The tragic yet avoidable reality of grizzlies being killed during hunting season
By Benjamin Alva Polley EBS COLUMNIST
Each year, about this time, we bowhunters head out to the woods and mountains, some searching for food to put in the freezer, while others want trophies to hang on the walls. Bowhunters and other hunters have the most significant risk of bear encounters. We go out when bears are in hyperphagia, trying to put on as many calories as possible before six months without eating. We are trying to fool an elk, deer or moose. We dress like the woods in camouflage, silently stalk and sneak through the brush, and try to be silent except bugling or imitating a bull or cow elk in heat or rattling antlers. We might even smell like an elk or deer if we are using scent to mask our own.
At least a few times yearly, a bowhunter or a rifle hunter shoots a grizzly because they thought the bear was charging them when in fact, it was a bluff charge, a warning by the bear. Last year, more than a half dozen bears were killed “in defense” by hunters and anglers with pistols.
“People who carry a pistol have to shoot,” said Tim Thier, a former bear biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who studied bears for 27 years. “So, now you have a wounded bear, and you’ve increased your chances of getting chewed on. A pistol doesn’t pack much power. If you have time to shoot a bear multiple times with a pistol, the bear probably wasn’t coming after you to begin with. You had time to pull out your pepper spray.”
Frequently, the bear is either wounded, maimed or killed. If it has cubs, they become orphaned, most likely captured and taken to a zoo, or if left on their own, will possibly die from malnourishment or be killed by predators. If fate has it that they survive, they most likely will get into trouble because they didn’t have their mother’s guidance to raise them to full maturity teaching them the grizzly culture: what to eat, where to den, where to go to stay out of trouble with the two-leggeds or where to find food when the berry crop fails. It becomes a cascading effect of the cubs getting into more trouble in the future.
“I think many bowhunters and other hunters prefer to carry and use a firearm instead of bear spray because they believe bear spray isn’t effective as a defense against a grizzly bear.”
Tim Manley, former FWP grizzly bear biologist
When a bear is injured, it increases the likelihood that a hunter or another person will be injured, putting agency folks in danger.
“Having worked for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, I was involved numerous times where people got bluff charged by a bear and they shot and wounded it, and then we’re supposed to track it down and kill it,” Thier said. “We’re risking our lives trying to find the damn thing.”
He never had to do that with a bear sprayed with pepper spray.
Given the proven effectiveness of bear spray over pistols, which is 98% of the time, the question arises: why don’t more hunters carry and use bear spray instead of a gun in self-defense?
“I think many bowhunters and other hunters prefer to carry and use a firearm instead of bear spray because they believe bear spray isn’t effective as a defense against a grizzly bear,” said Tim Manley, former FWP grizzly bear biologist for 37 years. People often told him that they didn’t carry or trust using bear spray because of the wind.
“Bear spray comes out of the can at about 75 mph. It was developed to be used at close range and to form a cloud so that you didn’t have to be accurate when deploying,” Manley said. “If the wind is blowing in your direction, you will get some blowback, but unless it is a gale-force wind, the spray will reach a bear that is close and will have an effect.”
Understanding bear behavior and taking preventive measures is critical. It’s disheartening to see these unfortunate events glorified—in some circles, shooting a bear is viewed as a display of power. With the right knowledge and tools, the vast majority of bear encounters could be avoided.
“It’s like these people that shoot bears with pistols are treated as heroes,” Thier said. “And I’m like, what the sh**! I’m tired of this nonsense.”
Valor shouldn’t be freely doled out to someone who shoots and kills a creature that was surprised by the shooter sneaking around in the forest, mimicking another animal. That is the sole purpose of a hunter’s biomimicry of the animal we stalk. So, why should we be alarmed when we surprise a bear?
“The vast majority of charges are bluff charges,” Thier said. “They’re trying to tell you to back off. If you carry pepper spray, you can create a barrier between you and the bear. In most cases, you can back out and be just fine, as the bear will likely retreat once it encounters the pepper spray, effectively deterring a potential attack.”
So, what is a bear to do?
Behavior to expect from bears
According to a scientific paper by lead author Kerry Gunther, bear management biologist for Yellowstone National Park, bears have many different ways of showing agitation. Warning behavior toward people includes blowing, hop-charging, huffing, teeth-clacking, paw-slap lunging, woofing, or charging without contact where they veer off at the last minute—which I have had bears do to me. In these situations, the bear comes at you with its head up, ears up, stiff-legged, telling you to back off. These behaviors are warning signs that the person should leave the area. When bears stand up, it is usually a sign that they are trying to gauge the situation and see if what they heard or smelled is a threat.
An actual bear attack is an incident where grizzly or black bears will have their heads down low, their ears laid back and directly come into physical contact with humans, including fatal or non-fatal.
A bear encounter is when people observe bears or the bear observes them but are unaware of each other. A bear-human encounter is when both are mutually aware of each other.
Curious behavior is when a bear approaches or follows people they have encountered. Flight behavior is where bears run off or walk away. Neutral behavior is when bears don’t react at all to humans but go about their business.
If people act confident, bears tend to leave us alone. Most of these behaviors are just warnings and don’t warrant being shot.
Grizzly densities and other stats
How come Glacier National Park, which has the highest density of grizzlies in the Lower 48, doesn’t have more bear attacks? It gets 3 million visitors a year from all over the world, many of whom don’t know a thing about bears, and still there are very few bear incidents. Sure, there were two injuries this year, but not severe. Since 1910, Glacier has had only ten bear-caused human fatalities.
According to the Public Affairs Office, Yellowstone had 4.5 million visitors in 2023, with only two bear-caused injuries in the last five years. From 1872 to 2023, YNP had only seven bear-caused human fatalities. The chance of being attacked in Yellowstone is 1 in 2.7 million visits, highlighting the rarity of bear attacks.
Tourists are rarely mauled in these two highly visited national parks, which have a high density of bears, because of one reason: people carry bear spray.
Manley told me via email that he strongly recommends bowhunters, bird hunters, rifle hunters, anglers, hikers, campers, or other recreationists to carry and know how to use bear spray.
Unfortunately, in most incidents where bear spray has been used to deter grizzly, those incidents don’t get reported or made into the media because people aren’t injured, and the bear isn’t wounded or killed.
“I know of two cases where the grizzly was actually on the person, and they were able to spray the bear in the face, and it left,” Manley said. While working with coworkers at FWP, he often told them not to shoot if a bear got on him but to use bear spray. “Why? Because I know of two instances where the hunting partners shot at the grizzly on their hunting partner. The autopsies of the dead hunters revealed they had actually shot and killed their partners while they were trying to kill the bear.”
Thier agrees, that there’s a safer tool during a bear attack. “Pistols aren’t the answer, and bear spray has been proven to work.”
Benjamin Alva Polley is a place-based storyteller. His stories have been published in Audubon, Esquire, Field & Stream, The Guardian, Outside, Popular Science, Sierra, and other publications on his website. He holds a master’s in Environmental Science and Natural Resource Journalism from the University of Montana.
