How to boost your odds in bear country

Looking for advice on how to avoid or survive a bear attack? Consider the source.

As recently as 1990, a publication of the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority offered this advice: "Unprovoked attacks in the wilderness are rare, but they do occur. For unexplained reasons, human couples engaged in sexual intercourse, especially during thunderstorms, have been attacked and killed by grizzlies."

This admonition was based on a pair of attacks on the same night in 1967 that killed two women in Montana's Glacier National Park. Those attacks also spawned the conventional wisdom — now considered false by experts — that bears are prone to attack menstruating women.

As zany as the Canadian advice sounds, heeding it won't provoke an attack. But acting on bad advice from a friend or your husband might.

A more comprehensive analysis

John Hechtel, a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist who has studied bears for 35 years, uses the Canadian advice to illustrate how, in recent decades, experts have learned much more about what provokes bear attacks and how victims can unwittingly exacerbate attacks.

Hechtel believes you have a good chance to avoid or survive a bear attack, if you learn a bit more about bears.

Hechtel's latest analysis was based on 207 bear attacks in Alaska between 1980 and 2014. He presented his preliminary findings at the recent conference of the International Association for Bear Research and Management in Anchorage.

"You have control over most of the important factors that determine your safety," Hechtel says. "This knowledge and preparation can empower you to act appropriately around bears and avoid an attack."

Who is attacked?

Hechtel should know. He is Alaska's most knowledgeable expert on bear attacks. He was a major player, along with Dr. Stephen Herrero from the University of Calgary and others, in developing a series of bear-safety videos, including "Staying Safe in Bear Country." Since retiring in 2008, Hechtel has consulted with state and federal agencies on bear safety.

He limited his latest analysis to the period after 1980 because prior to that, key information on individual bear attacks is often unavailable. Also, comparatively few people jogged or biked in bear country before 1980. Including earlier bear attacks would pad the database with hunters, who now represent a much smaller proportion of backcountry users.

Hechtel found that 86 percent of attacks in Alaska involved brown bears. Black bears added up to only 10 percent of attacks. For the remainder, the species was unknown. State epidemiologist Dr. John Middaugh found similar proportions in Alaska bear attacks between 1900 and 1985. Bear behavior hasn't changed during the past century, but human behavior in bear country has.

Bear experts believe that most charges are warnings; the bear may have no intention of making contact, although in a fluid situation unexpected things can happen. In legalistic terms, a bear attack mirrors the difference between human assault and battery, where assault is a threat of harm and battery is actual physical impact.

When a bear charges, there is no way to determine whether the assault will lead to battery. Luckily, most bear charges do not result in human injuries. And most charges aren't reported to authorities or the media. Therefore, Hechtel believes that attempting to include every known charge, even those where the bear is shot before making contact, could bias the data. For his analysis, he defined an "attack" as one in which the bear makes contact with one or more people.

Alaska has averaged about five attacks by brown bears annually since 1980. Someone is attacked by a black bear only about once every other year. These figures alone should give lie to one article of faith often repeated by those who don't know bears — that black bears are more dangerous than brown bears. Factor in another variable — black bears are five or six times more numerous than brown bears in Alaska — and the myth that black bears are more dangerous is easily discredited.

Attacks have nearly doubled since the 1980s. The increase seems to track human population growth during the same period. Hechtel didn't attempt to measure human activity, but the growing number of attacks appears to be correlated with the number of people recreating in bear country.

Why are they attacked?

Most bear attacks are defensive, usually brown bear sows defending cubs, or a brown bear defending a large carcass or surprised at close range. Hechtel found 73 percent of all bear attacks in Alaska were defensive, 8 percent of the bears were curious or seeking human food and 10 percent of attacks couldn't be classified. Only 10 percent of bear attacks appeared to be predatory in nature.

Most bear attacks occur in July, August and September. Summer and early fall are also the months when the woods are inundated with people, and many of those people are recreating or working on or near salmon-spawning streams, concentrating bears and people in the same place at the same time. Because most bears hibernate, attacks are much less frequent December through April.

Spawning salmon aren't a necessary ingredient. The main factor seems to involve the likelihood of surprise encounters, so any place with seasonal concentrations of bears and people not accompanied by a bear guide or subject to active oversight is likely to experience maulings.

Attacks are not randomly distributed. Forty-four percent of brown bear attacks in Alaska have occurred on the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island or in the vicinity of Anchorage.

Hunters, mostly deer and moose hunters, suffered 29 percent of the attacks. Surprisingly, only 2 percent of attacks involved anglers. Other recreationists were victims in 42 percent of attacks. People working in bear country or going about their daily business constituted 13 and 12 percent of attacks, respectively.

Hechtel is still completing and refining the database and hopes to learn more about the circumstances and factors involved.

Human food has long been known to attract bears, and bears that seek out human food are known as "food-conditioned bears." Food conditioning is often implicated in human-bear conflicts.

Recently, Ted Spraker, chairman of the Alaska Board of Game and another former Fish and Game biologist, called food conditioning a myth.  Spraker believes bears become "site conditioned" and will return to sites they've visited, but not necessarily because of the food. But if bears don't look for food supplied by humans, why in the world do bear hunters perch in trees next to bait stations?

Spraker also believes the state must kill a lot more bears to increase moose and caribou populations for hunters.

What can you do about it?

According to Hechtel "most attacks are preventable" and "your behavior can make a big difference."

Hechtel recommends always carrying a deterrent in an easy-to-reach location — in other words, not inside your pack. Be careful with attractants like fish, garbage and food around your home and camp.

The 10-minute video, "Staying Safe in Bear Country" offers useful advice and real-life situations but lacks the segment of the video that describes how to read a bear's body language, which helps determine whether an attack is defensive or aggressive.

Find a copy of the entire video at your local library or Fish and Game office.

After every bear-safety talk, someone asks whether bear spray works, or which is a better deterrent — a can of bear spray or a firearm. Hechtel fielded several of these questions. He wasn't willing to pick one deterrent over the other — he acknowledges it depends on personal preference and experience.

However, he did note that bear spray appears to be at least as effective as a firearm in deterring attacks in most confrontations with bears. With a firearm the goal is to kill or disable the bear, not an easy task with a charging, adrenaline-stoked beast at close range. A whiff of bear spray can discourage a bear without hurting it.

Large-caliber shotguns and rifles can stop a bear attack, but you can't strap one to your belt so they aren't always at hand. Most handguns aren't large enough to stop a bear. And if you don't have lots of gun-handling experience or comfort with a firearm, carrying one is liable to do more harm than good.

I cringe whenever someone tells me they are carrying an unfamiliar handgun supplied by a concerned friend or husband.

If you don't believe in statistics, perhaps one anecdote will suffice. A Yukon woman attacked by a bear in 2015 was accidentally shot by her husband.  No one has ever been killed during a bear attack by bear spray.

Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News. Contact him at rickjsinnott@gmail.com