12 year old Italian boy Alessandro became an overnight internet legend two years ago, as his calm approach to a wild brown bear outshone even the professionals. On May 24th 2020, he and his father were hiking in the north Italian region of Trentino, which is heavily advertised on TV as a holiday area. Heading to a thick bush to collect some pine cones, he came face to face with a huge brown bear just 2 meters away.

Instead of screaming, he asked his mother’s partner to start filming. As it happened, Alessandro had been a fan of bear videos on youtube for months. He knew exactly what to do: back off slowly and calmly, while talking at an even volume. The video shows the bear staying a consistent 2 metres behind Alessandro. The boy has a huge smile on his face, only panicking slightly when he turns around to notice the bear standing on its hind legs. The step-father implores Alessandro to stay calm, which he does, even saying “this is so cool”. Throughout the video, the bear stays calm, but seems to be on the precipice, uncertain whether the boy 2 metres in front of him is prey or a threat. It takes a whole minute of quietly descending before the bear begins to lose interest.

As Alessandro reaches the cameraman and disappears, the great brown bear walks down the mountainside, but the family isn’t out of the woods yet: it keeps turning its head back every so often, like it’s still debating whether to charge. It takes 2 minutes for the coast to be clear. If Alessandro hadn’t had such nerves of steel, he could have easily become a bear meal that day.

The legend goes that to defeat a bear in close quarters combat, you only need to punch it in the nose. Now, there’s another method, which made headlines around the world. In August 2019, Colin Dowler was cycling through the British Columbia wilderness, 185 miles north of Vancouver, searching for new hiking trails.

Zipping round a bend, he noticed a grumpy looking bear emerge from the woods. He wasn’t concerned, as this bear seemed to be acting normally. It wandered slowly towards his now parked bicycle, but calmly, and not at a frantic pace. Nevertheless, Dowler felt his anxiety rising. As the bear reached the front of his bike, Dowler decided it was time for a short, sharp warning poke with his hiking stick. That was all the excuse Brian Bear needed; after a brief tug of war, it launched a heavy swat on Dowler. He tried to throw the bicycle at the bear, only to make it angrier.

This time, the bear picked him up like a ragdoll and commenced mauling. Dowler’s next trick was the old play dead manoeuvre, which failed. The bear dropped Dowler in a ditch, but refused to leave. Dowler was in incredible agony, but managed to retrieve his 2 inch blade pocket knife. As the bear’s jaws descended, potentially for the final time, Dowler jammed the blade into the bear’s neck. With a howl and a great spurt of blood, the 800 pound bear fled the scene. After stemming the blood loss with a makeshift tourniquet (cut from his clothes with the same knife), Dowler staggered off, and finally got lucky: he encountered 5 men at a campsite with expert training in first aid. Hours later he was in a Vancouver hospital. 

One October day in 2018, while hiking with his father and brother in the Spanish Pyrenees, Lucas Meurlet diverted down the challenging GR211 path, planning to rejoin his family members. Little did he know that this detour would take him into the heart of bear country. After reaching the top of a rocky ridge between 10:30am and 11:00am, he immediately saw a mother and her cubs 10 metres away. Excitement turned to panic, and Meurlet started to run, but the bear almost instantly gave chase.

According to Meurlet “My legs were shaking. I started to see my life pass before my eyes”. Changing strategy, he turned and spread his arms as wide as possible. Still the bear charged twice more, and on the third charge, its mouth was wide open. Meurlet took the only option left to him: he screamed as loudly as possible while maintaining his wide stance. Spooked, the bear did a 180 and returned to its cubs, and Meurlet hid behind a bush.

Soon, Meurlet made contact with his father, and a helicopter descended onto the rocky ridge and transported Meurlet away to Refuge d’Eylie in Seintein, Ariège. It turned out that father Henri and brother Arthur had seen everything. In fact, they had spotted the bear and cubs on the hillside from a distance before Lucas had even ascended the ridge, and frantically shouted warnings, which failed to reach Lucas over the long, empty distance between them.

On September 11th 2017, Tom Sommer and his hunting partner were patrolling their stomping grounds of Gravelly Ridge, Montana. They were searching for a large male elk they had been stalking two days earlier, and turning a corner, they discovered a large brown bear feeding on an elk carcass. Problem solved. But suddenly, the bear was charging.

Like an Olympic athlete, the bear closed the 9 meter distance between them in 3 or 4 seconds. Sommer’s hunting partner let off a cloud of bear spray, which slowed the bear’s charge, but Sommer fumbled for his own can, failing to disengage the safety. He ran round a tree twice to buy time, but then dropped the can entirely. The bear was closing in, and Sommer reached for his trusty pistol and aimed it at the bear’s head, before a paw came down at the last second and swatted the pistol away.

Then the bear was on him in full-throttle maul mode. It used the standard predator manoeuvre of targeting the head for a quick kill, after which Sommer felt “bones crunching”, just like the stories of old. The bear kept biting and ripping into his thigh, but after 25 seconds, the ferocious grizzly inexplicably gave up, and slinked off into the woods. What happened? It’s believed that the bear spray cloud had a delay factor, meaning that the quick reflexes of Sommer’s hunting partner saved both of them.

Ultimately, Tom Sommer required ninety stiches, but didn’t hold a grudge against the bear: “he was just doing what bears do”.

On May 5th 2016, Bill Orr was struck by lightning twice, or the equivalent: he was assaulted by a grizzly bear twice within the hour, and survived.

He was walking through the notoriously bear-heavy Madison valley in southwest Montana, taking sensible precautions like yelling “hey bear” every 30 seconds to alert the grizzlies of his presence, to soften their surprise. He wasn’t particularly worried when he noticed a female bear with two cubs standing at the upper edge of a meadow he was in. At first, she wandered up a forest trail, but suddenly, she turned around and began to charge.

Orr stuck to regulations again and unleashed his bear spray, firing an orange cloud. No avail – the bear’s momentum propelled her through the gas, and Orr dropped to the ground in fetal position, protecting his neck. He later described the force of each bite as “like a sledgehammer with teeth”. The bear would bite, stop for several seconds, then start biting again. But then it stopped completely. Orr stood up, thanked the maker for his miraculous survival, and started down the trail to his truck 3 miles away.

But 5 minutes later, the mother bear charged from the wilderness again. How could this happen to the same guy twice, Orr thought. Back to the fetal position he went, and the mauling resumed. One of the bites pierced his arm and made a sickening crunch as it struck bone. Instantly, Orr’s arm went numb and useless. But suddenly, the mauling stopped. Had his play dead charade worked? Orr didn’t move a muscle.

2 minutes later, the bear seemed convinced and left. With his face and torso covered with blood, Orr managed to jog 45 minutes to the car, and then drive himself to the hospital.

George Knoll, aged 41, was an engineer working for a Vancouver logging company. At 8:30am, Knoll was exploring the undergrowth near Bella Bella, Canada, identifying the perfect trees to be logged, when he came face to face with a mother bear. Knoll had a stroke of bad luck: he was exploring next to a raging river, whose loud gushing sounds prevented both he and the bear from recognising each other’s presence until they were a mere 6 metres apart.

Knoll noticed a small cub, and knew instantly that he was in trouble. He tried to run backwards and sideways, but the ferocious bear launched into a tackle which knocked him to the floor. His next move was playing dead, curling into a ball, but he soon felt the bear’s teeth tearing into his upper arm. He could feel the stench of the bear’s breath, a stench of rotten fish. Soon, Knoll realised that playing dead wasn’t working, so he did the logical thing: he kicked the bear in the face. Then he kicked the bear again, using his hard caulk boots, spiked boots favoured by loggers. He could see blood on the bear’s snout, but wasn’t even sure who it belonged to.

The bear charged again, but after a final kick, the mother and its cubs fled into the undergrowth. Knoll forced himself into action, bandaging his arm using his clothes as a tourniquet, and radioing for help. In a semi-delirious state, George made it to the helicopter 200 meters away, where he phoned his wife to tell her he loved her.

After treatment in Vancouver hospital, George Knoll lived to tell the tale. So did the bear – it was deemed to be a mother defending her cubs, and not a predator that required execution.

On February 4th 2014, fisherman Igor Vorozhbitsyn thought it would be just another morning hauling catches. He drove to a bountiful fishing spot in Russia’s icy Yakutia Republic, parked his car, and started walking over to his favourite perch. Suddenly, he felt a tremendous impact on his back, and was knocked down by 600 pounds of brown fur. Diagnosis: brown bear attack.

Igor was convinced that death was imminent, but as the bear made its first few slashes, Igor’s mobile went off. Suddenly, the bay was filled with the high pitched voice of Justin Bieber singing his 2010 song “Baby”. Igor later said that his grandfather had installed the ringtone as a practical joke.

Like many humans, the bear ran away almost as soon as Justin Bieber started singing. It vanished into the forest, leaving Igor with severe cuts and bruises to his chest and face, but alive. He later recovered nicely.

Baby climbed to 5 in the US charts back in 2010, but apparently the bear had a different opinion. Wildlife experts deemed it to be a perfect bear deterrent, a short, sharp noise similar to a bear horn or the shouts recommended by rangers, with the added advantage that Justin Bieber was singing, supposedly proving that his music is truly “un-bear-able”.

At least we know one thing – Bieber himself is probably invincible against bears!

Our next tale from the book of impossibly narrow bear escapes concerns John O. Matson Jr, son of a former Rhode Island congressional candidate. In September 2013, Matson was prowling the slopes of Beaver Mountain, approximately 40 miles southwest of the Alaskan town of McGrath, when he saw a grizzly bear feeding on a berry bush one mile away. He aimed his gun, and shot the bear, which rolled over and thrashed around for one minute, before dashing off into the distance.

Matson and his hunter companion waited for 90 minutes with no sight of the bear. A disappointed Matson thought that his prey had eluded him. Apparently not! The bear was hiding in a bush, plotting revenge, and in an epic twist that nobody could have seen coming (well, maybe a few people), Matson became the prey himself. From 30 metres away, the assistant guide heard a cry and span around to witness Matson struggling with the 8 foot bear. After firing a shot, the bear fled once more, having learnt to associate the sound of gunfire with pain.

Blood was pouring profusely from a wound in Matson’s head, which the guides quickly bandaged up. Things went from bad to worse when poor weather prevented the rescue helicopters from landing. Finally, Matson was airlifted 225 miles to Anchorage hospital, and several days later, John Matson Sr reported that his son was responding well to surgery. The end result was bite marks on his head and leg.

In case you were wondering: the bear survived the ordeal, and was never seen again.

In February 2012, Ben Radakovich was hiking alone along the Bird Creek Trail just south of Anchorage. After venturing 3 miles from the official trail, he quickly stumbled across a mother bear and her cubs.

Ben knew that he was in trouble, particularly when he accidentally spooked the cub. Suddenly, mama bear was charging. Unable to grab his bear spray, Ben Radakovich followed the old instructions and curled up into a foetal position, to play dead and protect his internal organs. There was no let up, so Ben started swiping with the only tool he had: his ski poles, used as makeshift hiking sticks. Miraculously, the bear stopped the mauling briefly. Ben seized his chance, and quickly scampered 30 feet up a tall tree, fuelled by a “pure adrenaline rush”.

At 7:45am, a battle-weary Ben dialled 911 with his cell phone and told the operator “I’m bleeding a quite a bit”. “Are you injured sir?” Ben was asked in return, who could still hear the bear prowling the wilderness below. Rescuers only reached him at 9.20am, still clinging to the tree. Radakovich had a line of puncture wounds stretching down his back, and scratch marks lining his armpit. His back wasn’t intact, but thanks to quick thinking, his life was.

This story has sequel potential: the bear escaped, and was not located.

In 2011, 3 instructors and 14 students were taking part in the National Outdoor Leadership School, camped out for days in the Alaskan wilderness. On the final day, 7 students went hiking after dinner, and lined up single file to cross a river. Suddenly, the kids at the back heard a cry of “bear”. The next thing Samuel Gottsegen, 17, saw was a speeding ball of brown fur taking a swipe at his friends.

Samuel remembered thinking ” I’m going to die, I’m not going to live through this”. The bear was 8 feet tall, “a huge snarling thing”. The bear moved so quickly that the hikers had no chance of whipping their bear spray out. Samuel later described how he heard the bear’s running behind him and felt the jaws close around his head.

The bear ran between the 4 people in round robin style, attacking Samuel and returning once it had dealt a fresh blow to the other three. Death seemed certain, until the bear grabbed the leg of Victor Martin, 18. In desperation, he delivered a well-timed kick to its face, and then, the bear suddenly galloped away, as though it had made its point.

The chopper was activated at 9:30pm, and only discovered the huddled group in their tents at 2:30am. Several people had minor injuries, but Joshua was said to have a “candy bar sized” chunk missing from his forehead, while Samuel had a punctured lung, broken ribs, and deep bite marks to the chest. Nevertheless, they both survived without lifechanging injuries, although they might be slightly less fond of bears.

The post 10 Lucky Brown Bear Escapes: 2011-2020 appeared first on Bear Informer.

In the dark heart of Transylvania, there’s one beast which even Dracula in his castle fears – Balu the bear. This 6 year old Eurasian brown bear is prone to wanton displays of aggression at the mere sight of another brown bear. One such incident happened in 2019, and was captured on a midnight bear cam installed in a forest clearing, creating a washed out hellscape of altered colours and glowing eyes.

The one minute video shows Balu and another brown bear wrestling proudly on top of a large stone rock. For some reason, this rock is very important to the two bears. Both then fall to the ground, and the next minute, they’re circling the rock like a merry go round, swiping at each other repeatedly. A family of wild boar stop to watch in the background, before smartening up and moving on quickly. The bear brawl then shifts to the left, like a tornado propelled by forces beyond its own control. One bear pins the other, delivering a few bites, before a sudden burst of strength forces it backwards again.

The two bears then grow reluctant, and after a staredown, one starts to wander off. But there’s an agonising twist – the camera has shifted position and therefore never reveals whether the departing bear had conquered the rock or given up. Maybe they’re saving it for a sequel. 

In September 2019, Cari McGillivray was driving along a forested road on the outskirts of Stewart, Alaska, a small village of 500 people. While she knew it could happen, she was probably surprised to see two male grizzly bears facing off on the edge of the tarmac.

At first, the bears look down to the ground and pant calmly, as though giving up. But this isn’t a human fight – this is a bear fight, with body language that our species cannot comprehend. Seconds later, the bears stand on their hind legs and launch into a flurry of swipes and bites, far faster than any human being can manage. The battle takes them to the opposite side of the road and back again like a swirling tornado. The sheer velocity of blows would leave a man dead in seconds, but neither bear can land a finishing blow. At one point, the larger bear seems to belly flop, but miss and land on the road. This bear is noticeably bigger, with a thicker body and much more rounded muscular hump. About 40 seconds in, he gains the upper hand, charging the other bear forward, and knocking him over. The next second, they’re rolling through the undergrowth.

Perhaps the best part comes 55 seconds into the video where a wolf emerges from the trees and crosses the road in the distance, before stopping to watch the fight with a hungry-for-popcorn expression.

The video ends with one bear chasing the other towards the camera at high speed, which would be worrying if McGillivray hadn’t posted the video on Facebook from the comfort of her home a few days later.

May 11th 2020 was the day that China and Russia got too bored to fight a real war and sent along a couple of bears instead. All was peaceful at the border fence in the Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia’s east. A light breeze was blowing, and researchers from the Amur Tiger Centre had established webcams to keep watch for this endangered tiger species.

Instead, they got a shock as a large brown bear walks into the foreground, followed by a huge bear on the opposite side of the barbed wire fence. Almost instantly, the two begin swiping at each other through the border fence, as though they’d arranged the duel previously. One bear pokes its head through the barbed wire, as though impervious to pain.

Now the bears are wrestling each other, fighting to establish dominance, in the midst of the fence designed to separate two countries. They swipe, they grab each others’ necks, and seconds later, the fence is obliterated. The fence isn’t even considered, it’s just an after thought, a mangled mess on the floor. The footage ends with both bears on all fours, staring each other down, ready to fight again. Nobody knows who won the battle. No corpses were found and the camera footage suddenly cuts off. 

In 2015, Brad Josephs was sitting by a tidal flat in Katmai National Park. It was bear bulking season, the period of hyperphagia where they eat as much as bear-manly possible for 2-4 months to pack on the pounds for winter hibernation. Normally, this area was a bountiful salmon spot with bears congregating peacefully, but this year supplies were unusually scarce. 

Josephs watched as one bear dived into the water and emerged with a plump, tasty looking fish. The problem was that a few meters away from bear 1, bear 2 also noticed. The two began a ferocious duel which was mostly spent on their hind legs, wrestling and biting each other.

No-one seemed to have the upper hand until 30 seconds into the footage, when the fisherman bear suddenly began to back off from the wildly biting mugger bear. There was no killer blow – the first bear just got spooked by the sheer aggression. Eventually, the greedy mugger bear stole the salmon and ran off. All the fishing bear’s hard work was wasted. It wasn’t a case of attitude versus size, as bear 2 (which had lighter-coloured fur than bear 1) seemed to be more muscular and aggressive in temperament. Neither of the bears noticed a much larger meal standing behind a camera 30 meters away.

One of the meanest, roughest and gnarliest bears in Banff National Park is undoubtedly “The Boss”. He’s a legend in the area. “The Boss” has preyed on black bears, survived being hit by a train, and scares off nearly all fellow grizzlies he encounters.

In July 2020, wildlife photographer John E. Marriot was heading to a recycling bin 75 meters from his campsite near Banff, when a large grizzly emerged from the forest. It turned out to be “Split Lip”, a bear which Marriot had only encountered a couple of times over the last decade. His name came from a large rip scar stretching from his mouth to his lower chin. Also called bear 136, he was another of Bow Valley’s most massive grizzlies. Marriot yelled for his wife to hand him some bear spray, but thankfully, the bear wasn’t aggressive. Marriot spent the next 40 minutes watching him eat dandelions from a distance, scooping up his 18 month old son who seemed eager to stroke him.

Suddenly, another bear emerged on the scene – “The Boss”.  Marriot watched through binoculars as the notorious bear took a swipe at Split Lip. Who would win this battle of the grizzly heavyweights? Two notorious bears – there was no easy answer.

But Split Lip responded with a well-timed duck. Then, he dashed off into a nearby meadow almost instantly.

Marriot and family revved the car up, and followed as The Boss chased Split Lip for a full 3 kilometres down the highway. The whole time, they were weaving in and out of the yellow lines and a ditch running parallel. The chase petered out, with The Boss failing to land any blows. Split Lip had escaped, but The Boss had reasserted himself as king of the forest.

Most of our bear fights so far have featured ursus arctos horribilus, or the grizzly bear, the main brown bear subspecies of North America. What about the other 15-20? Could they have a different fighting style? This video captures two members of the Eurasian brown bear subspecies, the most common in the world, in the spacious yet remote forests of Finland.

Photographer Tero Pylkkänen had watched the bears follow each other for 2 hours without tiring. He knew full well that bear-on-bear violence could erupt, and sure enough, the two bears closed the gap to 1.5 meters. Panting, drooling and keeping their heads down, they showed all the subtle signs of imminent aggression. Then it happened: both bears shot up on their hind legs and erupted in a savage, blinding display of flurrying bear blows.

At first, the bears appear evenly matched, but the slightly larger one slowly drives back its opponent, never keeping its paws still. The different thing about this fight is the sheer speed of the bears’ limbs. They seem to have been drinking from a river of caffeine. Could the bears of Finland have lighting speed as their speciality?

Halfway through the video, the bears stop. It almost looks like they’re hugging each other. The smaller one retreats to behind a tree, panting, visibly in pain. Bear 2 stands its ground. This continues for 30 seconds, before bear 2 absent-mindedly wanders away. Bear 1 stays still behind a thin tree, and dashes off at the opportune moment. Bear 2 turns around, looking confused, and that’s the end of the fight. Pylkkänen uploaded his footage to youtube and decided on the name “Best Bear fight ever!”.

One epic duel took place in 2015, in Alaska’s Katmai national park. The Expedition Alaska team had watched two male bears stare each other down for 20 minutes while competing for a whale carcass. The bears pulled every trick out of the bag for intimidation purposes: strutting, jaw clacking, beating their chests, posturing. While they were distracted, several small bears had arrived to feed on the carcass, including a female and her 1 year old cub. Eventually, bear 1 gives up on the staredown and joins the carcass himself.

So what does bear 2 do? Instead of facing up to his old rival, bear 2 took the easy option and launched an all out assault on the mother bear. With its greater size, he pushed her back with a series of swipes. The cub slinks away, while the mother stays standing with a series of nimble backward steps. But the next minute, she gets rescued when male bear 1 reenters the fray and comes slamming straight into bear 2.

Finally, the two are coming to blows, on the edge of the water. The bears pulled some advanced moves out of the bag for this fight, as bear 2 used a “sweep the leg manoeuvre” to knock his rival over, unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, the mother bear walks away unharmed, saved, although unintentionally. After 1 minute of grappling, the two males give up, and back off slowly, looking reluctant to continue. Each bear manages to get a piece of the carcass in the end. The cub seems transfixed by the battle and keeps looking over his shoulder.

Our next fight was another salmon dispute, but this time, the outcome is a mystery, on par with the JFK assassination or where the city of Atlantis is located. 60 year old Japanese photographer Shogo Asao was exploring a forest trail in Katmai National Park, heading towards a waterfall, when he came across two bears engaged in a stare down. They appeared to be 6 years old, 900 pounds and around 8 meters tall. One had a salmon, the other intended to have a salmon.

Then the duel began, as the towering bears ran head on and started wrestling with each other, getting whatever swipes in they could. One bear landed a solid blow on the other’s nose, which did little to deter it. Neither bear noticed Asao, even when one dashed off to give itself some breathing room and stopped 3 meters short of him.

According to Asao, the fight carried on for 5 minutes, as he watched quietly. Gradually, the fight shifted into the forest and out of sight, but with no let up. The entire forest was lit up with the echoing roars of the duelling bears. “I was so close to the violent animals that I felt like a dead man walking”, Asao later said.

Yellowstone Park had one of its most eventful seasons ever in 2020. A bear called 791 became famous when he targeted a bull elk with a broken hind leg, chasing his prey into the water until it was drowned. 791 then dug a hole and buried the carcass, to keep the meat fresh and mask the smell in case other predators wanted to steal his kill. This happened by Yellowstone river just adjacent to the main road, and 971 was visible for a whole week, sitting by his lakeside carcass mound in a ferocious defensive posture.

During September, so many American bear enthusiasts flocked to Yellowstone that authorities were worried about road blockages. But then photographer David Angelescu decided to visit, and captured an amazing 10 minute piece of footage. At first, the grizzly bear waddles calmly through the water. All is well in the bear world. But 4 minutes in, a fellow grizzly charges from nowhere out of the left side of the picture. Grizzly 1 reacts without a second thought, swiping and wrestling with all his fury and all his might. This goes on for 20 seconds, before grizzly 2 thinks twice and leaves the picture.

Another 1 minute of calm waddling, before bear 2 reappears. This time, he doesn’t get a swipe in before a roar deters him and leaves the frame again. 6 minutes into the video, the paddling bear has reached the shoreline, to reveal the other bear looking uncertainly at him. This time, he makes no effort at all, swiping unsuccessfully at some birds instead, and that’s the last we see of him.

There’s one final twist in the tale though – which grizzly was which? Nobody has worked out whether grizzly 1 was the original elk-killer, or whether that was the second grizzly, retuning to defend his prize against an interloper. 

Hallo Bay is a place where bear history runs deep. It’s a wide, open grassy space where bears come to feed in their hundreds during summer, but it’s also where grizzly man Timothy Treadwell was killed in 2003, after naming it “the sanctuary”. In 2011, photographer Jim Abernethy was walking this hallowed ground when he saw an 800 pound male bear named Secretariat approach a mother and two cubs.

Unfortunately, this bear was hungry, and as it dashed into the water before the mother could comprehend things mentally, it scooped up the bear cub in its jaws, with cannibalism no concern. The mini-bear attempted to resist, but the laws of physics were against it. With water splashing everywhere, Secretariat prepared for a killer blow. But then the mother came charging. Defying all weight and size rules, she launched a savage assault on the male grizzly, beating him back for meter after metre.

Secretariat fought back, but as he approached the sandy shoreline, he decided enough was enough. After one last display of rage from the mother, he fled. Meanwhile, the cub was poking itself out of the water, covered in blood, but alive. His fellow cub approached in greeting. As the other returned, she seemed to comfort him for 3 seconds, before the 3 waddled out of the water and set off for their next adventure. Secretariat did not return.

The post 10 Brutal Bear Fights Observed In The Wild appeared first on Bear Informer.

Born in 1809, Kit Carson was one of America’s most legendary mountain men, one time duelling a Frenchman for the rights to marry a Native American, and barely surviving when a bullet grazed the top of his head. In 1834, Carson followed a set of tracks through the Colorado Rockies, where he found and shot a gigantic elk. But almost immediately afterwards, 2 gigantic grizzlies came charging from nowhere.

Carson’s rifle was out of bullets. A tree was his only hope, and with immense agility, Carson sprang upwards and swung himself onto a lower branch. He only just pulled his ankle from the giant bear’s closing paws, and now (probably with a quick nod to each other), the two grizzlies prepared to climb.

Quick as a flash, Carson pulled out his knife and cut a lower branch free. He knew that a grizzly bear’s nose was its tenderest, most vulnerable point, and the second the largest grizzly came into reach, jaws snapping, he stabbed the branch downwards in a multitude of crashing blows. The grizzly howled and retreated, and the second one suffered the same fate. Carson attacked the nose as though his life depended on it, which it did.

The howls of the grizzlies echoed throughout the forest, but they weren’t willing to give up their prey yet. They circled the tree for hours, while Carson simply waited and prayed. Finally, the grizzlies left, “of which I was heartily pleased, never having been so scared in my life“, Carson said. When Carson finally abandoned the tree just before midnight, he noticed that his elk carcass had been completely consumed. Carson made rapid progress to his camp, where his worried companions greeted him with joy.

The greatest internet video of 2013 begins in what appears to be a rural workshop, with multiple TVs filling shelves on the wall. The cameraman strays outside to an area with multiple cars and tools strewn around, before zooming in to reveal a man being chased by a brown bear up a tree. It’s a very thin tree, and the bear seems to be wrestling with the decision of whether to climb any higher. The tree looks like it could snap at any moment. The man is safely out of reach, but shouts at the bear repeatedly to scare it away, a plan which fails. Both man and bear stay in the same position for the entire 30 seconds the camera is on them, with a background of grassy meadows and forested hillsides.

But the craziest thing is how nobody rushes to help the man. The man is fighting for his life, but if anything, people are disinterested, and letting them get on with it. Halfway through, the cameraman lets out a deep sigh as though to say “why am I still living in Russia”.

Then he loses interest totally, and swivels the camera around to an adorable white and fluffy rabbit, before showing viewers his collection of classic cars. The fate of the man, the bear, and the delicate-looking tree is never revealed.

This video raises more questions than it answers. One possibility is that another bear was operating the camera.

Our next lucky escape took place on Igloo mountain, a small 1413 metre peak in Denali National Park in Alaska. At 3:50pm on August 4th 1961, a young ecologist named Napier Shelton was analysing a willow tree on the slopes close to the tree line, when he heard an ominous growling from close behind him.

Shelter was under no illusions, and as expected, his first glance revealed a charging grizzly approximately 10 metres away. Shelton dashed up the tree instantly, and he was lucky that its branches were horizontally angled and extended almost to the ground, making it like a ladder. Unfortunately, the bear had this advantage too.

Napier ascended several metres, but massive bear claws closed around his ankle. Seconds later, massive bear teeth were sinking into his calf. Napier kicked with all his might using his other foot, and the bear slipped down – was it a lucky strike on the nose? But Napier was pulled down in the bear’s grasp, and now the bear had his thigh. Napier refused to give up; he kept up a relentless onslaught of kicking with his free leg, like a pneumatic drill.

Finally, the bear let go, and Napier scrambled upwards. The impatient bear circled around the willow two or three times, before deciding that this meal was too much hassle, and wandering off relatively quickly. Napier stayed up the tree for half an hour, before starting down the slope and bumping into esteemed naturalist Adolph Murie.

A week after the savage assault, a smiling Napier Shelton returned to the tree to pose for pictures, which were later included in Murie’s book “The Grizzlies Of Mount McKinley”.

One day in 2017, 43 year old Andrey Ilyushits was walking his dog in the grassy, rolling south Siberian region of Kemerovo, when he stumbled into a gigantic brown bear.

Immediately, his loyal dog started to bark in the bear’s face. Bears have a strange fear of the much smaller dog, and this bought Ilyushits just enough time to take the only option available to him: climbing a nearby tree.

From a high branch, Ilyushits watched with horror as his beloved pet dog was killed, but fortunately, he had managed to climb high enough to be safe. He stayed in the tree for “many hours” before the bear gave up and he dared to climb down. Worse though, Ilyushits had been lost to start with. He had lost his way after leaving the small village of Alekseyevka.

Ilyushits sent a text message to his brother requesting a rescue, but he knew that movement was essential. He travelled 40km on foot through the wild Siberian taiga, praying that he wouldn’t meet another bear. Rescuers arrived and discovered a makeshift shelter and smouldering fireplace, plus a note explaining his intended route, but soon after, the trail of clues fizzled out.

The next day, an aircraft from a nearby town called Rosgvardiya flew over the wilderness, but failed to spot him. Finally, on day 5 of the intensive search, they found the starving Ilyushits. He had barely eaten a morsel of food for 7 days, but thanks to the tree and some rusty but functional climbing skills, he was still alive.

One morning in 1876, a man called Mr Townsend but more commonly known as “Dad” decided to set out into the Eagle prairies (as reported by the Humbolt Times). He had heard rumours of plentiful deer in the area, and accompanying him was a very cunning and experienced Native American hunter.

Two miles in, the Native suddenly warned Mr Townsend that bears were close by, but “Dad” was a man who never left a job he had started unfinished. He pressed ahead, and at the foot of a small hill, he sure enough discovered 3 fully grown grizzly bears feasting on a tender deer carcass.

The wise Native American had now disappeared. At first, Townsend fled with all the speed he could muster, but the growls were getting louder – the hungry bears were moving too quickly. So Townsend took the only escape route available to him – a medium-sized tree. He managed to reach the upper branches just before the hungry bears bit his heels, but in the melee, he had dropped his rifle. Instead, Townsend pulled out a Smith and Wesson handgun and fired insistently at the snapping bears below. One bear died, but the others refused to weaken.

Meanwhile, the old Native American had reached the cabin of two fellow hunters called Mr Painter and Lew McDaniels. They sprang to action, and when they reached the tree, Townsend was still alive. The duo shot the bears with rifles, and Townsend was saved from his tree refuge, after nearly 1 hour of panic.

The 1850s were the era of the Californian gold rush. Americans from all over wanted a piece of the profitable pie and in January 1858, miner George Favier and his merry band of 4 friends set out to the woods of Mariposa, California. One night, Favier was gathering brush for their campfire, when he heard a terrifying roar.

Turning around, he witnessed two gigantic grizzly bears gallop into camp and knock his friends to the floor. Favier immediately dropped his firewood, and dashed for the best-looking tree he could identify in the split second he had to think. Favier struck an approaching bear in the face with a pickaxe, and despite feeling razor-sharp claws nipping at his feet, he made it to safety with a final burst of strength.

From the highest branches, the bleeding young man watched on in horror as the bears devoured the bodies of his friends and ransacked their food supplies. “The young man remained in the treetop two days and two nights, nearly perishing with thirst” reported the Sacramento Age at the time.

Favier waited in the tree for a full two days before daring to descend. He staggered northwards for a further three days, until the miraculous sight of a cabin came into view, where he was nursed back to health. Without a tree, he too would have become bear food.

Few people have ever had more bear stories to share than Grizzly Adams, and one of the classics revolved around a tree. In spring 1855, Adams was following a knee-thick trail in the Sierra Nevada mountains with his pet dog Rambler and beloved bear Ben Franklin, when a mother bear’s head suddenly popped up.

The mother bear jumped, and with a single paw, she swatted the rifle out of Adams’ hand before he had time to fire it. With the other paw, she swatted his head and ripped open his scalp, leaving it hanging over his eyes.

Fortunately, Adams had one piece of luck: this was an elderly bear with blunt claws and ground down teeth. Adams started to sing “old sgt”, and his beloved bear Ben Franklin appeared, unleashing a flurry of blows on the rival grizzly’s back and giving Adams the breather he needed. He scooped up his rifle, and climbed into the sanctuary of a small tree.

He laid his flapping scalp back onto his skull, but now, the mother bear was mauling Ben Franklin. From his comfortable tree, Adams let out the mightiest screech he could muster, and when the mother bear swivelled to attention, he unloaded one shot into the bear’s heart. She fell back “like a log”, and when she appeared to recover, Adams jumped down and finished her off with a slash of his hunting knife.

Both Adams and Ben Franklin survived (as did Rambler), but died within a few years from complications.

In our next story, Bob Hayes of Haines Junction, Yukon managed to deploy two of the classic grizzly dodging strategies. One day in August 2008, he was walking down a wilderness trail when he calmly noticed a mother grizzly charging him. He wasn’t calm for long though: he soon exclaimed “something that … probably most people would exclaim“.

He was with his beloved pet dog Charlie, and the pooch managed to bark and distract the charging bear for just long enough to allow Hayes to climb a nearby spruce tree. He kicked and used every last remnant of tree-climbing knowledge from his days as a youth, and despite the bear getting a hard bite into his ankles, Hayes reached the safety of a higher branch. Then he remembered his canister of bear spray. He whipped it out of his backpack, and from 1-2 metres away, he deployed it into the mother grizzly’s face, which had shown no signs of giving up.

For the next 10 to 15 minutes, the agonised grizzly ran in loops, with its howls audible across the entire forest. From this tree sanctuary, Hayes heard the cub lurking in the background. Soon enough, the mother disappeared, and Hayes made sure to stay deathly quiet as he descended from the tree. He only suffered superficial injuries, and the same was true for his dog.

The Night of the Grizzlies was a fateful event in American brown bear history: two girls were killed by garbage-addicted nuisance bears, and this led to bear-proof bins being installed all over US national parks, and rubbish dumps being cleaned up. But without the sanctuary of trees, it could have been much worse.

On August 13th, Michelle Koons and her 4 friends were camped by Trout Lake. At 4:20am, Denise awoke to the hot, moist breath of a huge bear. She somehow stayed calm, but then the bear strayed over to 16 year old Paul Dunn, biting his sleeping bag and swatting him hard.

Dunn jumped awake, whacking the bear by accident. The bear backed off momentarily, and then charged, before Paul scampered up a tree just in the nick of time. Meanwhile, 21 year old Ronal Noseck had woken up, and at the top of his voice, he bellowed “everyone into trees“. Denise scampered up, and Ronald threw the dog to her, before climbing up the tree himself. The last to make it to safety was Ronald’s brother Ray.

Sadly, it was too late for Michelle Koons, who was almost having a panic attack. They urged her to get to the trees, but Koons’ last words were “oh god, I’m dead“, before being dragged into the woods. Paul and friends stayed in their tree sanctuary for 2 hours before climbing down and running headlong to the rangers’ cabin. It’s likely that the tree saved them – the bear’s hunger may have been satisfied, but the next day, it was shot dead by the very same lake.

A tragic mauling had a silver lining in May 1995 when a small boy survived thanks to hiding in a tree. It happened 20 miles south of downtown Anchorage, when a grandmother, grandson and her son-in-law were walking the popular McHugh Creek trail.

14 year old Art Abel was walking with 77 year old Marcie Trent, an avid runner who had completed 70 marathons, while 45 year old Larry Waldron, a popular local saxophonist, was further ahead. The team was 1 third of the way to the lake, when Abel heard the bushes rustling. The next thing he saw was a large shape moving. His grandmother let out a piercing scream, and in panic, Abel dived into a nearby ravine.

Further ahead, Waldron noticed the terrified boy approaching. He told him to hide in a tree, before dashing back down the trail for his mother-in-law.

Some time later, a hiker heard the boy’s shouts from the tree. Marcie Trent was discovered dead, while Waldron had deep slash wounds in his stomach. He was in shock, and despite the efforts of fellow hikers, he quickly died. Abel had climbed the tree, and was airlifted away by helicopter without knowing what had happened to his relatives. He told the rescuers that the attacking animal was a moose.

Apparently, there was a half-buried moose carcass 300 feet away which the bear had been defending, and the father and grandmother had been dragged halfway off the trail. Nevertheless, Waldron’s quick thinking saved the life of his son (and the tree helped).

The post 10 Bear Attacks Where Climbing Trees Succeeded appeared first on Bear Informer.