I’ve read where cougars and black bears you should try to fight off if they attack. A cougar will often quit as it wasn’t expecting a fight. A black bear probably won’t stop, but it won’t stop either if you just play dead, so might as well try to fight it. Black bear attacks are pretty rare though. (A freeper tells the story of his dog and him fighting a black bear, with the freeper finally on the bear’s back and stabbed it to death with a knife!)
Grizzlies you are supposed to play dead and hopefully you can survive the wounds from their first attack.
I just shoot.
If you are in grizzly territory, you pack some serious heat if you are in wandering around alone in their territory..
Similar from National Park Service for surprised or defensive bears.
“Grizzlies you are supposed to play dead and hopefully you can survive the wounds from their first attack.”
——————NPS————
If you surprise a grizzly/brown bear and it charges or attacks, do not fight back! Only fight back if the attack persists.
If a predatory bear attacks you, no matter the species, fight back with everything you have.
I believe all wild American carnivores are by nature afraid of people. Even the polar bear, who is the most vicious!
I have ran into black bears, coyotes and bobcats and they all ran away (pretty fast!). Cougar is very hard to see, it sees you before you ever see it and makes sure you will never even see it.
The only fatal accidents happened when people got scared and tried to run away! Carnivore instinct is to chase whatever tries to run away! And all of them are a lot faster than people, so we have no chance!
Another problems can happen when you run into mother with pups, the animal is sick (rabies!) or if you somehow get too close to it so it decides to fight for life instead to run away!
But overall animal attacks on people are very rare.
When i was in Alaska, I was told that the most deadly animal is moose!