A Good Representation of Size
 

Imagine a truly wild version of this little guy. Imagine him mad at you, for whatever reason. What on earth would (could) you do?

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I would hope the bear didn't care for the smell of feces because I would definitely mess myself. :(
Best
Les

Nope, nope, neeeewwwwwPPP!

Does a bear understand a hug? Affection?

Oh and NO,NO, NO....HELL NO, UH UH Nope, would NOT be prudent.

From another video; ''They'll kill you, you know. They just have to hit you one time.''.

The guy knows the risk. Stone Age men killed off the great bears in Europe. You know, the big ones. Used to make great piles of their skulls and bones.

There is a local restaurant called Trappers. It has a lot of mounted animals as a theme. In the lobby just inside the front door is a Kodiak bear mounted with arms up and mouth open. It is just huge and I truly can't imagine what a unarmed human can do against monster big critter except to die. Even Chuck Norris could not kick him in the head that is 11 feet in the air.

The can kill a full grow male moose with one swipe of the paw.

Well for a start I wouldn't call Leonardo.

Nope, I’d call Anthony Hopkins.

I wonder how realistic that is. Did your native Americans really kill bears like that? (The Edge)

Also that memorable ending scene from Legends Of The Fall. (Tristan Vs The Bear) :eek::eek::eek:
I think trying to fight a bear with a knife is probably not a good idea.

I've heard running down hill is your best option but at some point you'll run out of down hill.

In my younger years I backpacked in Yellowstone and Glacier parks. I carried a tin can with a rock in it. Hoping they hear me before I accidentally surprise them. I’ve seen a few Grizzlys from a distance. They scared the s—t out of me.

Always hike with someone slower than you.

I have never seen a Grizzly in the wild but when I was running rivers I did the Lower Kalamath a few times. The put in was at Happy Camp, Ca. Brown bears were always interested in us and we were very careful to elevate food, camp away from where food was made, etc.

Even the brown bears, no monsters, appear A LOT bigger in the wild.

Those claws are crazy, no wonder they can shred a human, or car for that matter, in seconds!

Many years ago a hunting guide and I were discussing what kinds of side arms would be most useful in grizzly country. His advice for those traveling alone was to carry something you could get to your own chin quickly and pull the trigger while getting pummeled on the ground by one of these things. Believing any sidearm could stop one of these things is simply wishful thinking. His advice for anyone traveling in a group, or with a partner, was to carry a .22, and use it to kneecap the other guy.

[QUOTE=Jeff Higgins;10775571 His advice for anyone traveling in a group, or with a partner, was to carry a .22, and use it to kneecap the other guy.[/QUOTE]




(note to self; never go hiking with Higgins)

I had opportunity to "play" with a young bear cub at a vet hospital once. It was the size of a small dog and kicked my ass. The little guy pushed me around like I was nothing. Can't imagine meeting a hungry one in the wild.

Ive always heard...when hiking thru bear country...you should take out your keys and shake / rattle them, making noise so the bears can clear out of your way.

You'll know when you've crossed into Grizzly country because you'll start to see keys & key chains mixed into big piles of Grizzly pooh...along the trail, just sayin.

here's some fun reading:

https://www.amazon.com/Bear-Attacks-Their-Causes-Avoidance/dp/149302941X

We used to raise Wolf Hybrids, and our big girl was 125#, and 7' long from tip of her tail, to her nose. I got the same feeling with her, that I was blessed to be allowed to live with her, and not an enemy.

I fished in Alaska on a river with my son. Large mama bear came down fishing the same river. She was close. 40 yards? Too close. She was gorgeous and peaceful in her pursuit of salmon.

I stood and watched in awe. She turned and went up river.

I didn't feel threatened but I would have moved away had she gotten nearer.

And yes, that was technically too close.

Amazing.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1583719446.jpg

Can you run faster than 30 miles an hour if you go downhill?

I saw a grizzly bear in Montana one time, through binoculars from across a river, so you don't get a good sense of size. My buddy showed me a tree that one had marked up. It was higher than I could jump, and I could do a two hand dunk of a basketball at the time.

Rattle your keys, whistle, hit your walking stick on branches. Ostensibly, they want to run into you about as much as you want to run into them. I am 100% sure that is not the case. Hang your food far from where you are sleeping. A black bear can get into a car with no problem. I shudder to think what an aroused half ton of Ursus horribilis could do. You could probably kill one with a .44 pistol, but it would maybe kill you too before it died.

Are you SERIOUSLY putting a horse, cow, donkey, and sheep into the same category as a BEAR?

I just want to point out that you are not all there upstairs:

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btw this is CGI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell

Read the rest at your own risk.

Nope not me, I would not be anywhere near that thing. I saw a Kodiak or a Grizzly at an RV show once. As big as the bear in the first post. May have been that bear. It was in a cage. It was enormous. The owner gave it a large bucket of KFC. The bear poured the chicken in it's mouth Chewed maybe three times and swallowed everything. He then gave the bear a bunch of apples. It looked like the bear was eating grapes.

You do know that Treadwell and his girlfriend were eaten, right? The video shows his empty ribcage after his guts were eaten, torn free from his legs.

A smaller bear but this is amazing.

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I was cruising down the freeway in medium traffic and at full gallop a black bear dashed out from the woods on my right ran across two lanes of freeway, a very large grassy median across two more lanes of medium traffic in the other direction and into the woods.

That bear looked straight ahead without even glancing in any direction. I estimate it was going 30mph! It happened so fast and was so unexpected it didn't register what was happening. That thing was FAST!

Another time what I thought at first was a VW Bug turned out to be a black bear running down the middle of the on-ramp just ahead of me.

I had a close encounter with a Kodiak about that size at the camp at the base of the golden stairs on the Chilcoot Trail about 15 years ago. He was 2 feet behind me...

I had 4 serious bear encounters over 3 days. The more serious one was 24 hours later when a momma treed her cub standing next to my tent and backpack. My bear spray was hanging on my pack. I fired off a bear banger and ran like hell.

Old Native American proverb: When the leaf falls in the forest, the deer hears it, the sheep sees it, and the bear smells it.

I have an older book of wildlife photography that includes a chapter on bears. The photographer, in one instance, spent a good deal of time observing a barren ground grizzly mother and her two cubs. From a distance, of course. He relates how it took him a few weeks with them to begin to realize that momma bear was absolutely blind. Didn't seem to matter much to her - she got along fine on scent and sound.

Decades ago a guy was attacked by a polar bear and all he had was a .357. He waited until the bear was over him and shot it in the head from underneath between the jawbones.

My luck the bear would fall on me and crush me.

Wish the California state animal (on the state flag) was still in existence in the state.

Went for a hike in the east side of the San Francisco Bay at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge. There's a plaque that says the bay once was full of grizzlies, wolves and the sky was black because of all the migratory birds. Imagine that!

There was a time when it would take days for a flock of passenger pigeons to pass, now they are gone.

I am absolutely 100% behind the re-introduction of the native California "golden bear". I believe the last one verified there was probably late 19th century. It's an absolute crime, what mankind has done to them, eradicating them from their natural haunts. It's high time they are restored across their historic range. For the life of me, I cannot understand why our modern day wildlife organizations - the same ones that have put so much effort into, for example, wolf recovery - are not all over this. It seems like an obvious "next step" towards restoring the natural balance of the State of California.

How do you kick all of the people out of the L.A. basin? I'd like to see more cougars and fewer hobos but OTOH, there are already too many lizards. Maybe we just spray paint the bums golden and call it good.

I was, of course, being facetious. For the most part, anyway.

There are plenty of truly wild places left in California. That may be hard to grasp from somewhere like the L.A. basin, the Bay Area, and other large population centers, but but a few days spent up north in places like Humboldt County, or up in the Sierra Nevada range, and places like that would demonstrate just how much wilderness remains in California. These areas would be eminently suitable for a large scale reintroduction of the Golden Bear.

Not that I wouldn't mind seeing them in the Los Angeles Basin, or in the Bay Area. Many of the activists that insist we need more wolves in my state, or in my neighboring states, hail from these areas. It would be nice to give them a really big, brown, somewhat cantankerous taste of their own medicine. But that's just being petty and vindictive. I'm sure a few of these roaming the Basin or the Bay Area would serve to discourage camping on your sidewalks, however... ;)

The great North American Humboldt bear (formerly known as the California Brown, or Grizzly Bear):
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1583811577.jpg

No longer an "apex predator", presumably due to a lack of wildlife in the post-1924 California "wilderness", today's nuevo era bear has made peace with the universe through a vegan diet consisting of locally available vegetables..

I think they might actually prefer locally available vegans...