Choose the Bear

I don’t know if you remember this one, but a curious little thought experiment went viral back in 2024: If you’re alone in the woods, is it better to come across a random man or a random bear?

The debate grew quite heated, and I encourage you to delve into the rich trove of online dialogue when you’ve got the time. Today, my concern is how people are prepping themselves for the random bear.

Working in the ammunition section at Bear Peak Supply, I can tell when there’s been a bear attack in our area without even reading the news. Suddenly, everyone is stocking up on ammo for bear protection, and I can’t keep 12 gauge slugs on the shelf. If you don’t know much about guns, a 12 gauge slug is the epitome of destructive stopping power.

For context, you can drop a dude, and about any animal in North America, with a bullet the size of a Tic Tac. Firearms are unnervingly and terrifyingly deadly, and even though that tiny little piece of lead looks harmless, you’re a goner when it hits you in the lungs at supersonic speed. Same goes for a half-ton fur-bearing beastie.

Now… that’s a Tic Tac. A 12 gauge slug, on the other hand, is the size of a jawbreaker, the big old-fashioned ones that give you chipmunk cheeks. And, as you can imagine, if the Tic Tac’ll kill you, the jawbreaker will wreak unspeakable devastation. And, yes, even a charging bear in full fury is going down quick if you can hit him with one. But accomplishing that maneuver in the critical moment is no small feat.

After the last bear incident in Alberta, I saw this dude come down our ammo aisle. He’s our typical modern-day frontiersman, or at least he believes he is. Buffalo plaid shirt, Wrangler jeans, five days worth of whiskers, and the hat and boots show just the right amount of wear and tear. His belt buckle is much larger than mine.

He spotted the 12 gauge slugs I’d set out about 20 minutes earlier and started loading up. He stacked 15 boxes in his cart, 25 shells to a box.

I looked over at him as I was putting out a few sale tags. “Heard about that last bear attack, did ya?” I said.

He paused with the last box in hand and looked me square in the eye. “Them bastards ain’t gettin’ me,” he said, smacking the last box down hard on top of the others and giving it a smart slap for good measure.

I wondered what a bear encounter looks like in this guy’s head. I mean, it’s gotta have a sort of old-time shootout theme going, right?

A clearing in the forest, the sun wallowing low in the western sky, two opponents—man and bear—stand 50 paces apart.

Our man with the artillery says, “State yer business.” Spits.

The bear, wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth: “I aim to kill ya, pilgrim!”

Our man, calm and resolute: “Best get to it then.” Grim smirk. “Light’s a fadin’.”

Spurned, the bear lets out a snarling roar.

Close up on the bear’s eyes, jump cut to the man’s eyes.

We go to a wide shot as the bear begins to charge. Our man shoots from the hip with his sawed-off 12 and hits the bear full in the chest. The bear collapses and his death moan rings out, but our man has already chambered another round and cuts it loose again. His aim is true, and the bear’s moan is cut off by the roar of the shotgun. Not one to leave things to chance, our man closes in, pumping round after round into the motionless heap of fur.

At this point, we should probably cut away. The guy’s bought himself 375 rounds of ammo, and damn if he isn’t going to use every one of them. We could be here a while.

Surprisingly, most bear attacks don’t go down like that. I’m not saying one shouldn’t prepare before going into the woods where the bears roam, but buying a crate of ammo is not going to accomplish much. Sure, buy a box of 12 gauge slugs. You don’t need the 25 pack, though, and you certainly don’t need 15 of them. You could do with the box of five, and if we sold singles, that’d probably do you fine too, since even managing to get a single shot fired is abundantly optimistic, even fanciful.

Bear attacks are swift and unexpected. It’s usually the result of a surprise encounter where you just happened to approach from downwind, and the bear didn’t hear or see you until you were within 20 yards.

You hear some crashing, turn and see a black or brown streak of motion coming impossibly fast, and then you’re on your back or stomach with 400-800 pounds of pressure pinning you down. There’s a lot of pain and chaos. You have no strength nor dignity in this moment, and nothing you can do will affect your fate. You’ll make it or you won’t.

It’s one of the reasons I carry bear spray in the woods, often on a chest harness. Bear spray is designed so simply that you could set it off while wearing thick mittens. The safety clip is large, easily knocked off, and the trigger is very responsive. While being mauled—instinctively pulling your arms in to protect your head and vitals—you could feasibly set off the spray even as it’s holstered to your body, creating a sudden and painful plume of gas that might persuade the bear to leave.

If I’m the victim of one of these zero-warning bear attacks, I’d rather have bear spray on my chest than a shotgun in my hand which I’d have almost zero chance of using.

I suppose if I’m going to experience a bear attack where I actually have a couple of seconds to react, e.g., me and the bear see each other at the same time from 20 yards, and it charges… maybe I’d prefer a gun psychologically, but spray still has its advantages.

Like I’ve said, that 12 gauge slug can stop a charging bear, but in addition to that gun, you’d better have some very flattering adjectives attached to you. If you’ve got the gun at the ready every moment of your hike in the woods, you’re more vigilant than me. If you can flick the safety, acquire the target, and pull the trigger in less than a second, you’re deft and dexterous as a finely tuned machine. And if you can hold steady enough to put that slug into the vitals of a living nightmare closing in at 60 kph, why you are the very definition of valiant and stalwart, my friend.

So, all things being equal, sure, I would prefer deadly force (gun) to deterrent force (spray) when my life is on the line. But things are not equal. The gun defense is based on the premise that one can reliably exhibit great precision with fine motor skills in a couple seconds of panic. The bear spray defense is based on the premise that one could perform a couple of gross motor skills with low precision in those same seconds.

Hunters and hikers have argued and will continue to argue over these two defenses. They both have stats and stories, and they both make solid points. It’s entrenched enough for me to say that there is probably no right answer. My advice would boil down to this: Soberly assess your abilities; choose your weapon.

However, there is most definitely a wrong approach to bear defense, and that was provided to me by one of my most startling encounters at Bear Peak Supply to date.

I saw a man hemming and hawing over by the gun cases and ammo cans. He was short and wiry, late 50s, Indonesian or Malaysian if I had to guess, and when I say he was hemming and hawing, I mean that he was outwardly performing the act of hemming and hawing.

Arms crossed over chest, brow knit, one hand occasionally creeping up to thoughtfully stroke the chin. He clearly wanted one of us staffers to come up and ask him if we could help with anything. It was kind of tempting to just leave him there and see how long he’d keep this mime going before he approached one of us, but I was just too curious.

“Hi there,” I said.

“Hello.”

“Can I help you with something?”

“Hmm. I don’t know. You know… I have question. I want to know answer. Maybe you have answer? But maybe you don’t? Yeah?” he raised one eyebrow.

I found this opening salvo both mystifying and intriguing.

“Well, I have lots of answers. Whether they’re right or not… that depends on the questions, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Yes, we see! We see if you have answer!” he said, delighted.

Seems like I answered well, I thought. He was acting very cagey. It was clear he wasn’t going to just ask me his question, like, I don’t know… a customer standing in the middle of a department store. No. He wanted to play this out like he was a Bond villain, and I was—perhaps—finally a worthy adversary.

“Yes,” he said, “we see if you have answer.” He cocked his head to the side, eyeing me up.

Of course, I played along.

“So,” I said, taking a glance in either direction to be sure we weren’t being observed, “what are we really talking about here?”

“I go on trip. Leave tomorrow. We go five days. Camping, you know?”

“I do know camping.”

“Five days. I go five days. And I have display already. Got display. But no license. I have no license. You know?”

I had to get him to repeat this last bit a couple of times. He had a very thick accent.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “So… you’ve got…”

“Display.”

“Right. But…”

“No license.”

“Okay… I’m not… totally sure where we’re goin’ with this, but I don’t think you need a license to camp. You might need a reservation at a site, but no license that I’m aware of.”

“No. No,” he said. “Bear. For the bear. I have display but not license. I have no license.”

“Oh, you’re bear hunting?” It was getting a bit late in the black bear season, but there were still a few stragglers headed out. “Well, you absolutely need a license to hunt a bear. Which we sell at Customer Service,” I said, pointing in that direction.

“Not hunt! Camping. No hunting!” He was frustrated. I had disappointed him. I was not the worldly man he had taken me for. “Bear! I have display for bear. But only for close, not far away. Display is for close.”

Oh, geez, I thought. He’s talking about bear spray. I had ignored “display,” because I didn’t know what he meant by it in that context, and focused on the license. But “display”—in his accent—was “the spray” as in bear spray. I thought, A misstep, but I can recover from this.

“You are very right about that, sir,” I said. “Bear spray is for close-up. They say five meters, or so.”

“Yes. The spray for close, not for far away. The gun for far away, but no license.”

“Got it. Yeah, if you wanted to have a gun with you, you’d need a license, something called a PAL: Possession and Acquisition License.”

“Yes. No time. Leave tomorrow, five days.”

“Right,” I nodded sagely, hoping we could get our charade back on track. “Can’t get a PAL by then. But it was a good idea to get the spray. You know, some people even say it’s better than a gun. I carry it all the time.”

“But only for close.”

“That’s right.”

“So… I am thinking,” and now he went back to the conspiratorial tone. We were on the same page again. All was forgiven. “What about far away? Bear far away… 50 meter… 100 meter… No spray,” he raised that eyebrow again.

“No, can’t use it then,” I agreed.

“So… I see bear far away. I want him to stay away. You see problem?”

“Well… if you see him, and he sees you from that far, he’s probably gonna leave you alone.”

“No, I see him far away, I want him stay away. But no license for gun. But air gun… no license,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “No license… but I can buy air gun.”

“Well… sure, you could.”

“So… what air gun I buy?” he asks, and by his tone, I can tell we are now at the very crux of the matter. “Which one best air gun for when bear far away?”

“Wait… just a second,” I said. “You mean… you mean for the bear?”

“Yes!” he cried. This was the big reveal, the ace-in-the-hole he’d been concealing. “For shoot when I see him far away!”

“No!” I said, probably too emphatically. “No, you do not shoot a bear with an air gun.”

“But the spray only for close. See him far away. Keep him far away. Which air gun?”

“No air gun!” I could see him looking around me, and I realized I had my back to the end cap where all the pellet guns were tantalizingly displayed. I gestured over my shoulder.“ None of these are for shooting bears.”

“No… you not understand,” he said. “Not hunt bear. Just see far away. Make him run away.”

“No, I’m understanding you. Believe me, I’m… I’m afraid I’m getting’ you just fine. Look… whatever you heard, whatever someone told you… do not shoot at a bear with an air gun.”

“But I shoot to make him stay away. Better than nothing.”

“No, listen to me. It isn’t!” I had dropped all pretense now, and I was deeply regretting that I’d followed him into this play acting in the first place. For now, life and death was truly hanging in the balance. I was staring him in the eye with utmost sincerity, trying to get through. “You need to hear this: shooting a bear with an air gun… it would be worse than nothing. It—”

“No,” he interrupted, “not, worse than nothing. Not what you mean?”

“Yes. Absolutely what I mean! Worse than nothing!”

“But…”

“Look, you want the air gun as a bear deterrent, right? Like, you want to keep it away. Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“My friend, you can’t even keep me away with an air gun.”

He just smiles at me, like: Oh, we’ll see about that.

“No, seriously. You’ve gotta listen to me,” I said. “Air guns… they… they sting. A bear might not even feel it, but if it did, it might decide to come after you.”

“But for far away. I see bear. I want him to stay away.”

“You just yell, man.”

“At bear?”

“Yes! You go, Hey, Bear!!” My yell startles him, and several other shoppers as well. “And you wave your arms around and keep yelling.”

“You yell?”

“Yes. Hey, Bear!” I yelled again and waved to demonstrate.

“You yell, Hey, Bear?”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be Hey, Bear! You could yell Cosmonaut! or Frère Jacques! it’s not like they’re lingual. You’re just yelling to let it know you’re there.”

“And the bear… what it do?”

“It runs away. Like… pretty much every time they’ll run away. It’s really, really rare for them to come at you if they see and hear you from far away.”

“No shoot at it? With air gun?”

“No! No air guns. Ever,” I said. “You need… you really need to stop coming back to the air guns. Just the spray for if it’s close. Yell if it’s far away.”

“It work?”

“Yes, it works.”

“It run away, you yell.”

“Yes. Yell, and it runs away.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning back and nodding at this new possibility. “Okay, I try.”

“Yes,” I said. “Just… yell, and that’s all.”

“Thank you,” he said, and offered his hand. “Thank you for… answer,” he was back in the scenario where we were two rivals, dealing out worthy points and counterpoints.

I shook his hand, and said, “You’re welcome. Have a safe trip, and just… leave the bears to themselves. You’ll be fine.”

He nodded and began to meander away. But he didn’t seem to be leaving the store, and I loitered in the area for a while, worried he might just loop back around to buy an air gun.

For the record, yes, I know there are cases where a bear has purposely targeted humans as food, and yelling will not work in that situation. But… I was in a tough place here. This dude either got it into his head, or had it put into his head, that if you want to stay safe from bears, it’s best to poke at them with a pellet gun to let them know you mean business. Given our language barrier, I feel like getting him off of the idea of firing BBs at momma grizzlies was a step in the right direction, perhaps even an act of kindness.

So… circling back to that original question of whether you want to meet a random man or a random bear in the woods, I’m not anxious to run into either of the patrons I’ve mentioned above.

The one is going to be draped in bandoliers of shotgun shells just looking for a reason to discharge a shot. And the other… you know, I’m not convinced I got through to him? I believe he’s going to go by an air gun at our other location, stalk up on an otherwise innocuous bear, and open fire.

All that to say, even without ill intent, random men in the woods can be very dangerous. And perhaps we’ve always had the answer to the bear vs. man debate sitting right in front of us. In Proverbs, the good book says it’s Better to face a mother bear stripped of her cubs than to encounter a fool caught up in his foolishness.

There’s your answer, folks. Choose the bear. The Bible tells you so.