Free Republic

The 12-year-old was sleeping under the stars with his buddies when the bear jolted everyone awake "Be Prepared" may be the motto for the Boy Scouts, but a 12-year-old from New York was anything but prepared for the encounter he had while on a recent camping trip -- one that saw his leg end up in the jaws of a black bear. The uninvited guest was peaking around a campsite late at night at Harriman State Park in Rockland and Orange counties, in search of some human food, when it stumbled on a group of Boy Scouts from Cooperstown. "It...

I have been researching the effectiveness of pistols when they are fired as a defense against bears for several years. The research started as an attempt to find cases where pistols were ineffective. In October of 2016, a poster on freerepublic.com claimed (post 28 at the link) that there were numerous failures when people attempted to use pistols as a defensive tool against bears. The author knew there were several cases where the use of a pistol resulted in an effective defense. Because access to handguns, bear spray, knives, rifles, and shotguns all involve similar problems, only cases where a...

These eleven events of pistols fired in defense against bears, in combination with other items, have been found since the last update in June of 2021. The increasing number of incidents had made checking all links difficult and awkward.With this article, and in the future, updates will consist of the newly revealed incidents and any change in statistics. In this article eleven newly revealed cases of combination defenses are added for completeness. In our research of the effectiveness of pistol fired in defense against bears, we include all documented incidents, so readers may evaluate them themselves.Because these incidents involve more...

Grizzly bear downed at 10 feet by Jimmy Cox with a 10mm pistolU.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- – The 10mm pistol caliber is gaining supporters as a suitable pistol caliber for defense against bears.The caliber has long been known as an excellent pistol hunting cartridge. In this correspondent’s study of the use of pistols in defense, eight cases have been discovered where 10 mm pistols were used to defend against bear attacks. Six of those cases were with the 10 mm only. One case was in combination with a .340 Weatherby magnum rifle, and one case was in combination with a .45...

Handloggers is the biography of Alaskan pioneer W. H. (Handlogger) Jackson and his wife Ruth Jackson, nee Ruth Johnstone. 251 pages, 1974, softcover. Jackson moved into Alaska about 1917-18, prospecting, handlogging, and trapping. He was born about 1883-84 in California when the fastest transport was a steam engine train. Most of his travels before 1920 were on foot, horseback, or by steamship. He married in 1927 and died in 1970. During his long outdoors career, he developed an outstanding reputation for skill and fair dealing. On page 225, Handlogger writes of the unprovoked black bear attack he foiled with a...

This is another in a series of self-defense against bear events uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request done by AmmoLand. It seems they have not been published before. At about 10 a.m. on the morning of May 28, 2016, a father-son pair of shed antler collectors were searching for antlers in the Bear Creek drainage of the Shoshone National Forest, about 16 miles northeast of Dubois, Wyoming.The father and son had separated. The father went up a draw, and the son went up a side hill to a flat bench. The son had reached the top of the...

This article is part of a continuing series of defensive bear shootings discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request by AmmoLand. It appears these events were not reported in other media. On September 13, 2011, two bowhunters were hunting for elk in a wild part of Wyoming, on the boundary of the Shoshone National Forest and the Bridger Teton National Forest. The location was on the Continental Divide between the Salt Creek and the South Fork of the Fish Creek drainages, about an hour north of DuNoir Junction, southwest of Dubois, Wyoming, near the boundary of Fremont County and...

This is another in a series of self-defense against bear events uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request done by AmmoLand. It seems they have not been published before. On October 18, 2010, an elk hunter was successful in collecting a bull elk at the head of the North Crandall Creek drainage in Wyoming. It was late in the day, so they field-dressed the elk, moved the gut pile about 50 yards away, and left the elk to be retrieved the next day, with horses.On October 19, 2010, three men were on their way to retrieve the elk. Because...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The first recorded fatal polar bear attack in the United States happened in 1885, near Cape Thompson, Alaska. It was unlikely to have happened any earlier because there weren’t any polar bears in United States territory until the USA acquired Alaska from Russia, which was formally transferred to the USA on October 18, 1867.There were probably many fatal polar bear attacks before then, but they happened to stone-age people without the ability to record them or publish them. There is not much overlap between the habitat of people living in the far North of Alaska and polar bears....

On April 15, 2021, Carl Mock was attacked by a grizzly bear, just outside of Yellowstone Park. Mock was an accomplished woodsman and guide. He did not have a firearm with him. He had bear spray. He used the bear spray but was fatally injured.irected to Montana Fish and Wildlife Morgan Jacobsen, was able to determine bear spray had been used in the incident. Initially, the use of bear spray was reported as unknown by ktla.com: Mock when attacked had bear spray — a Mace-like deterrent meant to protect against attacks — but officials said they did not know if...

A man was riding his bicycle along a riverbed in Alaska on Tuesday, when police said he was mauled by a brown bear. As he was riding his bike in Cantwell, Alaska, the man, who police didn't identify, said he saw the bear running towards him from 10-15 yards away. He got off of his bicycle and started yelling at the bear. "Just prior to the bear making contact, the victim fell to the ground and onto his back, covered his head and believes he kicked at the bear, ... The victim estimated that the bear weighed 500 pounds and...

This is one of a series of detailed accounts of bear attacks found with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by AmmoLand. On September 7, 2010, a pair of archery hunters were stalking moose in a remote part of Wyoming near Pinedale. A large boar grizzly bear attacked them. Fortunately, they were able to shoot the bear and stop the attack. In the morning, one of their guides had been scouting the area. He had seen two bull moose and what he thought was a large black bear. When he told the hunters about the moose and the bear, the...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- There has been a spate of bear vs people conflicts in Idaho from July through September of 2021. Three of them happened near Island Park, which is in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). A sow with at least one cub mauled a hiker on July 10, 2021.From ksl.com:Although the bear that Whitney estimated between 350 and 400 pounds began to swing its claws and biting him, he lay in the fetal position and covered his head and neck. The bear’s cub stayed a short distance away from the attack.“All I could hear is the growling and I honestly...

As part of AmmoLand’s investigative journalism, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed this bear attack which happened in Wyoming, in 2010.On 14 August 2010, in the Union Pass area, on Forest Service Road 693 near Fish Creek in west-central Wyoming, a family group was camping. One of the children reported they had seen a dead calf near the creek.Two members of the group armed themselves to investigate. The creek was about 300 yards from the campsite. They were unsure if the calf were dead or merely sleeping. If the calf were dead, they would need to keep the...

On the evening of 22 September 2005, a hunting guide and his hunter, who was from Ohio, were attacked without provocation, by a grizzly bear in the Shoshone National Forest in the northwest corner of Wyoming. The details of the attack were found in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response to AmmoLand. This correspondent has not found any other published account of this attack. The hunter had been drawn for an archery tag for elk, with his friends. The hunter had been assigned a guide by the licensed outfitter. On the morning of 22 September, the guide had decided...

While searching for events where pistols were fired to defend against bears, I came across several references to an event that happened to Larry Kelly of Magnaport fame, in Alaska. The event was described by him in full, first-person detail. There were several variations online. Some claimed the event showed how ineffective pistols were for defense against bears. Several claimed the ammunition was at fault. Here is an example from thefiringline.com:Several years ago I read a story about Larry Kelly, owner of Magna-Port and hundgun hunter Hall of Famer, has told a story about having to share a hunting cabin...

A 55-year-old man was mauled to death by a wild bear in the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, a senior official said on Wednesday. The incident took place on Tuesday evening in the forest near Bagoha village, said the reserve's field director Uttam Kumar Sharma.

Montana wildlife officials shot and killed a grizzly bear early Friday morning that was believed to have dragged a woman from her tent in Montana earlier this week and killed her. The bear was killed less than two miles from Ovando, a Montana town of fewer than 100 people and the place the woman was killed Tuesday morning. “Last night, the Powell County Sheriff’s Office took a report from a resident who came home and found her door ripped off and large claw marks were present,” the sheriff’s office said on Facebook Friday. “A short time later a male grizzly...

A local resident in the city of Sapporo, which is due to host the Olympic Marathon and Olympic Race Walking events at this summer's Tokyo Games, first reported sighting a bear on a road in the early hours of the morning. Soon after, Hokkaido police tweeted they were on the lookout for the bear, writing that since the sighting, many others had reported seeing the bear and that people had been injured. Local police said the bear attacked three men, one of whom was seriously injured, and a woman in her 80s, according to NHK. At around 11 a.m., the...

On the East Fork of the Wind River, near Lander, Wyoming, three bow hunters were walking to their hunting grounds, bows in hand. An old boar grizzly suddenly charged them from a few yards left of their approach. The bow hunters had set up base camp the day before at the East Fork trailhead. The next morning, they rode horses six miles up the trail, turned west, and rode uphill until the terrain was too steep for the horses. At about 7:30, they dismounted and continued up the steep slope of the trail on foot, in line.Wind River Peak from...