Cars sometimes hit animals that cross the road. In Michigan, sometimes deer hit cars. In Montana, sometimes deer hit horses.
An incredible story came out of Montana this summer of a wrangler on a trail ride whose horse was hit by a deer. The distracted deer was running for its life from a 750 pound grizzly bear. The grizzly, thrown off by the deer/horse collision, then took up after another horse on the trail ride instead. The chaos that ensued was settled when the wrangler and her horse challenged the charging grizzly head on. A tragedy was prevented as the grizzly bear veered off and gave up the chase. The bear was hungry and its instincts took over. It was trying to get something to eat, deer, horse, human, whatever.
Triggering a grizzly’s predatory instincts is not a wise thing to do. A couple involved in a grizzly attack this summer apparently ran 157 yards before the bear caught them and ended up killing one of them. By running, they triggered the bear’s instinct to chase them and the ensuing mauling took one of their lives. The bear was just being a bear. The people unfortunately did the wrong thing at the wrong time and it was a fatal mistake.
My hiking partner Ras Erdal once had a grizzly encounter with different results than the above mentioned tragedy. He was hiking in Glacier National Park with his wife when they came upon a beat up BEAR-IN-THE-AREA warning sign in the middle of the trail. Because of the condition of the sign, they figured that it was old and not a current warning. So they continued on their hike. All of a sudden, a huge grizzly bear, not more than 20 yards away, stood up on its hind legs and starred at them.
What Ras did next probably saved his life. After an eye to eye contact, he simply froze, titled his head passively down and to the side, and slowly started backing up away from the bear. He instructed his wife to get the bear spray from his pack as they moved slowly away down the trail. The bear did not react aggressively. It simply followed them from a short ways off the trail before heading back into the forest.
The eye contact thing about down and to the side is real bear talk. A smaller bear would do it if he confronted a larger bear and there was a standoff over things like who eats the berries or who can fish in this site. The whole gesture tells the big bear that he’s the boss and that you’ll move out of his way…and that you are not prey.
The ranger that Ras reported this incident to said he couldn’t have done a smarter thing as three other hikers were mauled that same week in the area.
Ras told me he did have a camera around his neck at the time, but feared if he had tried to take a picture, he may have provoked or spooked the bear. Being alive to tell the story is a lot better than being mauled or dead with a blurry picture of a charging bear to prove it.
And speaking of pictures to prove it, my family and I were driving out of Estes Park at dusk the other day when we came upon a huge bull elk just off the side of the road. My camera unfortunately was in my backpack in the back of the car as we drove slowly by to gawk at it. We decided to turn around and get a picture. My wife was in the front passenger seat and was within a few feet of this magnificent creature as we drove by on our second pass. It was then that I got scared. All the elk had to do was turn his head and she could have been gored.
So I quickly drove by and we turned around again. This time I tried to capture the essence of this giant from across the road out the driver’s side window. As the flashes went off in the twilight, the big bull began to move away down the river bank into the darkness. The photo op disappeared, but the memory safely remains.
No comments:
Post a Comment