Take careful precautions to avoid run-ins with grizzlies if you’re hunting in their stomping grounds. 

Photo above by Vic Schendel

Hunters are most likely to experience bear problems in three broad-category situations: while looking for game, while camping, and while handling, dressing, retrieving, or transporting downed animals. The primary rule when hunting in grizzly or polar bear country is to always be alert for bears, and/or to “stay bear aware.” That these maxims are practically clichés by now is unfortunate, because clichés tend to go right through people’s ears, or at most receive a gratuitous nod. “Stay bear aware, right, got it. Will do.” The advice is good, but a bit too pat and vague to be very helpful.

A biologist friend likes to be a little more specific. He tells Montana hunters, “Think grizzly, and think defensively. Assume that grizzlies are in the area, and that an encounter is very possible. Anticipate scenarios and how you will handle them. Have your self-defense deterrents within reach, and know how to use them in a hurry. Practice with gun and bear spray before you go hunting. Know the guidelines for handling different types of encounters.” 

That’s an excellent start, but to really lower the odds of bear trouble in the key situations, we need to delve into more concrete details. 

In grizzly country, for instance, “being alert for bears” means not only scanning for actual animals near and far, but also looking closely for evidence that bruins are in the vicinity. Bears tend to leave plenty of sign. Claw marks raked into tree bark; tufts of hair stuck in the bark of “rubbing trees” and fence wire; berry bushes bent, broken, and imperfectly stripped of fruit; logs torn apart (by grub-seeking bruins); digs where a bear has unearthed roots or ground squirrels; large, oval bedding depressions in grass or other vegetation; half-buried carcass caches; and of course scat and tracks. Several scat piles in one fairly small area can signal that you are near a bear’s bedding site. 

Fresh tracks are important sign, of course, and it’s worth knowing how to distinguish a grizzly print from a black bear’s. Griz tracks are not necessarily larger, but the claws are usually longer than the toe marks, and the toe marks are jammed tightly together on a fairly straight line. Black bear toe marks are spaced apart and form a noticeable arc from large toe to small, with claw marks seldom longer than the toes. Remember, the idea here is to avoid bear trouble before it happens, so if you are encountering fresh grizzly sign or an abundance of sign, the smart move might be to change course or leave the area entirely and find another place to hunt. 

Be especially alert and ready to defend yourself when hunting in the following high-risk conditions: In thick, heavy cover (where a large percentage of sudden grizzly charges occur); along noisy waterways, especially in tall cover; and on high-wind days. If you are hunting along and suddenly pick up the whiff or stench of a dead animal, don’t investigate. Back up and move well away to avoid the possibility of running into a carcass-defending griz, which could very well react with a defensive charge. 

If you see a bear that hasn’t yet seen you, move out of sight quietly and leave the vicinity. If you see or meet a bear that sees you or approaches, stay calm, don’t call out or yell, don’t run or try to climb a tree, but do stand your ground and prepare your deterrent and/or weapon. If the bear doesn’t approach, slowly move back and away. Stop if the bear comes forward and stand your ground with weapons ready.

For hunters in grizzly country, one of the most potentially dangerous situations occurs after a game animal is down. This should be considered a prime-risk, red-alert time, and treated as such. (The risk is even higher if you are alone.) Have your bear spray at hand and your rifle or sidearm loaded, with a round chambered, and within easy reach. If possible, move the carcass away from thick brush and into the comparative open. If you are alone, stop, stand, and survey the surroundings every few minutes. Stay attuned to natural sounds around you, such as rustling brush, the crackle or crunch of leaves or twigs, alarm-chattering squirrels or scolding birds–any of which might signal an approaching predator. With partners, one person stands armed (with both spray and gun) and ready while the other does the field-dressing. If both people are needed to move or lift the carcass, at least one should keep surveying the surroundings during the effort, loaded weapon(s) within reach. When the gut pile is removed, it should be immediately placed on a piece of tarp or thick plastic drop-cloth and skidded as far as feasible (100 yards if possible) from the carcass. Bears will almost always go for a gut pile first. If you must leave the carcass, or part of it, for later retrieval, mark it with a stick and bright flagging tape. On the return trip, glass the flagged stick from a safe distance. If it has been disturbed, you know a bear might have found the meat. (Even better, attach a motion-detecting alarm device like a Critter Gitter to the carcass. The high-pitched alarm and flashing lights will ward off bears and other scavengers.) Whenever possible, pack rather than drag out game meat. Dragging leaves a scent trail bears can follow. Make plenty of noise while hauling out meat, to help alert and hopefully drive off any bears in the area.  

Another prime time and location for bear trouble is while camping, and in a camp, “bear trouble” can mean more than personal safety. Anyone who has returned from a morning’s hunt to find tents, sleeping bags, packs, camp stove, lanterns, and miscellaneous other (expensive) gear torn, clawed, bitten, crushed, or carried off knows a thing or two about bear problems. I’ve also seen boats, rafts, and even a float plane wrecked or damaged by marauding bruins. (We’re talking about all three kinds of bears here: black, brown, and polar.) Camp-raiding night bears are another, more startling and serious, kind of problem, and the rare camp-invading predatory bear should be considered a possibility. 

Start by positioning your camp wisely. Of course you want to be a good distance from any known bear trails or travel routes. Bears also use human trails, game trails, river and stream banks, and lake shores as travel and foraging lanes, so it’s best not to set up camp too closely to such thoroughfares. Whenever possible, choose a clearing for your tent site and avoid camping close to thick cover. 

Everyone has heard the basic rule: “Keep a clean camp in bear country,” but not everyone realizes what a clean camp really means these days. First comes a sub-rule: Don’t sleep where you cook and eat. Ideally, the cook site should be about 100 yards from the sleeping tent, but this isn’t always realistic. Sometimes 100 feet or less is the best you can do, and that can suffice if the cleanup is scrupulous. Locate your cook site so that you can see an approaching bear while cooking or eating. (Try not to cook or eat near thick cover, or where your view of the surroundings is blocked.) Note the wind direction and remember that a bear is more likely to approach from downwind. Never leave food unattended (even if it’s sizzling in a pan). Despite being large, even cumbersome animals, bears have a way of suddenly appearing out of nowhere, especially when there are edibles to be had. Don’t try to burn or bury leftover food or garbage. What’s left behind in the fire ring or covered underground is enough to attract a bear. Ursid noses are unbelievably acute. They can smell sardines inside an unopened tin; they can pick up meat, fish, or bacon odors from as far as ten miles away, given the right atmospheric conditions. Bears have been known to break into a car and tear out the backseat to get at a food-laden ice chest locked in the trunk.

They also have a peculiar sense of what constitutes “food.” One hunter’s backpack was carried off and torn apart by a black bear because the pack contained a tube of toothpaste, which the bear ate down to the cap. Scented soaps, toiletries, and sunscreens can also attract bears. Inside a tent, crumbs from a candy bar or sandwich, a pack of chewing gum or mints, can be and have been enough to draw in a scent-following bruin. All such items, including canned goods, garbage, game scent, and clothing permeated with blood or food aromas, must be separated from the camp and either hung out of reach in bags or locked up in bear-proof storage containers. For secure tree-hanging, the bagged items should be suspended at least fifteen feet from the ground, and at least eight feet away from tree trunks. Locked bear canisters can be kept on the ground. But remember, although they are “bearproof,” they are not scent-proof. In other words, to a bear they still smell like food. So a bear can should never be kept inside or near a tent. Place it on level ground at least 100 feet away. A covering of clean pots and pans can serve as a bear alarm.

One way to make safe camping much easier, especially for hunters who have game meat or hides to protect, is to use portable electric fencing. Initially, the purist woodsman in me balked at the idea of such contraptions in the wild, but I’ve come to see the sense and value of an electric fence in certain situations. Some modern units weigh less than ten pounds, take about twenty minutes to set up, and have a very good track record at keeping out bears, including large grizzlies, even when game meat or a carcass is lying within the perimeter. (I do know of three cases where polar bears have broken through electric wire and attacked humans. True security while sleeping out in polar bear country usually involves rotational night-watches with armed guards, even when fences are used.) For an excellent review of how electric fencing works and the best ways to use it, check out biologist Tom Smith’s article, “Protecting Your Camp from Bears: Electric Fencing,” available on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website: adfg.alaska.gov. 

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The fascinating, complex, and intelligent behavior of animals never ceases to amaze us.

Photo above by Gary Kramer/garykramer.net

The hunting world is full of contradictions, some more visible than others. One of these is how often hunters, in private, share their wonder at the capacities, intelligence, and emotional expressions of wild animals, and how infrequently they do so in public.  There certainly appears to be an unstated reluctance by hunters to acknowledge or celebrate the intelligence and emotional capacity of animals, especially when there is any likelihood the discussion will drift into a debate over the ethics of hunting itself.  It seems there exists a deeply ingrained fear that discussing the shared capacities of humans and animals is a strategic mistake, and we might acknowledge that, yes, there really is some risk to this. But, will engaging in such discussions always unleash more criticisms of hunting?  Isn’t it possible that demonstrating our careful study and acknowledgement of the complex lives of other animals might lead to a better understanding of hunting and hunters?

When we talk about the minds and emotions of animals, we usually refer to their sapience and sentience.  These are technical terms but are easy to understand. Broadly speaking, sapience encompasses thinking and intelligence, whereas sentience represents the capacity to experience emotions and feelings. Advances in modern technologies, from radio-tracking devices to camera-equipped drones, have been exploding our understanding of both.

Every day we see news features that present us with incredible examples of the amazing thinking and emotional capacities animals of all kinds possess. The constant barrage of new observations into the private lives of animals, combined with scientific advances to probe ever deeper into their behaviors and relationships to other species, is leaving less and less room for those who see animals as fundamentally distinct from humans or driven solely in their behaviors by that catch-all term, instinct. The great seventeenth-century scientist and philosopher René Descartes may have been brilliant, but his belief that animals were machines and incapable of feelings has long been laid to rest.

Hunters need to recognize that the wider public is seeing animals as less and less different from humans, and it isn’t all Bambi’s fault. Through the magic of new technologies, we are all seeing with our own eyes what formerly was hidden from view by distance, darkness, or depth. Hunters must join with this new awakening or risk being out of step, once more, with social change. That, I suggest, is where the real risk lies; not in sharing our own fascination at the thinking and emotional capacities expressed by the animals we pursue. After all, our investment in observing wild animals in their natural state is exceptional by any social standard. Hunters and anglers spend more time trying to understand how animals behave than most people, by far, and are rewarded by experiences and observations that only a small segment of society will ever encounter. That knowledge is something to be celebrated, not hidden.

Many of us are familiar with methods commonly used to determine animal intelligence. Perhaps the most widely known involve mazes and/or boxes, which the animal must figure out in order to be rewarded with food. Sometimes this involves the animal needing only to navigate through a series of twists and turns, while other times it can involve multi-step processes whereby tools must be employed or repurposed, such as pushing a button or lever to access a reward. Another common test is the mirror test, in which animals are exposed to their own reflection in order to determine whether they understand the mirror to be showing them a reflection of themselves. There is truly no shortage of variation to the tests that scientists employ in their search to understand animal intelligence, and their findings have been remarkable.

While most of us have already heard about the intelligence of great apes, a growing body of evidence now points to the intelligence of a much broader array of species. For example, a study published last year revealed that New Caledonian crows are able to engage in complex puzzle-solving and can plan three steps ahead. In the test administered for this study, the crows had to select a short stick from a tube, which they then used to get a stone out of a second tube, which they could use to weight and depress a platform to get a piece of meat. This test revealed an astonishing level of problem-solving and strategizing on the part of the crows.

Outside the lab environment, researchers have also been able to identify intelligence markers by observing animal behaviors–sometimes very sneaky behaviors! For instance, researchers studying squirrels have determined that they are capable of engaging in tactical deception. When they have a nut in their possession and they are certain that they are being watched, squirrels will pretend to bury the nut, going through the entire process they normally would–digging the hole, refilling and patting it down–all the while keeping the nut hidden in their mouth to bury later when they are out of sight.

These are just a few examples of findings from recent studies of animal intelligence. In fact, this entire field of research is snowballing. Across the board, from large mammals to insects, scientists are proving more and more that the thought capacities of animals are far beyond what we had initially assumed, with creatures demonstrating incredibly sophisticated cognition. Indeed, a study of manta rays in 2016 revealed these creatures can pass the mirror test, demonstrating self-recognition, considered a high cognition capacity once thought limited to humans, chimpanzees, and dolphins. Viewed against a historic backdrop in which we consistently distinguished and distanced ourselves from all other animals, these findings are exciting for many, and certainly challenging for some. Almost every hunter I know, however, can relate their own observations of animal intelligence, striking behaviors they have witnessed and struggle to interpret.

Sapience, or intelligence, is only part of the story, however; we must also consider animal sentience. While intelligence has been tested and proven in a variety of species, measuring the emotional capacity of animals has proven a more nebulous target for researchers. Nevertheless, there has been a litany of scientific ventures across a number of disciplines, including many within the field of medical research, which shed new light on the emotional lives of animals. Findings reveal strong evidence in support of animals’ capacity to experience a diversity of positive and negative emotions, including joy, contentment, empathy, grief, sadness, fear, anxiety, anger, and jealousy.

Elephants, for example, have repeatedly been observed displaying grief and mourning over the loss of herd members. In 2016, a doctoral student studying African elephants released a video depicting how, after the death of a matriarch, three different families of elephants came to the site where she had died in order to touch her bones. While we may wonder at the motivations, few observing such behavior doubt that it indicates a sophisticated level of emotionality. Elephants have also been seen protecting the bodies of deceased loved ones from scavengers, standing watch and chasing away any predators that approach. These behaviors have extended to offspring, predictably, and to other members of the herd as well.

In July 2018, a killer whale gave birth to a calf off the coast of British Columbia only to have it die just half an hour later. Visibly distraught by the loss, the mother refused to let go and instead carried the 400-pound calf, keeping it at the surface of the water as she travelled more than 1,000 miles over a 17-day period. Following this journey, it appeared the mother finally accepted the death of her calf, and released it to the ocean depths. The whale’s journey was a media sensation and while some dismissed the unique observation as insignificant, many people, including experienced scientists, did not. Whatever the mechanism behind the mother’s behavior, one has to travel a long way to avoid calling it what we would if a human mother and child were involved: mourning. 

Of course, to those of us who have a pet, these findings are unsurprising. When our dog greets us at the door, wagging his tail, we can see in his eyes and body language that he is happy to see us. Likewise, when he curls up next to us shaking as a thunderstorm rages outside, we know he is afraid and in need of comfort. When we ask him to sit, he understands and responds, but we know his intelligence goes far beyond learned commands. None of us needs a scientist to tell us our dogs are intelligent and can experience emotions; we see this firsthand every day. Nor do we need a psychologist to tell us how we feel about our dogs, or what human word best describes it. Why should we doubt that wild animals possess these same capacities? 

I believe current research is only scratching the surface in our understanding of the lived realities of animals. To me, this is incredibly exciting. I am thrilled at the prospect of learning more about the intelligence and emotional lives of other species, and I am not alone. It is these rich, interconnected layers of existence that speak to the beauty and mystery which are the magic in our world, and in our lives afield. This is something hunters never stop admiring, and must always fight to conserve.

With this in mind, I stand firmly in support of legal, ethical hunting, and I believe this remains the most natural and humane manner in which we can participate in the complex circle of life. I love wildlife; I always have. But I also recognize that we, like every species, must make our way, and I believe we should do so as naturally as we can. Most hunters I know feel the same way. And this love goes far beyond the appreciation of wild meat to a deeper gratefulness for the entire natural system we seek to engage. Many of my fondest hunting memories are not of harvesting a wild animal; instead, they are of simply being in and around the hum and buzz of a wilderness alive with incredible creatures. In the end, what we hunt most is the experience of nature, of being sometimes amazed at our own frailties and always enthralled by the capacities of wild things. 

As hunters and conservationists, let’s celebrate the beautiful and complex lives of all wildlife–those we hunt and those we simply admire–as we wander the wild places we all depend upon and enjoy. We can be excited about knowing wild species think and feel in ways much like ourselves. This does not mean we must somehow remove ourselves from participation in the drama of existence. However, it does mean that we may walk a little more humbly along the way. 

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