Bears Don’t Care About Your Philosophy: Why Firearms Matter in Bear Country

AmmoLand ^ | April 2, 2025 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Timothy Treadwell was a controversial figure who insisted on approaching and viewing brown bears at close range for about 13 years. He did not carry a firearm or bear spray or any deterrents. From backpacker.com:

Wes: Timothy thought he was the dominant bear in the ecosystem. I think he was past the point of accepting any input on that. I think he had convinced himself that they would never hurt him, and he was untouchable.

Treadwell was repeatedly warned about the danger. From akfatal.net:

Despite that, Treadwell refused to carry firearms or ring his campsites with an electric fence as do bear researchers in the area. And he stopped carrying bear spray for self-protection in recent years. Friends said he thought he knew the bears so well he didn’t need it.

U.S. Geological Survey bear researcher Tom Smith; Sterling Miller, formerly the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s top bear authority; and others said they tried to warn the amateur naturalist that he was being far too cavalier around North America’s largest and most powerful predator….

“I told him to be much more cautious … because every time a bear kills somebody, there is a big increase in bearanoia and bears get killed,” Miller said. “I thought that would be a way of getting to him, and his response was ‘I would be honored to end up in bear scat.’ ”

Timothy Treadwell was killed and eaten by brown bears in October 2003. His death overshadowed the first fatal failure of bear spray to stop an attack.

Vitaly Aleksandrovich Nikolayenko was a prominent Russian brown bear researcher (Asian version of the American brown or grizzly bear) who routinely and closely approached bears without a firearm. He did this for 33 years, from 1970 to December 2003. In December 2003,

[9YearLurker]

Ha!

[MayflowerMadam]

“Bears Don’t Care About Your Philosophy: Why Firearms Matter
... “

Neither do ghetto rats. Firearms definitely matter.