Free Republic

Few studies have examined the effectiveness of firearms in defense against bears. This may be because early experience with modern firearms against bears showed them to be incredibly effective compared to muzzleloading firearms, which were far superior to bows and spears.Before Christopher Columbus pioneered a regular and profitable way to travel to the Caribbean and the New World, Amerindians had difficulty defending themselves and their food against grizzly bears.Grizzly bears migrated into the area occupied by the 48 contiguous states a bit after humans, about 12,000 to 16,000 years ago. The bears originated in Europe and Asia, and had colonized...

Some people can't be taught. That brings us to Downieville, a Gold Rush village up in the Sierras where an elderly woman living alone was mauled by a bear who broke into her house and killed her. ... a sheriff’s deputy found Miller’s lifeless body in her kitchen. Her right leg and left arm had been partially gnawed off. On the floor around her were the large paw prints of a bear. ... autopsy determined that Miller had likely been killed by the animal after it broke into her home... fatal bear attack on a human. ... people who live...

Yellowstone National Park confirmed an 11-year-old male grizzly was captured and killed Wednesday after repeatedly knocking over bear-resistant dumpsters. Officials say the grizzly had repeatedly sought out human food. ======================================================================= A grizzly bear was captured and killed in Yellowstone National Park this week after becoming too used to human food. It’s the first grizzly to be killed within the boundaries of Yellowstone since 2017. The National Park Service (NPS) announced that the 11-year-old male grizzly had repeatedly sought out human food, turning over several bear-proof dumpsters and bear-resistant trash cans in several different areas of the park between April 3...

DOWNIEVILLE, Calif. — Patrice Miller, 71, lived by herself in a small yellow house beneath towering mountain peaks on the edge of a burbling river in this Sierra County village. She doted on her cats and her exotic orchids, and was known to neighbors for her delicious homemade bread. One fall afternoon, after Miller had failed for several days to make her customary appearance at the town market, a store clerk asked authorities to check on her.A short time later, a sheriff’s deputy found Miller’s lifeless body in her kitchen. Her right leg and left arm had been partially gnawed...

An 88-year-old man and a dog were killed in apparently separate bear attacks near the victim's home in Florida, officials said. The Collier County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call shortly after 7 a.m. Monday involving a "bear encounter." The attacks occurred "some time apart" on Monday, and the man and the dog were found within a couple of hundred yards of the area, according to FWC spokesperson George Reynaud. His daughter saw a bear attack the dog and then went looking for her father, who is believed to have been attacked earlier on Monday, Reynaud said.

A North Carolina man uses a bear suit to scare black bears off his lawn. Some Wyomingites said trying that with a grizzly would be insane. They could maul you, or worse, try to get frisky. A North Carolina man uses a bear suit black bears off his lawn. Some Wyomingites said trying that with a grizzly would be insane. They could maul you, or worse, try to get frisky. (Rodney Clark) A North Carolina man took a creative and goofy approach to bear deterrence —stepping out of his house in a bear suit to spook away a black bear...

The Musk-Deranged and DOGE-Deranged media appear to have stumbled on a new genre of coverage: the horrendous fate that will befall Americans due to DOGE cuts across multiple federal agencies. Reaching a new height of absurdity, CBS’s Ian Lee leads viewers to infer that DOGE cuts will lead people to be eaten by bears. Watch as Lee walks viewers to an empty ranger station at Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming: .. LEE: I spoke with several senior Forest Service officials across the country, and they told me the future leadership of the agency has been wiped out, and it could...

Grizzly bears in Wyoming and the rest of the Lower 48 will remain under endangered species protection, federal officials announced — a decision immediately blasted by Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon. In a statement released Wednesday just after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced its intention to keep grizzlies listed, Gordon implied it was a political move in the last days of President Joe Biden’s administration. “It has always been clear the Biden administration had no intention of delisting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear,” Gordon says in the statement. “This latest move to keep a fully-recovered population on...

The Year-Long Day is a factual account of an overwinter in the Svalbard Archipelago, trapping foxes and hunting polar bears. It was published in 1976 and is a fascinating true story of survival and adventure. In the Arctic winter of 1970 to 1971, a trapper/hunter in the Svalbard Archipelago had to protect himself several times with gunfire from polar bears.This is not particularly unusual. It was unusual for Ivar Ruud to keep a detailed diary, make a movie, and have a book published about his experiences. Most arctic trappers and hunters do not keep detailed diaries, make movies, and...

During a crisp early Wednesday morning on October 15, 2003, near Fortine, Montana, James Beeman used a .410 shotgun to shoot and drop a charging grizzly bear at three feet.James Beeman had been having problems with raccoons in the large chicken coop he had built, about 50 yards from his 3600 square foot home. At about 3:30 a.m., he heard an unusual noise, sort of a mew-mew, but he did not sense anything amiss. At 4:30 a.m., chaos erupted in the chicken coop.The coop was 36×22 feet, with a floor 4 feet above ground level to allow the chicken droppings...

Lions running back David Montgomery has revealed how he overcame his dark thoughts. Montgomery said he was overwhelmed with stress and had suicidal thoughts when he was a rookie on the Bears in 2019, with fantasy football managers contributing to the situation. “When I was a rookie, I had a real, real stressful time in the league,” Montgomery said on Sports Illustrated’s “Fantasy Dirt” podcast with Michael Fabiano and Lindsay Rhodes. “I was at a point where I would have this suicidal thought and it just a depressing and a scary year for me. And unfortunately, fantasy, the people in...

Voting starts Wednesday in the annual Fat Bear Week contest at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, with viewers picking their favorite among a dozen brown bears fattened up to survive the winter. The contest, which is in its 10th year, celebrates the resiliency of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. The animals gorge on the abundant sockeye salmon that return to the Brooks River, sometimes chomping the fish in midair as they try to hurdle a small waterfall and make...

It's going to take some time for Ryan Beierman's scars to heal, but he's alive and well today thanks to the quick thinking and good aim of his 12-year-old son Owen. The father and son were on a bear hunt in western Wisconsin earlier this month when Owen spotted a 200 pound black bear emerge in a clearing. Owen fired a shot and struck the bear, but it ran off into the thick brush. Ryan says he and his son waited about 20 minutes for the bear to bleed out before trying to track it. [....]The elder Beierman says he...

A flurry of black bear attacks has been covered in the media in the summer of 2024. Five people were injured in the attacks. The first occurred in Alaska at a campground near Anchorage, by a male bear. The bear injured a woman’s face after scratching and biting its way into the couple’s tent. She was treated at a hospital. There was no food or other items that usually attract bears inside the tent and it’s not clear what prompted the rare encounter, Wardlow said. “These folks who were involved did everything right and this is just a very unusual...

It’s a good thing their numbers are thriving. After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gets done, polar bear safaris may be Canada’s only growth industry.. Legal Insurrection readers may recall that in 2019. I covered a book entitled “The Polar Bear Catastrophe that Never Happened” by Dr. Susan Crockford. The University of Victoria professor analyzes the latest data and reviews the questionable values in official estimates, concluding that polar bears are thriving. Subsequently, she was fired from her position at the university. However, it didn’t stop what she wrote from being true. The polar bear, the iconic image of the climate...

When Kristin Cavallari goes viral for something she said on her "Let's Be Honest" podcast, it's usually because she made an eye-opening comment about a controversial topic. This week, however, she talked about her oldest son. Cavallari, the ex-wife of former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler, revealed on her podcast that her son Camden is now playing tackle football. Her son is currently in sixth grade and is going up against much bigger opponents who are either in seventh or eighth grade. At first, she tried to hide her feelings about her son playing such a physical game. Now that she's...

ISLAND PARK — Dangling from the jaws of a 530-pound grizzly, 20-year-old Riley Hill’s body flung from side-to-side as his hunting buddy Braxton Meyers fired round after round into the bear’s hulking frame. The grizzly’s ferocious teeth sunk deep into his arm, puncturing the skin to the bone, as he screamed and fought back during the longest 30 seconds of his life. “It was lifting me off the ground and then slamming me back on the ground,” Hill said. “… It was like playing tug of war with your dog, but he was playing it with my arm and ripping...

A social media video depicting people “adopting” bears and raising them as pets is terrible idea, experts told Cowboy State Daily. They are just setting themselves up to be mauled, they said. A popular social media video that opens with a bear showing up at a family’s front door, set to a sappy love song with cute emojis littered throughout is put out there as a heartwarming tale of nature communing with humans. What the video really shows is a level of ignorance and interaction with one of the planet’s apex predators that’s really just incredibly stupid, wildlife experts told...

A man in British Columbia stopped a grizzly attack by punching the bear in the face. Some Wyoming bear experts say that say might work, but isn’t something anybody should try unless it’s a last ditch option. ===================================================================== A man who stopped an attacking grizzly in British Columbia, Canada, by punching the bear the face was just as good as he was lucky, some experienced Wyoming outdoorsmen said. It’s possible to fight off a grizzly with a stout punch to the snout, but only as an absolute last-ditch tactic. “By that point, a lot of things will have gone wrong,”...

On July 10, 2024, a 19-year-old tourist woman and her boyfriend hiking in Romania were attacked by a European brown bear. The couple was on the emergency phone line with authorities as the woman and man followed directions on how to handle a bear. The woman was attacked, dragged off, killed, and partially eaten. The bear attacked authorities attempting to recover the body and was shot and killed.The European brown bear in Romania is a sub-species of the worldwide population of brown bears. The species includes the North American Grizzly, the Japanese Ussuri brown bear, the Kodiak bear, and the...