[EnderWiggin1970]

The research directly found that with a headwind of any significant amount more than 1 m/s, limited the range of bear spray to 5-7 feet.

I'm an engineer, and that just doesn't make any sense. If in a 0 wind condition a can of bear spray is capable of sending spray, say, 30' (what my can says, online I'm seeing 25-44' in a quick search), a 1 m/s headwind shouldn't reduce that more than 5' or so, max. And that's if we were treating air as an unrealistically solid substance.

1 person has been killed by a bear in incidents where handguns were used to defend against a bear attack

Look up the Uptain case in Wyoming, which I alluded to in my last post. I suspect that it was wrongly discounted in such research. In that case a guide with a bowhunter found an elk they'd shot the prior day. The guide hung his pistol on a branch a few yards away, had bear spray on his waist. A mother grizzly and partly grown cub following the scent burst out of the foliage as they were dressing the elk.

The guide spent the next few seconds shouting and waving; that had probably worked in other encounters but in this case the bears were following the blood scent and were primed to chase off or attack any competition when they found the carcass. So the mother barreled directly into the guide and immediately mauled him, inflicting fatal wounds.

Meanwhile the bowhunter ran for the pistol and tried to use it as the largish cub attacked him. He wound up ejecting the magazine instead of flipping the safety off, and then tossed the now-useless pistol to the guide and ran off.

The guide's body was found about 50 yards away with the discharged bear spray alongside. Evidently he crawled/ran that far before the bears renewed their attack at which time he used it. His body and the elk carcass were not molested, which suggests the bear spray was effective in driving off both bears at that point. It was just too late for him, unfortunately.

[marktwain]

I have written extensively about that case. It is a classic case of bear spray failure.

Yes, there was a handgun present. It was never used because the only person who had access to it did not know how to use it. Very likely they would have had the same problem with bear spray.

We have a couple of minor misallignments in our memory. The pistol was in a pack, as I recall. The bear spray distances are from the Tom Smith study. Aerosol movement in air is a complex, dynamic process. (I have an engineering degree and a meteorology degree) Smith used a complex computer program to simulate the wind effects. I am not a big fan of using simulation programs, but it only makes sense wind would have a big effect on a quickly aerosolized spray cloud.

There have been several incidents where people said they could not use spray because it would be ineffective because of wind, (only anecdotal information). There is at least one documented case where it was ineffective because of cold.

Smith is a bear spray proponent, so when he publishes a paper saying wind significantly decreases the range, I paid attention. He also said it would not be a problem, in an interview, saying just wait until the bear is within 2 meters to spray! ( I found that to be silly). 1 meter/sec is about 2.24 miles per hour.

Glock pistols do not have traditional safeties. The pistol did not have a round in the chamber. If you know what you are doing, and practice, that is not a big problem. If you do not know what you are doing, and have not practiced, getting the safety off a bear spray can is a big problem, too.

I recall reading the official report. As I recall the bears had bear spray on them.

I read these reports with a critical eye. They seem to attempt to convince people bear spray is extremely effective. They appear to me to be written by people who want to believe such, because they are extremely concerned about saving bears.

I may have been the first person who made it widely public that Uptain had sprayed the bears before he died. As I recall, the official report was not published very widely.

Maybe Uptain carried the empty cannister, clinging to it as he attempted to get away from the bears. Maybe he was given a mortal wound before he was able to spray. None the less he died using bear spray.

If Uptain had fired a handgun while defending against the bears, I would have scored it as a handgun failure. It is useful to reverse the methods and apply the same logic to each. In the first and most commonly referenced bear spray study, Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero only included instances where bear spray was sprayed against bears. Many of the cases were park personnel harassing problem bears.

In their firearms study, the included all instances where a firearm was present and someone tried to use it. The looked hard for cases where people were injured. So the Uptain case would have been both a bear spray and a handgun failure in their studies, even though the handgun was not fired.

They admit, in the firearm paper, they have a problem with selection bias about firearms. Admitting it made the publication valid. The bias is seldom discussed.

Here is the image from the Tom Smith paper on Bear Spray.