Grizzly Incident Count

[Bigjay73]

Limiting encounters between bears and people is a noble goal and worthy of thought and investment. That said, maybe it's worthwhile to just recognize that when we have healthy populations of grizzlies and people living around each other, people and bears are going to get killed from time to time. It's sad, but is it necessarily a problem that needs to be "solved?" Seems more like a fact of life in certain areas.

I tend to think that the differences between Alaska and say, Montana, have more to do with the bears, their lifestyle and the landscape, than they do with hunting. My wife worked in the backcountry of Denali Nat. Park for a while, where I don't believe the bears experienced much hunting pressure, and her level of concern about the bear danger seemed markedly less than a lot of the people who recreate in the northern Rockies. In fact, I seem to recall some paper that I read in college (in Montana) about correlations between bear's diets and their likelihood of attacking humans...

Read am article about how moths, yes, moths make up a significant portion of grizzlies diet, I believe it was Wyoming grizzlies. Article stated they would eat upwards of 40,000 a day to gain fat fornrhe winter. Makes sense that given the choice between chasing 40,000 moths, or a single human wrapped in a north face tortilla, a bear would take the easy calories.

Edit, found article:

‘Like butter for bears’: the grizzlies who dine on 40,000 moths a day

The tiny army cutworm moth provides a surprisingly nutritious meal for the giant carnivores – but humans are getting in the way

www.theguardian.com

 

[Elky Welky]

The recent beattie gulch incident isn't even the most recent anymore. Opening day of rifle a hunter shot a grizzly in the south gravelies

Correct, the Gravelly shooting is what the newspaper article I linked is about.

 

[Sasquatchewan]

How come Canada and Alaska don't have near the problems we have in the lower 48 with bears when they have 30x the bear population?

I think there are a few factors at play. You're obviously going to have more fatal bear encounters when you have more people in bear country with firearms, ie spring and fall hunting seasons, which also coincides with sows leaving the den with cubs in spring and bears racing to fatten up for winter during fall. Summer sees a lot more tourists running around the bush with mostly bear spray which more likely results non-fatal encounters and most likely a lot less reported, at a time where there is plenty of food around for bears to eat.

On your comment, the lower 48s get a lot more pressure from hunters in grizzly country during hunting season. Canada sees a lot less as BC and AB have most of the grizzly population with a tiny fraction of what the lower 48s see in terms of hunting pressure. Also, tourism in the area is limited to hikers with bear spray and most focus in certain popular areas. You will almost never hear instances of hikers shooting a grizzly in Canada as it is illegal to carry firearms in National Parks, where the vast majority of tourist/bear interaction occurs.

I think its just a matter of "people pressure" at certain times of the year and in the right locations. Canada and Alaska simply doesn't see the same amount of traffic in bear country.

 

[Benfromalbuquerque]

I think there are a few factors at play. You're obviously going to have more fatal bear encounters when you have more people in bear country with firearms, ie spring and fall hunting seasons, which also coincides with sows leaving the den with cubs in spring and bears racing to fatten up for winter during fall. Summer sees a lot more tourists running around the bush with mostly bear spray which more likely results non-fatal encounters and most likely a lot less reported, at a time where there is plenty of food around for bears to eat.

On your comment, the lower 48s get a lot more pressure from hunters in grizzly country during hunting season. Canada sees a lot less as BC and AB have most of the grizzly population with a tiny fraction of what the lower 48s see in terms of hunting pressure. Also, tourism in the area is limited to hikers with bear spray and most focus in certain popular areas. You will almost never hear instances of hikers shooting a grizzly in Canada as it is illegal to carry firearms in National Parks, where the vast majority of tourist/bear interaction occurs.

I think it’s just a matter of "people pressure" at certain times of the year and in the right locations. Canada and Alaska simply doesn't see the same amount of traffic in bear country.

So to summarize: armed gorbies in the bush during hyperphagia is causation?

 

[Sasquatchewan]

So to summarize: armed gorbies in the bush during hyperphagia is causation?

Big words, nerd!

 

[BuzzH]

Another thing to consider, many of the people getting in a jam simply have not lived around grizzlies, don't understand the bears and habitats they prefer depending on time of year, take even the most basic precautions, etc. Where I've hunted my whole life in Montana there has always been grizzlies, as they increased in number, I changed how I do things. So far, so good, not one bad encounter.

Also fair to note, it seems the further some folks live from a grizzly bear, the more adamant they are about how to deal with them.

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

I'll say idc if you have bear spray or a bazooka, if you aren't alert and have your head on a swivel at all times your in big trouble cause stuff happens very fast.

 

[theat]

Another thing to consider when comparing AK to the lower 48 is how griz encounters are reported. I have talked to several hunters in AK that had to kill a griz in self defense. The reported it to the troopers and in 2 cases a trooper came out and did a quick investigation and in the other the hunters gave interviews over the phone. I couldn’t find any reporting on any of those shootings in either the Fairbanks or Anchorage papers or anywhere else for that matter. It seems that self defense bear shootings just don’t get the media attention up there that they do down here.

Another thing to consider is that many resident hunters in AK will have a griz tag and if they kill one in self defense they just tag it.

I’ve spent some time in both Denali and Gates of the Arctic parks. I had close encounters with multiple griz in each park and those bears didn’t want anything to do with us. Once they caught our scent, they immediately took off running for miles, sometimes crossing rivers and climbing thousands of feet over mountains to get away from us. Those bears don’t get hunted so I think it is something other than being hunted that makes them act that way.

 

[Hplayer13]

Bearsssssss

 

[Bambistew]

I don't think its fair to compare AK bears to L48 bears for a lot of reasons. There is really limited opportunity to interact with most of the bear population here, so stating we have a lot of bears means we should also have a lot of interactions isn't a fair assumption. There is so much country up here that sees zero human traffic each year, where as in the L48, most is accessible and sees people many times a year. Also the availability of food for them is vastly different. We see bears on the rivers all the time, and they couldn't care less. Most have never been hunted. How many bears are shot in the villages here and no one every hears about it? None of that is tracked, and none of it makes it to the news or SM. There is a lot more bears in the L48 now, IMO that is the main reason there are so many interactions.

We still have plenty of interactions, mauling's and a death about every year or more it seems even with liberal hunting seasons and no permit required in most of the state. With unlimited hunting, shouldn't the mauling's be zero?

 

[atlas]

I would like to see the incident count for brown bears in Western Europe. Italy and France have remnant populations and Spain has a recovering population of over 300 bears. There are a lot of people there...

 

[MTLabrador]

I get a kick out of people thinking that the extremely limited hunting that will eventually happen in the lower 48 will ever have an impact on their behavior. Shooting a very small handful of individual bears won’t do a damn thing to change the way they behave.

 

[Southern Elk]

I get a kick out of people thinking that the extremely limited hunting that will eventually happen in the lower 48 will ever have an impact on their behavior. Shooting a very small handful of individual bears won’t do a damn thing to change the way they behave.

It’s the same folks that say gunshots attract them. No, a nose that’s better than a bloodhound attracts them.

 

[rjthehunter]

Start a new thread for this...

Allow me to bring it back to where it started...

It is related. He wants bears to be delisted. So he suggests using spray instead of a gun...

You know, because "bears will never be delisted" if people keep having to shoot them in self defense.

I think a better stance to have bears delisted would be "hey we've reached population goals in certain areas. It's time to manage them" not "don't shoot them to protect yourself". Population goals have been met in certain areas, they haven't been delisted. I don't think a few bears a year is going to make any real difference in the population.

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has an estimated 1,063 grizzlies. Lets say 5 get shot a year. That's 0.47% of the population. Even if 10 bears get killed, that's still less than 1% of the population. People shooting bears in self defense has little to no impact on whether they get delisted or not.

 

[mtmuley]

Another thing to consider, many of the people getting in a jam simply have not lived around grizzlies

This will happen in the Bitterroot soon I bet. mtmuley

 

[PaulRevere]

Allow me to bring it back to where it started...

It is related. He wants bears to be delisted. So he suggests using spray instead of a gun...

You know, because "bears will never be delisted" if people keep having to shoot them in self defense.

I think a better stance to have bears delisted would be "hey we've reached population goals in certain areas. It's time to manage them" not "don't shoot them to protect yourself". Population goals have been met in certain areas, they haven't been delisted. I don't think a few bears a year is going to make any real difference in the population.

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has an estimated 1,063 grizzlies. Lets say 5 get shot a year. That's 0.47% of the population. Even if 10 bears get killed, that's still less than 1% of the population. People shooting bears in self defense has little to no impact on whether they get delisted or not.

How many years have you lived in MT?

 

[MTLabrador]

Allow me to bring it back to where it started...

It is related. He wants bears to be delisted. So he suggests using spray instead of a gun...

You know, because "bears will never be delisted" if people keep having to shoot them in self defense.

I think a better stance to have bears delisted would be "hey we've reached population goals in certain areas. It's time to manage them" not "don't shoot them to protect yourself". Population goals have been met in certain areas, they haven't been delisted. I don't think a few bears a year is going to make any real difference in the population.

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has an estimated 1,063 grizzlies. Lets say 5 get shot a year. That's 0.47% of the population. Even if 10 bears get killed, that's still less than 1% of the population. People shooting bears in self defense has little to no impact on whether they get delisted or not.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t kill a grizzly that was threatening me, because I would, and I nearly have a couple times. But all human caused mortality does have an impact on delisting and hunting grizzlies.

Under the last proposed management plan there is a limit on all human caused mortality which includes vehicle strikes, bears killed as management actions, bears killed in self defense, and eventually bears killed by hunters. In many years the mortality limit is met, and if delisted, meeting the limit would shut down all grizzly hunting.

And I wouldn’t drop my rifle to pick up bear spray, but I’d trust spray before a pistol every time.

 

[BuzzH]

I’m not saying I wouldn’t kill a grizzly that was threatening me, because I would, and I nearly have a couple times. But all human caused mortality does have an impact on delisting and hunting grizzlies.

Under the last proposed management plan there is a limit on all human caused mortality which includes vehicle strikes, bears killed as management actions, bears killed in self defense, and eventually bears killed by hunters. In many years the mortality limit is met, and if delisted, meeting the limit would shut down all grizzly hunting.

And I wouldn’t drop my rifle to pick up bear spray, but I’d trust spray before a pistol every time.

You'll have to forgive the Minnesota grizzly bear expert.

You're absolutely right. When Montana had a season, not that long ago, it was managed the same way. Any human caused mortality was counted against the quota then as well. Back then, spilled corn on railroad tracks in NW Montana and the train hitting them was a big source of mortality.

That often took a bunch of the mortality quota.

 

[sapperJ24]

I think a better stance to have bears delisted would be "hey we've reached population goals in certain areas. It's time to manage them" not "don't shoot them to protect yourself". Population goals have been met in certain areas, they haven't been delisted. I don't think a few bears a year is going to make any real difference in the population.

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has an estimated 1,063 grizzlies. Lets say 5 get shot a year. That's 0.47% of the population. Even if 10 bears get killed, that's still less than 1% of the population. People shooting bears in self defense has little to no impact on whether they get delisted or not.

A few individual deaths is not the issue, it is the aggregation of all human caused mortality that is the problem. I'll use the numbers from the NCDE Grizzly Bear Population Monitoring Team Annual Report from 2021 as I live and work within it and thus are more familiar with it than the GYE. This report projects 1,163 bears in the NCDE in 2023.

"Fifty-five known or probable grizzly bear mortalities were documented in the NCDE during 2021." A continuation of this trend with the addition of five or ten more females could jeopardize the population, state management efforts, and overall population effectiveness.

Based on the NCDE Subcommittee guidance, the maximum threshold for the number of independent female mortalities for 2021 was set at 24, and there were 18 documented total female mortalities of which 12 were independent bears. So maybe a little room on an annual basis.

Another threshold set by the subcommittee is that the annual survival rate for independent females must be at 0.93 or greater. "For the 6-year period 2016–2021, we estimated an annual survival rate of 0.93 (± 0.01 SE) for independent females within the DMA, which meets the minimum threshold rate of 0.93 (NCDE Subcommittee 2019)." And so the overall trend is a bit touchier with losses of independent females.

All of these mortalities from self defense, travel corridors, conflicts, etc. take away from potential hunting opportunities.

 

[406dn]

And I wouldn’t drop my rifle to pick up bear spray, but I’d trust spray before a pistol every time.

That is my logic as well.

There is not going to be a Grizzly Bear hunting season anytime soon. If a person can't see the political reality of that, they are wearing blinders. Could the population handle limited hunting, imo, yes. But there is so much more to it than that. I used to hold out hope that perhaps before my old age precluded it, there would be a season. I now think that a season is not happening anytime soon.

I hope that I'm never in the position of having to use a rifle to defend against a bear attack, but would do it, if it ever came to that. So far all of my bear encounters have been uneventful, but the next one might not be.