this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Side note: In Sweden, the general advice for bears is "play dead", but maybe Canadian bears are different?
Depends on the bear. Black bears are cowards and you can generally just make noise or act big to scare them. Brown or grizzlies you'll want to play dead and pray then don't try to eat you. Polar bears, good luck, better have one of those boxes really close by.
The rule on black bears can go out the window if they are worried about their young, super hungry, or young and inexperienced with humans.
Someone with better knowledge can correct me but that's what I was taught when I was a kid.
Let me see if I remember this correctly…
If it is black, fight back
If it is brown, lie down
If it is white, good night
If it's yellow or green, it's just not clean.
Oh wait, that's not hiking advice. That's a quote from the 2003 Disney animated film Brother Bear.
Red touch yellow, kill a fellow; red touch black, friend of Jack
(snake advice)
I thought that was from a Charmin commercial
Lol, I actually wondered if anybody would end up seeing it without context like that.
I've had over a dozen black bear encounters, and two grizzly. The blacks I've just made a lot of noise and looked like more trouble than it's worth.
The first grizzly I just froze and he lost interest or couldn't see me (I was downwind) and the second I had my nephew get behind me and keep me between us as he crept away. The bear watched and then went back to grubbing a log, so I slowly moved directly away from him.
I'm still alive so I must be doing something right, besides the part where I don't backpack where the bears are.
I believe in North America, the same advice is generally true, except for black bears, which are pretty stupid and easily scared away. The Humane Society advises you in the case of a black bear sighting to make yourself appear larger and more aggressive than the bear, and the bear will almost always run away. If the bear does attack, you can't play dead. You have to fight back.
There are plenty of news stories about black bears being warded off by small dogs. They're not much of a threat.