bigger than cougars for sure! 
This is kind of the line of reasoning re: the goats in the Enchantments.retired jerry wrote:hmmm... maybe they should have bear hunting in Yellowstone? or you wouldn't have to kill the bears, just harass them. At least the areas where humans frequently go.
By virtue of our size relative to black bears, a black bear will be naturally reluctant to treat a human as prey, even if it has never seen a human before. Grizzlies are another matter. They are more than four times our size, can outrun a deer, are immensely strong, and have no 'natural fear' of anything alive, although my understanding is they will only rarely tackle a moose as prey. There will never be any foolproof way to instill fear of humans into grizzlies. The best we can do is to convince them we are mildly dangerous, but extremely obnoxious, unpleasant company, and worth avoiding on general principles. Oh, and it helps if we travel in packs.drm wrote:I think hiking in the wilds of Alaska is probably safer than Yellowstone wrt to bears, if not so for other factors (like the weather), because in Alaska the bear's natural fear of humans is still much stronger than it apparently is in Yellowstone.
I didn't mention black vs brown bears. Denali NP has had one brown bear mauling in it's entire history, which unfortunately was fatal. Yellowstone has had 3 fatal brown bear maulings this decade. Yellowstone has a lot more visitors than Denali but I'm not sure what the comparison is for counts of backpackers.Aimless wrote:By virtue of our size relative to black bears, a black bear will be naturally reluctant to treat a human as prey, even if it has never seen a human before. Grizzlies are another matter. They are more than four times our size, can outrun a deer, are immensely strong, and have no 'natural fear' of anything alive, although my understanding is they will only rarely tackle a moose as prey. There will never be any foolproof way to instill fear of humans into grizzlies. The best we can do is to convince them we are mildly dangerous, but extremely obnoxious, unpleasant company, and worth avoiding on general principles. Oh, and it helps if we travel in packs.drm wrote:I think hiking in the wilds of Alaska is probably safer than Yellowstone wrt to bears, if not so for other factors (like the weather), because in Alaska the bear's natural fear of humans is still much stronger than it apparently is in Yellowstone.
That's not how I think about it. I think grizzlies are afraid of us, at least in the sense that they consider us a threat. Only rarely do they think of us as food, and that's usually an afterthought. That's why the main thing with grizz is to not startle them. That's why you can play dead with grizz, because as soon as they think they've eliminated the threat, they're usually ready to move on. That's why it's so much more dangerous to separate a grizz mom from her cubs than it is with blackies.Aimless wrote:By virtue of our size relative to black bears, a black bear will be naturally reluctant to treat a human as prey, even if it has never seen a human before. Grizzlies are another matter. They are more than four times our size, can outrun a deer, are immensely strong, and have no 'natural fear' of anything alive, although my understanding is they will only rarely tackle a moose as prey. There will never be any foolproof way to instill fear of humans into grizzlies. The best we can do is to convince them we are mildly dangerous, but extremely obnoxious, unpleasant company, and worth avoiding on general principles. Oh, and it helps if we travel in packs.drm wrote:I think hiking in the wilds of Alaska is probably safer than Yellowstone wrt to bears, if not so for other factors (like the weather), because in Alaska the bear's natural fear of humans is still much stronger than it apparently is in Yellowstone.
