How to Deal with Bears in the Wilderness

Stephan Kesting talks with explorer Adam Shoalts about encountering and safely dealing with bears in the wilderness.
Bears feature very very large in the terrible things that can happen to you in the bush, so I asked Adam what his advice is for people about bears.
It’s hard to give one size fits all advice because circumstances can vary depending on where you’re going and what you’re doing. But if you were to ask Adam what the top 10 hazards he would worry about, bears would definitely not be in the top five at all, they would just barely crack the top 10. He worries 100 times more about the weather, specifically lightning. Wind can be terrifying, not only on the water when you’re paddling but when you’re camping on the shore, there are many places where there is a significant hazard that a tree could fall on your tent in the night and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Wind, weather, cold water, hypothermia, rapids, these are things to worry about. Freak accidents like slipping and smashing your head against a rock because you slipped on a boulder field doing a portage, or anything like that, any sort of unforeseen medical emergency. You should worry about those sorts of things far more than about bears.
The vast majority of bears are shy, and most of them will run away as soon as they see you. Most that don’t, if you make any sort of threatening gesture or noise then they’ll run away. Of course yes, there are aggressive bears and they are certainly capable of attacking and killing humans. But it’s like any risk factor - are you terrified of walking down the streets of Vancouver or Toronto at night? Well statistically yes, every year people do get attacked or murdered, any number of bad things could happen to them, but the risk is really low and it doesn’t make sense to be completely worried about that. Of course you don’t want to be completely dismissive of the risk but it’s relatively low down the list.
I did ask Adam if his risk calculus changed at all in Ungava Bay because now we are talking about polar bears. He said he’d be lying if he said they didn’t make him nervous. He has a recurring nightmare about a polar bear swimming under his canoe. This is partly because the water on almost of the Northern Rivers is very clear so you can see far down into the lake and polar bears are of course excellent swimmers, and they can swim faster than anyone can paddle a canoe. And let’s face it, it’s terrifying. Because if there really was a polar bear underneath your canoe, you would have very few options. There would be very little you could do if that polar bear intended harm. You would be essentially a sitting duck. Even a polar bear didn’t eat you, if it so much as flipped your canoe you would be in serious trouble.
On his most recent trip, Adam wasn’t really worried because even though theoretically he was within the range of where polar bears would be, he just thought this early in the year, in July, polar bears are still off shore, they’re on the ice floe’s hunting seals, there won’t be any hanging around the coast here. But when he reached the end of his journey he came to a tiny Inuit community called Kangiqsualujjuaq, and came into shore there and the first person he met is a local man named Willie and the first thing Willie said to him was that there were two polar bears swimming up river, exactly where Adam just came down river, so on a perfect collision course. He was really glad he didn’t know about it earlier or he wouldn’t have slept a wink, knowing he had passed two polar bears going up river while he was going down river. Maybe ignorance is bliss so he didn’t have to be terrified about it. However, as his example just demonstrates, those bears paid no attention to him whatsoever and thankfully he was fine.
I think polar bears are a different world from black bears and grizzly bears. I mean there’s lots of Inuit who are happy to camp inland in canvas tents when they’re hunting caribou in the middle of winter, and that’s perfectly normal, but you’re not going to find very many Inuit - I’m going to go out on a limb here and say none - who feel comfortable camping on the Hudson Bay coast in a tent in the summer. They just don’t do it and it’s because of polar bears. I think their ecology of being carnivorous, or I think Wikipedia describes them being “hyper” carnivorous, last time I looked, that phrase scares me. Hyper-carnivorous. So I think that’s worth carrying a 12 gauge, and carrying one of those bear perimeter fences.
If you enjoyed this snippet you can check out the full conversation (episode 374 of The Strenuous Life Podcast) here: • Adam Shoalt’s Amazing ...
Stephan Kesting
P.S. If you're interested in outdoor adventure, please check out my book "Perseverance, Life and Death in the Subarctic" at www.amazon.com...

[@bookofdaveandsteve]

The crossover I didn't know I needed!

[@essentialwilderness]

Glad I could help facilitate that!