allergies, drowning, and even the car or truck ride just getting to the park. Way down the list of potentially fatal episodes are death through bear attack. In fact, it almost never happens.
It definitely happened to that young couple though, and it became apparent that the bear was drawn by their careless storage of food where they had set up camp. Death, in such circumstances, is a tough penalty to pay for such an oversight, but bears don’t employ that level of higher-order thinking when they’re out and about, almost always searching for, well, food.
All things being equal, a bear would have absolutely no interest in coming into contact with humans, as they’re smart enough to sense that when there are people around, trouble is not far behind. In almost every circumstance, a bear will be aware of your proximity long before you become aware of his, and they will almost 100% of the time attempt to put more distance between themselves and any human. It’s more often when they’re surprised by human presence, are caught off-guard, have cubs with them, or are desperately hungry that they will engage with a human. But those interactions are almost exclusively ones involving self-defence (from the bear’s perspective) or extreme and desperate hunger. Improperly stored food will draw a desperately hungry bear closer to humans because they can’t overcome the temptation. It’s often as simp[e as that.
Claire says that everyone has a bear story, and as natives of Canada, I suppose there’s a good chance of that being true. We are a people blessed with a lot of what counts as the great outdoors, and we have more of it than most. And if you’re tramping about in a bush or forest, or deep in the wilds of Algonquin Park, you have to be aware of the fact that this is not your domain, at least not in an everyday sense. This is the realm of the wilderness, and in the wilderness, the bear is the apex predator.
Bears can do everything better than you, or at least anything that may come in handy in any encounter. They’re bigger, they’re stronger, and they’re faster. They can swim better than you can, and can climb a tree better than you as well. So if it’s you and a bear face-to-face in the woods, the smart money is on the bear.
There are any number of urban myths about how you can successfully deal with a bear at close quarters. Perhaps the most famous is the “play dead” one, where you go inert and fake death, hoping that the bear will become disinterested and move along. Okay, fine, but all I can say is that you can go ahead and try it, but I sure as hell wouldn’t. It seems to me that playing dead removes any other possible strategies and leaves you vulnerable in front of the Beast of the Bush. I suppose if it’s a playful bear, this might work, especially if he becomes bored or feels less threatened. But you only really get one crack at deciding your response, and I don’t know if I’d want to put all my eggs in the play dead basket.
If you’re with someone, you can always take stock of your partner, and decide for yourself if you can outrun them. Not the bear, but your partner. This is a pretty cynical way of approaching survival in the wild, but if running is your preferred option, then at least make sure you can run faster than the person that you’re with. Yes, it absolutely sucks to be your friend, but hey, sometimes it’s every man for himself.
You can put into practice your recent training from your Muay Thai studio in town. All those fancy fighting moves are, without question, impressive as all giddy-up. And after you’re dead on the forest floor, tall tales will be shared over campfires for decades telling the story of your ferocious defence of yourself, flashing elbows and knees, and all the rest of it. And then, after that impressive demonstration, the bear connects with a right-hook with those murderous claws, and there you’ll be, a dead Muay Thai guy on the ground. So, for the record, going toe-to-toe with a bear as if you were in a hockey fight is a terribly bad and misinformed idea. The play-dead strategy is preferable to this being-dead strategy, and duking it out with an irritated, and often frightened bear is definitely not the way to go.
My favourite technique requires a degree of savvy, since as an outdoors-person, you’ve made yourself aware of the fact that the bear has shorter fore-legs than he does back legs, which I suppose is something a lot of the four-legged types have in common. Some wise old woodsman told you that, since the bear has shorter fore-legs, you should run downhill, where the hapless bear in pursuit will then tumble ass-over-tea kettle down the hill. This strategy has an appealing sound to it, other than having a really pissed off bear at the bottom of a hill intent on bloody murder. As to you, I suppose you ought to always make sure there’s a hill of some sort nearby, and, if you have to employ this technique, perhaps you ought to peel back up to the top of the hill in case you need to employ it again. Bears aren’t rocket scientists, so he may fall for it again, or he could lose interest and walk away. Or he could just kill you.
I remember being a flagman on some road in the middle of nowhere between Redbridge and Mattawa. All by myself on this logging road with a stupid STOP/SLOW sign affixed to a metal pole. Just me and every mosquito and blackfly God thought it sensible to create. And then, one summer afternoon, some rustling in the bushes, perhaps 30 or 40 yards away. A mama bear with three cubs comes out of the bush and crosses the road. I can tell you that not much can concentrate a man’s thinking as quickly as a bear with cubs a rock-throw away. Instinctively, I knew it was going to be that sign that saved me, if anything did, as it was a somewhat thin, somewhat sharp, metal piece attached to the pole. I determined that I wouldn’t swing it at the bear, but would rather use it to butt-end him or spear him in the face, since I was betting that such a thing would hurt. None of it came to pass as the four of them crossed the road and entered the bush on the other side. It was like she didn’t see me, but then again, of course she did. For some reason, she just decided to keep on trucking with her cubs, although I remained on high alert until a truck came to pick me up. I shared my adventure with my co-workers, but I’m not sure they even believed me. So I guess that’s my bear story, the one Claire Cameron says everyone has. The beauty of my story is simply that I didn’t end up dead on the shoulder of Highway 533.
In the early 1990’s, I came across a guy by the name of Troy Hurtibise, an inventor of sorts from Mattawa who was perfecting a bear suit for anyone who felt they might need a bear suit. Hurtibise was featured on some pay television channel, and watching him test his suit by having cars drive into him, being hit by a wrecking ball, even hurling himself off a steep slope, was nothing short of hilarious. Here was this guy dressed like an Apollo astronaut getting biffed and smashed, all in an attempt to sell his invention to anyone who makes a practice of being in near-proximity to bears. Troy, all dressed up in his suit, hanging around in the Mattawa Dump and waiting for a bear encounter. You can’t find television like this today.
Sometimes it’s a struggle to find things to write about that may interest other folks. And then you find yourself on the way to Sudbury listening to CBC radio programming, and a bear person comes along and gives an interview that gets you thinking. Today’s effort came as a result of just such a thing.
And besides, everybody has a bear story.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 