Yes, that is a real grizzly bear (male) about eight feet away from me, and yes, I did take the video, lying on my back with the camera on my chest. You see one of the four other people in the group at the beginning of the video, and those are my legs, in black rain pants, later on. “Does the bear know we’re there?” you’re wondering. Of course he does. He’s just not interested.
This was a grizzly-watching trip on Kodiak Island in Alaska. They have an off-the-grid settlement that you have to fly into on a float plane, and when you arrive, they carry you onto dry land:
Then you take a boat to an even more remote camp near the streams where the grizzlies dine. You’re warned that if you get up in the middle of the night, do not go far from the others.
I actually had no idea we were going to get that close to grizzlies when I signed up. I’m not going to name the tour operator, but they are licensed and they’d been doing it for 17 years when I took the trip. We were all coached to dress in dark, neutral colors, not wear scents of any kind, not to make any sudden moves when a bear came near, e.g. to take a photo, and don’t even think of getting closer to them. I was stretching the rules a bit by just keeping the camera stationary on my chest.
Right after this bear passed, Jack, the tour leader, said to us, “Get up the hill and get down, and don’t move!” There was a mama grizzly coming, with her two cubs trailing behind. I put the camera away (this was before it became so easy to record video with your phone). Jack sat near the bottom of the hill, with his Labrador, Biff, beside him and his rifle across his lap. When we set out that morning, I asked Jack what the dog thought about grizzly bears, and he laughed, “Oh, he’s seen so many bears he doesn’t even pay attention to them anymore!”
All names have been changed.
If you’ve read the lore of bear attacks, you know that getting between a mama grizzly and her cubs is a surefire way to get killed. Even coming anywhere near the cubs will do it, as it did for Timothy Treadwell, the activist (or “imbecile” as I like to call him) in Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man.
Biff did shift position suddenly, contrary to Jack’s assurances. The grizzly noticed and turned towards us, roared, and charged.
As this point, you might wonder:
What went through my mind? Stark terror? Did I wet my pants?
For some reason, no. I felt as if I was watching a documentary on TV:
“Wow. I wonder what happens now?”
I can’t explain this lack of emotion, and I won’t claim “Hey, I’m so brave!” That was just what I thought: like I was watching from a distance. I didn’t ask anyone else what they thought. Obviously we all could have died at any second. We knew Jack had a rifle, though.
Thinking about this more: imagine how different it would have been if we were there without guides who knew what to do? Looking anxiously at each other, frozen in fear? Probably. Hopefully someone would take charge. I hope to never be in that position.
Jack and his wife Barbara both stood up suddenly, made themselves as tall as they could, raised their arms over their heads and yelled at the top of their lungs, “Enough! Enough!” Mama Grizzly turned and ran away. Barbara said to me, “So did you get that on video, too?” I shook my head.
I had actually seen Barbara do that the night before, when a grizzly wandered into our camp. Apparently this is routine behavior around bears for them. You don’t use bear spray, and you certainly don’t shoot them.
Then we all walked back to camp. No one said anything. The reality of how close we’d all come to death was sinking in.
Finally I said to Jack, “So you didn’t even load your gun for that, did you?”
“No, I wasn’t going to kill a bear for that stupid dog. He shouldn’t even have been there!”
If he’d killed a bear, he could lose his license to run these tours, and thus his livelihood. The dog was expendable. Jack said that in 17 years of doing this, he’d only even chambered a round in his rifle once.
So What Was Going On Here?
If you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking this sounds insane. “Grizzlies can kill you, man! I just read about a camper up in Montana who lost his life to one!”
And you’re right. But that’s Montana, and this is Kodiak Island. Since I did this trip, I’ve seen a couple nature documentaries where a cameraman stands within 50 feet of a group of Kodiak grizzlies, who ignore him. But you’ll never see anyone doing that in Montana, or anywhere else in the lower 48. And you’ll certainly never see anyone doing it with polar bears, who will very cheerfully kill and eat you.
Here’s why: Kodiak has
Lots of bears (3,500 is the estimate).
Very few people. Most Alaskan cruises don’t go there. Most tourists don’t go there. You have to fly in, or come by boat.
Lots of salmon, so the bears are not starving or competing with each other. They do have to work hard to catch the salmon, and they often fail.
These photos were via zoom lens. The bears aren’t really that close to us.
The bears are so sated by September that they only eat the fatty parts of the salmon and leave the rest to the forest scavengers. They’re trying to bulk up before the winter hibernation, and fat is a very precious commodity in the Arctic.
These salmon, by the way, have already spawned by September, and they’re often called spent. They’ve used up all their stored energy, and will not make it back to the Pacific.
Humans don’t want to eat them by the final stage, but the bears aren’t so picky.
Taking Your Life in Your Hands
I’ll close with a meditation on doing things that could kill you. I’m not going to claim there’s anything logical about my choices here, nor should there be. You might choose differently.
Unavoidable: You could be in a car, or walking on the street, and get killed by a vehicle. Yes, you can avoid this by not going anywhere. Verdict: keep doing, but carefully.
Assumed risk: something really dangerous, like getting close to a bear, with a guide who knows what he’s doing: Verdict: Fun! But only if he really does know what he’s doing.
Assumed risk: riding a bicycle. You could get killed by a car. Verdict: keep doing, but carefully.
Assumed risk: motorcycling. Verdict: Nope. Aside from the risk of getting killed, you almost certainly will fall off, sooner or later. Way fun, though.
Assumed risk: flying on an airline. Verdict: keep doing. Staying put or only going by ground travel is not worth it.
Assumed risk: flying with a private pilot (lots of people have pilot licenses): Verdict: Nope. I used to, but I won’t anymore. I’ve read too many stories of private planes crashing. You’d have several seconds to think, as the plane goes down, “I’m about to die, and I didn’t need to be doing this.”
Assumed risk: parachuting. Verdict: Nope. See “flying with a private pilot “
Assumed risk: bungee jumping. Verdict: I suppose I might do this, but it seems like you could dislocate your knees when you hit the bottom. So probably not.
Assumed risk: rescuing someone who’s drowning, being victimized by crime, stuck in a burning car, etc. Verdict: Only you can decide whether to risk your life in a heroic way like that. It’s laudable, and you could die. I wouldn’t even presume to offer advice.
Stupid risk: (now we get to the really dumb things you have no reason to do, but some people do anyway) autoerotic asphyxiation. I actually knew someone who died this way.
Stupid risk: standing on a ladder where, if you fell, you’d get killed. Like a second-story window on your house, or in a stairwell.
Stupid risk: taking a selfie with a bison, moose, elk, bear, or other large animal; taking a selfie very close to a cliff, waterfall, or the edge of a roof. This is why the Darwin Awards were invented.
Some people who do the activities that I give thumbs down to lie to themselves, in my opinion. There was one guy I knew at Google who did wing-suiting (as well as parachuting).
I said to him, “Why would you jump out of a perfectly good airplane?” He’d heard that tired old cliche before, and smiled:
“There’s no such thing as a perfectly good airplane! Any plane could crash!”
This, to me, is lying to yourself. Your risk when you jump out of the plane is vastly higher than if you just stayed on it. Whenever I read about some wing-suiter getting killed (a frequent occurrence), I think, “God, I hope it’s not him!”
People also say, “You could get killed crossing the street!” This is also lying to yourself. Crossing the street is unavoidable. Riding a motorcycle is not.
