Alaska bears should be viewed with respect, not a fear that bolsters false narratives

Rising from bed, the first couple of steps were tenuous, assessing the day ahead. A shudder rippled the length of the massive body, releasing the sedge grass and alder catkins accumulated in slumber. An effortless climb up to higher ground and into the mountain breeze to sit and assess the prospects for the day.

The enormous head turned slowly in the swirling air currents, the nose wrinkling with each familiar scent bringing assurance that the day would be good. A contortion to scratch an offending irritation completed the waking process.

“Oh, the day is going to be wonderful,” the enormous bear thought in a language we could not know, as his nose told of a promise for breakfast. Lumbering from his lofted perch, a plan forming without conscious thought guided him to a distant valley, whose floor displayed a tortured ribbon of bare earth where breakfast morsels often walked upright toward distant peaks.

Silently slipping into a clump of alder that provided concealment without restraint, he prepared for a lightning-fast strike with an enormous paw and 3-inch teeth.

I imagine most folks have seen the memes on social media that display a half-dozen photos of someone; the photos are captioned with things like “what his wife thinks he does, what his mother thinks he does, what his friends think he does, what his dog thinks he does, what he thinks he does, and finally what he really does.”

Those memes always make me chuckle a bit, and when I see them, I think about what that might look like for bears. The possibilities seem endless, and maybe there are some out there, and I haven’t seen them.

The coming of spring and a podcast sent me down this path. It’s always fun to be in the mountains when temperatures rise, the sun hangs around longer, and there is the possibility of seeing a bear emerge from a snow-surrounded winter den. In 53 years of living in Alaska, luck like that has only been with me once, but I’ll never forget it. Seeing bear tracks in late March snow and the possibility of following them and seeing the animal in its tracks brightens every day’s prospects. Perhaps because of its relative rareness, bears and snow seem a delightful combination.

During a recent interview with Ron Boehm, who hosts an upland bird dog hunting podcast from Michigan, the subject of bears arose, which, it seems, always does when you are from Alaska. The interview focused on the book Christine and I recently published, and Ron wanted to know if, when reading it, he had missed the bear story. Surely, he said, you guys have trouble with bears.

Ron is a wonderful fellow to talk with, funny, and with seemingly no ego. He talked of trips to Alaska where his head was on a swivel as he watched for bears lurking in the bushes, ready to have him for breakfast. When he spoke to Christine and said as a lifelong Alaskan surely she feared bears and no doubt had bad experiences with them, she said no, she hadn’t had a bad experience and didn’t really think much about them.

“Oh sure, we see them when we are in the field, but we respect their space, and in turn, they seem to respect ours. We pay attention to the area and the time of year, and the dogs don’t care much about other animals; they are bird hunters. We put bells on them to announce their presence, and we have had bears come out of alder patches when the dogs get close,” Christine told Ron.

[From author Seth Kantner: Visiting a place that belongs to the bears]

Ron asked if we carried guns, like a bear pistol, in addition to our shotguns when we were hunting. When we told him no, he said it would surely be smart to carry bear spray.

“Smart, it probably is, but no, we don’t carry bear spray, " I told Ron. “My thoughts on bears are that they are one of the most overblown aspects of Alaska life. I think it is more the love of titillation that seems prevalent to the human condition that has promoted Alaska bear danger beyond what it actually is.”

I told him of coming to Alaska with visions of bears around every tree, and how delighted I was as a young boy, with the prospect of shooting my way through every encounter in the outdoors, carrying a .44 on my hip everywhere I went. When the reality set in after a couple of years of rarely seeing a bear, unless hunting for them, much less having to shoot one to save my life or some damsel in distress, my dreams were crushed. My young hopes for gallantry evaporated as the realization came that driving down the highway, cruising Alaska’s cold waterways, or climbing the distant peaks were infinitely more ominous to life and limb than bears.

We told Ron that one can definitely find trouble with bears if one goes looking for it. If one wants to be attacked, there are multitudes of ways to elicit such a response. You can always approach a sow with cubs, you could wander into a kill site that a bear is protecting, or even stumble upon one as you stalk close to a calf moose that the bear is stalking for lunch. Shooting one and wounding it in close quarters or having to follow one up wounded at a distance could get you the story you long to impress your friends with if you live to tell it.

It was a wonderful conversation with a person who was openly terrified of brown/grizzly bears and his perception of the dangers that we Alaskans must face every day. While it is sort of funny to many of us who live in Alaska, it isn’t really funny. Perceptions that fuel fear may be more dangerous than the feared.

Fear is obviously a useful emotion. It prevents the extinction of most living species. But irrational fear, or more aptly, panic, produces irrational responses in many things. Healthy fear, or perhaps better said, healthy respect, leads one to the path of intelligent avoidance, like avoiding moose calves or bear cubs. Panic might lead to shooting a bear in “self-defense” before there is a realistic threat.

For the most part, animals prefer to be left alone. Many tolerate observation from a comfortable distance. They react to being startled and most of the time, their escape is to run unless their fear of you, and their instinct demands attack instead of running.

If one wants to learn about bears in preparation for visiting Alaska’s backcountry, look beyond the many books and conversations that romanticize the dangers. There is plenty of good information out there. And talk to folks who have spent time and can tell you things to look for when encroaching on territory that we are fortunate to share with the original landlords.

At the end of our conversation, Ron thought he might like to accompany us into the field if the opportunity arose. But, he said, only if he could have bear spray.