Bear Spray

[bmike-vt]

Found this via another forum:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/42173184/Survival%20Spray.pdf

A good read.

[adelorenzo]

Good article. In my experience (and backed up by research) bear spray and being aware of your surroundings are the best thing going. A good dog really helps as well.

Also had many conversations with people telling me bear spray is a waste of time and I need to carry a gun...

[bmike-vt]

Good article. In my experience (and backed up by research) bear spray and being aware of your surroundings are the best thing going. A good dog really helps as well.

Also had many conversations with people telling me bear spray is a waste of time and I need to carry a gun...

even though we don't have grizzlies here out east, and black bears are certainly a nuisance in some parts of the wild where i can get by bike, people still think i need to carry a gun.

have some of the counter assault, carried it only once in the east, to test out where it can ride on the bike, and how accessible i need it, and to give the wife peace of mind, not from the bears, but from the locals....

[Tommi]

Carrying a weapon while biking...hmmmm, not so good... heavy, hard to aim while pedaling...

[Area54]

So, tech me up on this stuff, where do you get it (edit - just found it at REI), can you fly domestically with it in the US? Wondering whether I get it in AK or OR.

[ascar_larkinyar]

while hiking the dog was plenty to keep any black bear and even some small brown bear away or retreat.

on my own no matter how loud i bark the bears just laugh at me...

blowing a coach whistle and waving my arms was the best i could do to make black bears slowly walk away.  must have thought i was crazy and not very tasty.  once i had a black bear try to pull my bikepack off my bike while i was sleeping in my bag and just a tarp(bike was holding the tarp up).  i woke up and screamed like a little girl.  that pretty much made the bear run.  i broke down camp and reset up 10 miles away, but slept with one eye open.

[Colorado Cool Breeze]

I've had a couple bear incounters. They really don't like people but they do like our food.
Good camp practice of cooking away from your bed and not wiping steak juice off your knife on to your pant leg
goes a long way. Not really tried any of the sprays.




That said I do carry on solo trips. Never to point at the bear but it makes a much larger sound than screaming like a girl or
banging two pots together.

[Eugenemtbing]

I sometimes carry a revolver in a pocket holster in a Mountain Feed Bag on the bars.  Have thought about molding a kydex holster with attach points that would mount within a frame bag.  Anyone have experience with something like this?

[jeremy11]

I sometimes carry a revolver in a pocket holster in a Mountain Feed Bag on the bars.  Have thought about molding a kydex holster with attach points that would mount within a frame bag.  Anyone have experience with something like this?

Now that I have an ultralight 44 Special revolver, I'm definitely interested in frame bag carry.  We call it "Bear Spray."

[wahday]

There is an interesting article in backpacker magazine about bears this month. They have some interesting stats regarding the efficacy of bear spray. Statistically it is WAY more effective than guns for bear encounters. FYI...

[KenSmithMT]

+1 for Bear Spray.  

I love to hunt and shoot...but bear spray is proven effective and I would rather not shoot an animal just because it wanted my twinkies.   I carry my spray on the top of my bar harness.  Quick and easy to grab.

[mosibiker]

I carry a Keltec 32 auto or Glock 27 depending on how light weight I want to go, 32 clips inside my pant or short pocket and .40 in handlebar bag.  If I was in grizzly territory I would probably add spray.  I am more concerned about crazy drunk rednecks.

[Flounder]

I spent several years living in Haines, Alaska. We had several massive brown bears (mega grizzlies) that would frequently pass through our yard. I also managed the largest bike touring company in Alaska. Our guides would encounter bears pretty regularly. One of our tours was through the thick of bear country. Nothing like riding mountain bikes through hundreds of bear prints and massive piles of poo.

In short, we'd go through a couple cases of spray a year. I've sprayed close to a dozen bears, usually from the safety of a van, or off my front porch. Spray....works.

You're a daft git if you think shooting a full sized brown bear with a hand gun is going to do a thing. Shoot yourself and get it over with.

Seriously, shooting a bear with anything you have on a bicycle is just a death wish. I think it goes to show how little people understand of bears. When you injur a bear, like with a teeny pee-whipper bullet, it instantly unleashes a flood of endorphins and adrenaline. In other words, you just turbo charged your pissed off bear when you shoot it. You play to the strengths and survival mechanisms of a bear when you poke a tiny hole in it. By contrast, the bear's snoot is hundreds of times more sensitive than even a bloodhound's nose. As a bear expert told me, shooting spray in the sensitive nose of a bear would be like having a train horn go off next to your head. BLAM!! Sensory overload.

[ekloco]

After reading the Thread.....I agree about a pistol just turbo pissing a bear....I have heard from backcountry experts that Bear Spray is plenty effective.....I share the same fear of Drunken Rednecks, but I figure the Bear spray will work pretty good on them too (and probably with less legal side effects the shooting someone).....Where I live, fireworks are legal, so, I have pondered carrying a pack or two of firecrackers to scare away the persistent Raccoon for good....I have never followed up on the idea though.

Tim Nelson    Santa Fe

[Flounder]

Bear encounters are anything but uniform. In Alaska during the spring, you can ride right in front of a brown bear and chances are, he'll not care. As long as he has dandy lions or other food to graze on, his biggest concern is filling his belly. Get between him and a salmon...maybe a different story, but for the most part in places like AK, browns are just happy to be bears. If you surprise a brown, there's even a good chance he'll scury off. Naturally mama bear and her cubbies creates an entirely different scenario. Regardless, spray at the ready is your best defense.

In places where bears have been habituated and associate people with food, there again spray is a good defense, but more so is good bear sense. Your evening ritual of rubbing your face in bacon grease and using honey for hair gel...not smart.

Every black bear I've ever seen in the Rockies and AK, usually skittered off like a shot when they saw me. Those bears are often very shy. The only bears I genuinely worry about are young punks that got separated from mama, and old bears that can't hunt and gather as well as they once could. Old bears become despirate bears, and are often the ones that stalk people. Some of those encounters have been thwarted with something as benign as a stick, but then again, the old bear at Liard Hot Springs (BC) managed to kill several people. The most important thing is to know what type of bear is likely to participate in your journey. How you travel in areas with habituated bears is WAY different from how you travel amidst wild bears in places like AK.

With regard to hand guns, I'm not going to poison this wonderful forum with unnecessary gun chatter, but I will say this. Those who feel safer with a gun have a myriad of reasons why they carry. With regard to bears, bicycles, and the guns that would be carried in that scenario, you really are out of your depth to think even a giant hand canon will save you from a charging bear. For one thing, if you get genuinely surprized by something like a big brown, you'll likely not have time to squeek, let alone draw, point and shoot.

[Damnitman]

What do mountain lions think of bear spray?

[KenSmithMT]

They like it, but prefer chocolate.
Bear spray should be referred to as pepper spray. It works on cats and bears.

[Flounder]

Seems like historically, people are first aware they're being attacked by a mountain lion when they notice sharp teeth cutting into their necks. Hard to thwart that attack with spray. Cases of lions being sprayed is probably pretty rare. At any rate, I was told that spray is less effective on non-bears because it's the highly sensitive olfactory system of bears that makes spray so effective.

All of this is a whole lot of much-a-do about nothing. Animal encounters do happen, but within the scope of how many hours humans spend wandering around animal habitat, it's exceptionally rare.