Free Republic

With the 31 July fatal attack by a black bear near Swan Hills in Alberta, Canada, 2021 has tied the record for the number of fatal bear attacks in one year. From ctvnews.ca:EDMONTON — Mounties say a female tree planter was mauled to death by a bear in northern Alberta. RCMP told CTV News they received a call just after 3 p.m. on July 31 regarding an attack in a rural area northwest of Swan Hills. The 26-year-old woman was planting trees in the remote spot when she was attacked by what witnesses described to police as a black bear.The...

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...

TRIMBLE, Colo. (KDVR) — Colorado Parks and Wildlife said a woman was found dead off U.S. Highway 550 after a suspected bear attack on Friday. According to her boyfriend, the 39-year-old victim was believed to have gone walking with her two dogs earlier Friday, La Plata County Sheriff’s office said. Her boyfriend told police he got home around 8:30 p.m. and the dogs were present but his girlfriend was not there. After searching for her, he found her body around 9:30 p.m. and called 911. When CPW wildlife officers responded, they found signs of consumption on the body and an...

A black bear attacked a woman and her two dogs in Collier County on Christmas Eve morning. Kathleen Boyle said Friday that her two dogs, one ironically named Bear, and her other pup, Robin, helped save her from a bear they ran into on their morning walk in the Fiddler’s Creek community. “It wasn’t until probably 11:30, 12 o’clock that I stopped shaking,” Boyle said. “Because it was that trauma, ‘I can’t believe this just happened.’” Boyle’s two Westies are show dogs, but they didn’t worry about manners when a bear approached them and their owner. “So here you’ve got...

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Wildlife officials have documented seven grizzly bear encounters resulting in injuries so far this year in the greater Yellowstone region, an increase compared to the previous high mark of three in the first half of 2007. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reported that Frank van Manen, supervisor of a grizzly bear study team, said there is usually a single interaction where a person is harmed in the first six months of any year. Data from the interagency team dating back to 1992 shows that 17% of injury-induced interactions occur in the first six months...

Stephanie Blais, 44, was killed on Thursday after she was attacked by the black bear outside the cabin at McKie Lake, near Buffalo Narrows . Blais had been on the phone with her father, Hubert Esquirol, at the time of the attack. Her nine-year-old son watched horrifically from inside the cabin . A conservation officer said that the bear attack was unprovoked. They also said the bear was not hungry and had a stomach full of berries. A Canadian woman was fatally mauled by a bear while outside her family's cabin while on the phone with her father, and to...

Colorado has a bear problem. Pure and simple, we have too many bears.. When I was a kid growing up .. my brother and I spent a lot of time in the woods. We were hiking, backpacking, exploring, hunting and climbing around all the time in the high country. Never once did we see a bear. I clearly recall the first time I ever saw a bear in the woods, and I was 31 years old, in 1993. Not too long after that, I took over the outfitting permits in Marble, Colorado, and I remember one day when I saw...

This isn't about picking on the boss or someone you know. But literally don't go out and poke a wild bear. In a video shared on Facebook by The Hunting News, here's another guy that just wants to be friends with a wild bear. Yep, a wild bear. Gee I wonder whats going to happen. A word to the wise don't go looking for trouble. Doesn't matter if you've seen this bear a million times when you were out on your nature walk. Bears are wild. Give them plenty of room and never corner one for fun, especially a bear....

U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)-On 31 May, 2019, at about 1 p.m., a woman hiking with her husband on a popular trail near Aspen, Colorado, was bitten in an unprovoked attack by a black bear. She was bitten on the thigh and required hospitalization for a short period. Most bears that show no fear of humans have become acclimated to humans. Bears that have no fear of humans are likely to test humans to see if humans are potential prey. Eventually, the bears have a good chance of causing harm.The case illustrates how effective a pistol could be at stopping bear attacks,...

California police are reminding drivers to lock their car doors after a bear let itself inside an unlocked vehicle near Lake Tahoe and destroyed the interior. The bear couldn't escape as easily as it had entered the vehicle and became trapped inside, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday. "The bear had somehow locked the doors and broke the handles off, so they couldn’t open it from the outside," Sgt. Dave Hunt told FOX40 Sacramento. While trapped inside, the bear apparently ripped the seats apart, tore open the glove compartment and pulled down part of the ceiling. The animal also urinated, defecated and spit all over the destroyed...

Many places on the Internet continue to claim that bear spray is more effective at stopping bear attacks than firearms. There is no objective source for these claims. They are mostly based on a spurious comparison of the deterrent effects of bear spray on curious or food seeking bears compared to a selection of bear attacks where firearms were present, and sometimes used.  It is not a valid comparison.  Author Dave Smith explains the problem: Efficacy of Firearms for Bear Deterrence in Alaska and Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska were 2 halves of a straw man argument...

Opinion Flurry of Bear Attacks in Fall of 2018, Are You At Risk?Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- It is the season for bear attacks. Bears are very active in the fall, when they must accumulate enough calories to lard up for hibernation. At the same time, human hunters are out and about, hunting all game animals, putting human hunters in the same areas with heavy bear populations. In the last month, there have been several bear attacks in the news. On 9 September 2018, Dr. Brad Johnson was attacked and severely mauled. He had bear spray in his hand.  He was attacked...

A Wyoming hunting guide was fatally mauled and his client was injured when a pair of grizzly bears attacked them Friday, officials said.{snip} Uptain and Chubon were attacked by bears as they field dressed the elk they had shot Thursday but were only able to find Friday, officials said. The bears “aggressively charged” the men and didn’t touch the dead elk, Teton County officials said.{snip} Authorities later euthanized two grizzly bears, a mother and a cub, who wildlife managers believe killed guide Mark Uptain and wounded his client Corey Chubon near the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks border, according...

BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. (AP) -- A woman says her dog has died after warding off a bear that broke into her family's North Carolina home. WRAL reported Saturday that the incident occurred in Black Mountain, a town outside Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Tiffany Merrill said she thought she was going to die when the bear broke in. She yelled to her children to shut their doors. Her dog Pickles quickly appeared. Merrill said the five-pound dog "started barking and got the bear's attention and got the bear outside and he saved my life." Merrill said she couldn't save...

RATON, N.M. - A New Mexico man is sharing his story of survival after he was attacked by a bear while walking his dogs. He killed the bear while its jaw was clamped around his leg, and the jaw stayed that way for a while. ... When he saw me, he pinned his ears down and immediately made a big charge at me," said Petrini. That's when the struggle began. "Down the hill, we went again rolling and he had bit me a time or two but he was never able to get on my upper body, so my legs...

A crazed grizzly tore off part of a park ranger's scalp, half of an ear and several puncture wounds. Miraculously, he survives and managed to drive himself to the hospital. “Suddenly I was just run over,” Jordan Carbery said. “It felt like two football players tackling me. The next thing I realize is that the bear had my head in its mouth and was picking me up.” Park Ranger Carberry had gone outside of his home in Bella Coola, British Columbia, to investigate a noise. He spotted a couple of bear cubs in one of his cherry trees. Then he...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – A 5-year-old girl suffered serious injuries after she was attacked by a bear overnight in east Orchard Mesa. The girl had gone outside around 2:30 a.m. early Sunday to investigate noises she thought were being made by her dog, the girl’s mother told Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers. But the girl’s mother heard her daughter screaming and went outside to see a “large black bear” dragging her daughter, CPW officials said. The bear dropped the girl after her mother screamed at it. Their home is in the east Orchard Mesa area, above the Colorado River corridor,...

In the Land of the Midnight Sun, those who traverse the Last Frontier must choose to carry or not carry, and they must choose wisely. As I coast into what may be my sunset years, I have come to realize there are two kinds of people in this world. Some of us believe there are things out there that will hurt or kill you, and there are some who do not. A few of the things pretty high on my list include a summer lightning storm, a poisonous snake, a crazed terrorist and an 800-pound bear. People on the other...

Two men met a grizzly bear while scouting for hunting areas and the encounter didn't end well. Both men were badly mauled by the bear. Two men were hiking and scouting new areas for potential hunting grounds in British Columbia when they encountered a sow grizzly bear with cubs. The protective bear mauled both men and put them both in the hospital. The attack occurred in the Dewar Creek area of the southern Purcell Wilderness Conservancy north of Kimberly, where the two men are from. "It happened on Saturday, June 10 at about 9 p.m.," said Conservation Officer Joe Carravetta....

This video shows Todd Orr a former Trails Engineer at Gallatin National Forest records himself talking about the aftermath of a bear attack that he encounter while on a hike. He stated, "he had pepper spray with him and did use it to defend himself but wasn't much help”, but it was better than nothing. Here's the excerpt from the video: Yeah, life sucks in Bear Country. Just had a Grisley with two cubs come at me from about 80 yards and, uh, I sprayed the shit out of her with bear spray, and then I went on my face...