Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Black Bear Attacks - Allena Hansen and Old-Timey Yellowstone Lady

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Wes has two stories uncovering the dangers black bears pose to the unprepared. Thankfully, he and Jeff are able to share their knowledge on how to avoid an attack, or if you do end up having an encounter with one, how to fight back. Mike's ideas are a little more unorthodox and are thus discounted out of hand. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Tooth and Claw, where Wes, the Gris Kid himself, recounts true tales of wild animal attacks. This week we're talking about Black Bears, which Wes, being a wildlife biologist, specializing in bears, and his brother Jeff have extensive experience with. And I, Mike, have seen one once. We actually have two stories to share with you this week, so we hope you enjoy them. Once again, because we're just starting out on this whole podcasting thing, every single rating and review that we get actually really helps us. us out a lot. So please, if you have a moment to spare, rate our podcast and subscribe to it.

Thank you. All right. Let's get on to the episode. All right. So we are back. You guys see any good movies or TV during your quarantine? I've been watching Ozark and then I am re-watching season one of True Detective. Mostly because... That's the only one I liked. Yeah. And because Matthew McConaughey is like such a nihilist in that and he like thinks that nothing matters that it really speaks to how I feel during this quarantine. Nice. It's just like.

It's a good character to relate to you. It's, I weirdly relate to him right now, which is, yeah, probably not the best. I didn't even think about it. So I actually just watched Shawshank Redemption. And that's kind of like, maybe that's a little how we're feeling. Yeah, we're trapped. Yeah. But I kind of like it.

Yeah. I think I'd thrive in Shawshank. I'll say, I'll say this much. The, would you be with the, you wouldn't go. Not the CISN. Not the CISters. All right, just making sure. You just, what are we talking about today?

We are talking about black bears. So, you know, this is something that's right up, mine and Jeff Sally. We both worked on a black bear project for a few years. We've collared a lot of black bears. We've crawled into black bear dens. We've gotten comfortable enough with black bears to where I would probably be more scared encountering like a pit bull in the woods than I would, a black bear. I definitely would be.

So, wait, you're saying a pit bull in the, Just out in the forest, you'd be afraid of that? Much more so than a black bear. If someone's dog was just like loose and I ran into it. Yeah. Like I'm not, I'm not anti-pit bull or anything. But like, I know the behavior of a black bear much better than I know of like a pit bull or of some other animal that I encounter. Yeah.

And so for me, black bears, because I know their behavior so well, a lot of that fear is gone. And that's kind of like the purpose of this podcast. Yeah. Is to teach people how to recognize the right behaviors to not be afraid of the end. animal. I think for me, if I see like a pit bull deep in the woods, I'll be like, this is pretty weird. I'm afraid of this pit bull more than a black bear. That's true. But if I see a black bear in a neighborhood, I'd be more afraid of a black bear in the neighborhood than a pit bull. Because I'd be like, this black bear is obviously like comfortable around people. This is pretty weird bear. It would be

kind of weird. So that's my take on it. How about like in the Simpsons though where Homer sees the bear? It's just like, doesn't care. Yeah. Anyway, so we're talking about black bears. Black bear attacks are incredibly rare. They're not a common thing. The fact that you are dealing with an animal that can be a predator, they're mostly eating vegetation and insects and stuff,

but they can be predatory. And the fact that they're responsible for so few attacks, given how many bears there are and how close they live to people, they're really rare. This doesn't happen very often. selling this podcast right now. Yeah, well I'm just letting you guys know that this isn't a common thing because a lot more pit bull attacks and black bear attacks. And this is an animal that a lot of people are going to end up seeing at some point in their lives and I don't want them to be afraid of them.

I want them to have a healthy respect for them and like know that this is an animal that can kill you if it wants to. Yeah. But more often than not, they want nothing to do with us and they're going to try and get away. Is that kind of insulting? I don't know. I feel like they could reciprocate a little better. What do you mean? We're all interested in black bears. We like to go out and see them and stuff. They don't really care about us. Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably from a like a long history of us persecuting them pretty badly. Persecution. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there used to be campaigns where they'd just kill them to get rid of them. Oh, really? Yeah. So, I mean, they have plenty of reasons not to like us. Usually, usually we spell trouble for them. And they don't usually spell trouble for us.

So they are really shy. And they also, and part of that, too, is. because they evolved with grizzly bears and in some parts of their range they evolved with grizzly bears in the west they did and so they know that they are like not top dog so they're more of a flight than a fight um grizzly bears are often more of a fight than a flight. These guys like to just get away. They're also incredible tree climbers so they know that if they can just get up a tree they're probably safe. So they do occasionally attack people and that's what we're going to talk about today. So we're going to start, we're actually going to do two quick stories. We're going to start with one that's kind of been in the news a bit recently. And it's because of some comments this woman

made that was attacked about her health insurance and like how much of a nightmare that was for her navigating health insurance after her attack because of like the extensive surgeries that she had. I'm assuming this happened in the United States. It did. Yeah. And she she was like a big Bernie supporter because her health insurance was like such a nightmare for. for her. She said it was worse than the attack, which is like saying a lot because she had her face ripped off. All right. So this is Elena Hansen. This is a story I'd heard about a lot because my professor, Tom Smith, my mentor, had talked about her. And there's this idea kind of like what we're just talking about. They're like, black bears don't attack people. They're these kind of like,

they're the teddy bears of the bear family, you know? And this woman had heard all this stuff. And so she wasn't afraid of them. And then like she did everything kind of right and a bear attacked her. And so my mentor would always say, like, yeah, they don't attack people until they do, you know, which doesn't make a lot of logical sense, but it's true. No, that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. Good. So, yeah, every once in a while, you know, 999 out of 1,000 bears aren't going to attack you, but that one might.

And that's the bear that you have to prepare for. So Alina Hanson, she's a single, at the time of her attack in 2008, she's a single 58-year-old woman. She lives on this big 70-acre plot of land in the mountains outside of Bakersfield, the Sequoia Mountains. Where's Baker? In California. Yeah. She's like a pretty confident woman, you know, older woman kind of out doing her thing.

She has one kid that's off on his own now. And she kind of works this land by herself. And she's just kind of living this solitary life out in the California mountains. And one day she's out and she's working on this spring system. It was like a way that she got water to like her crops or something. I'm not totally sure. But it was like a spring well essentially where she had a natural spring water that she was using in some way. And she was out there working on it because it was jammed or something.

And she was inside this well, like up to her chest in spring water working. And then she gets out. And right as she gets out, her legs were getting numb. So she decides to get out of the water. She's looking around and it's this really idealic kind of Walt Disney. Like there's butterflies and birds chirping and everything is green. and beautiful. And as she's turning her head, she sees a black bear. And it's 10 feet away. Ten feet? Yeah. And it's just staring at her. And she says within a split second of meeting the

gaze with the bear, the bear attacks her. And it takes half a second for it to cover that distance. And it's on top of it. Some good acceleration. Yeah. Yeah, they're fast. I mean, they're just like grizzly bears. They're super explosive. And it doesn't take long for them to be on top of you. So the bear's mauling her pretty much instantly. And she like pretty much black. out from shock or from whatever and then wakes up numb legs yeah exactly from being so cold and she wakes up with her face down in the sand kind of on the edge of the spring and the bear's mauling her and it's got her face in its mouth and she wakes up with like its eyes right next to her eye oh wow and it's biting her and she feels her eyeball pop and she feels like her scalp being ripped off and she feels all these

crazy things happening to her face. So the face was in the mouth, the eyeball is popped, and the scalp is gone? So she, yeah, she's got like not even a head anymore. Exactly. She, I mean, she thought the eyeball had completely popped, but really had kind of gone around it. And so then as

she's there, she starts to see these things fall down that she thought were like chewing gum, which she thought was, you know, weird. And then she realized it's their teeth, and the bear had, it was like inside of her jaw and had ripped out of like, I think she lost like 14 teeth and it was spitting them out. Oh, geez. Yeah. So this thing's like full on, this is a full on predatory attack. That's like a cartoon.

Yeah, exactly. Where like an animal, like, pating. So she's on the ground. She is seeing the bear literally spit out her teeth and she's being mauled. And the bear, this whole time, you know, the bear has had her face in its face. And it takes this quick break to spit out her teeth. And when that happens as it's spitting out her teeth she shoves her finger in its eye and yeah and actually get some of its eye and the bear stops for a second you know it pulls away for a second and in that split second eye for an eye yeah an eye for an eye she's like you took mine I'm taking yours she gets up and she yells for her dogs and she has two dogs that were kind of sleeping around to bend in this little creek or whatever and it's like a big mastiff that had been involved in

a dog fighting circuit that she rescued, and then a big wolfhound too. So she's got big old dogs. And they hear her calling and they rush in and she blacks out again. Like she uses kind of every last strength she has to call the dogs. Then she blacks out again. And she wakes up to all three of them fighting on top of her. And the dogs are going crazy and like she hears them yelping and she sees the bear like bite one of their stomachs and stuff.

And this is all happening on top of her. And she suddenly has this realization, like I pretty much just sacrifice my dogs to this bear. I need to make good use of this. And so she gets up and crawls off. And she gets away from the bear, but she's completely blind pretty much from the blood. And then she's lost her contact lenses. And one of her eyes is essentially gone.

And she's like her, she thought it was like a baseball cap, but it was actually her scalp was like coming down in front of her face. And so she can't see. And she's in all these brambles and wood. So she's trying to navigate her way down to this pond where she knew she could get kind of her bearings, but she can't find it.

And so she, luckily, like this one of her dogs, I think it was the wolfhound shows up. And she puts her hand on the dog's head and it like guides her through these brambles down to the pond. And when she gets to the pond and she can still hear the dog like fighting in the other one, the wolfhound goes back to fight with the bear. When she gets to the pond, she can navigate her way to where her truck is. But then she has to drive this weird kind of logging road down to the fire station, which is like the closest help for her. So she drives pretty much blind on this logging road down to the fire station that like lurches into this fire station that's like staff. And she's like, she's kind of a sassy old lady. I listened to a few interviews of her.

And I guess when she got there, she yelled out like, honey, I'm home or something. And so they like run to her. And one of the like, it was like a younger fireman was like, you're going to be okay. And she was like worried about him even because he was like the same age as their son. And she was like, I promise I'm not going to die. on your station or whatever and he's like don't worry about it and then um she told this guy her last message to her son and all this stuff because she at this point she liked to assume she was probably dying because her face she describes it as her face looking like a chunk of hamburger

and and you can find pictures of her mauling on online and it is pretty bad I think I won't yeah there's a few really really really there's one where the dude completely had his face ripped off like no eyes know anything's left and somehow the dude survived hers was pretty bad though like it's pretty gnarly so then yeah she gets she gets like life lighted out um she goes through a ton of surgery right off the bat to kind of stitch her back together and make her look somewhat recognizable and they save her eye and then they she pretty much has to eat out of a straw for like a year and a half because of this like while they're reconstructing her jaw and she again like her main the thing that she said was the worst was dealing with health insurance because

She had to have tons and tons and tons of surgery. And you guys should really listen to her interviews sometime because she really is this kind of funny old badass woman that just lives out in the middle and more. Oh, that comment is so good. Honey, I'm home when you're just missing half your face. Yeah, and she's really sweet too. She was super concerned about her dogs.

Yeah, I was going to ask. Yeah, so she assumed that they had died. And when her son came to visit her, she asked him, like, what happened to the dogs? And he was like, oh, they're fine. What? They came back to the house and we gave them some antibiotics and washed them off and they're fine. And actually, this picture, I have a picture of them.

It's pretty funny. The pictures captioned Elena's heroic dogs. And then her cat somehow worked its way into this picture. It's like these two huge dogs that saved her life and then the cat's like standing in front of them too. So describe the picture. The picture is because they can't actually see you. I just wanted your guys's reaction there. We have the mastiff laying down on the ground.

looking very proud. The wolfhound standing over him. And then she's got a pretty fat cat that just happens to be in the picture as well. Just photo bombing. Looking right at the camera. Yeah. Do you think the cat helped out at all? I doubt it. I really doubt the cat did anything. Well, I don't know. She wasn't there for the full fire. That's true. She was guiding the house. Yeah. And the cat definitely looks like it fits in. She's guiding the honey. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own.

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I'm not going to get into that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for having your face ripped off by a bear. No, that's great. She did pretty good. Yeah. It's surprising to me that the bear like stayed and fought the dogs.

Yeah. Because, like, we worked with bears, and we would use dogs every now and then, and it's like, they don't like dogs. They want to get away as fast as they could. Well, so all of this probably happened really quick. For her, it probably felt like a long time. Well, if the bear is, like, 10 feet away when she first saw it. Yeah.

Well, I'm just saying that from the point where she got away from it to where the dogs chase the bear off, it probably didn't take it a whole lot of time for the bear to figure out, like, I don't really care to mess with. It's outnumbered by these dogs, and they're going crazy. Yeah. So the bear probably got out of there pretty quick and didn't like... Yeah, I'm guessing like, you know, if you have two dogs that are fighting the bear, it maybe just didn't feel like it had a way out. And so it like kind of held its ground. The thing about this attack is it most... I read a lot of different kind of articles about it.

And there's one or two of them where like she surprised the bears. She came out of the well. I think this was a predatory attack. I think generally black bears, there's really, really, really hardly any incidents where they are surprised by someone and then decide to attack. They're like we talked about earlier, their number one thing is just to get away. And this bear had everywhere to go to get away. It didn't need to come at her. She didn't corner it or anything. And so my guess is that it kind of heard her messing around, saw she was by herself and decided that she was a meal and went down and attacked her. It's a good strategy to wait till her and legs were numb.

Yeah, her legs. Hard to run when you can't feel your legs. The other reason I think it's predatory is because she was putting up a pretty good fight and the thing, the bear just stuck on her. Kept going. Yeah, and so that idea kind of shows that it wasn't just trying to get away. It actually thought that she was a meal. And for it to even stick around when the dogs come in, you know, this is a bear that,

who knows, it could have been a bear that was desperate for a meal. Maybe it was sick or old or whatever. Or maybe it was just a bear that decided a person as a meal. Well, I remember you telling me once that with black bear attacks, it's almost always because they want to eat you. Yeah. Black bear attacks aren't very common, but a grizzly bear is going to attack you because, you know, it's stepped on a thorn and it's grumpy. Right. Or like, you're in its territory or just, it wants to.

Yeah. But a black bear, it's probably not going to attack, well, it's almost for sure not going to attack you, but if it does, it's going to try to eat you. Yeah. And that's why when you, when you, when you suppose. surprise a black bear like we've surprised some black bears before or we've seen oh yeah oh yeah picture like a surprise party times three what does Jeff like what happens when you when a black bear's angry at you what does it do so in our traps when we would have one in there yeah um they clack their jaws yeah and then yeah they would kind of smack their tongue like that

Yeah. And lots of snorting face up on you. Yeah. So there's this whole kind of suite of behavioral things that the bear's saying, I'm a bear, I don't want you to mess with me. If you mess with me, it's going to be bad for you. And what that bear is trying to do is get you to leave. Right.

And so if you see a bear doing those things, it means you're too close to it, but it probably doesn't mean it's going to attack you. Because really all that bear wants to do is create some space between the two of you. but what happens with these attacks when it's a black bear attack is you don't get any of that what you get is a bear that's being really quiet and not giving you any of these signs because what it's actually doing is stalking you and so you don't see any of that you don't see the clacking you don't see the bluff charge or any of that stuff you see a bear that's like sneaking up on you and that's probably what happened to her and in those cases you got to do what she did and just

fight it off because it's not trying to just neutralize you it's trying to eat you What do black bears usually eat? What are they usually looking to eat? I mean, they're typical diets vegetation or insects. A lot of berries and grass. Berries grass. I mean, it wasn't just like a case of mistaken idea. The bear didn't think this woman was like a berry or something. They're pretty smart.

And like a bear in this area too would have had seen, it would have seen some people before and some berries before. And it was mid-July. So it was probably right into like berry season. So this bear was probably pretty well fed. But yeah, I mean, it probably just wanted to try killing a person. You know, not for a thrill, but it was probably like, maybe I can eat this. Yeah. And she's by herself.

Like I said, it hardly ever happens. But when it does, it's almost always a predatory black bear. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Those dogs. I like those dogs a lot. They're great dogs.

Yeah. So we're going to talk about another quick one that while we're on the top of the black bears. Do you guys want to ask any other questions about Elena Hansen? No. About her attack? It's not a whole lot you can really do. There is. See, I gouged it.

Yeah. Yeah, like a, yeah, okay. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Sure. All right, so the second one, this is a more kind of traditional black bear attack in quotation marks, but it's one from the early 1900s in Yellowstone, which was kind of the wild west when it came to black bears. This is back in the day when blackbirds. Feeding the bears.

Yeah, they're feeding on, they're doing everything. It's a very different park from what we have now. I couldn't remember. This is kind of funny. I couldn't remember the title of this story or anything, but I remembered what happened. So I googled Black Bear Breasts, and that's how I found this story.

Any other good stuff in this? No. I've probably stumbled across this story a couple times then. All right, so I'm going to read it to you guys, because I haven't memorized this one. But pretty much this is, so this is an excerpt from the book, Death and Yellowstone. It's one of the earlier issues of that book.

Great book. book, by the way. It is a great book. Yeah. So essentially this one's talking about how a black bear gets the blame for an attack that actually wasn't its fault, which is something that used to happen a lot in these national parks where there was, you know, rampant feeding and everything that we talked about. Right. Okay. So this is talking about an author who was in the park in the 30s and he found a ranger impatiently talking to a woman. And the ranger says, lady, you mustn't do that. You've been told time and time again not to feed that. And he found a ranger. And he's that bear. Oh, he won't hurt me, replied the lady. He's so cute standing there. He's the gentlest bear in the park. Yes, I know, assented the ranger wearily, but even tame bears hurt people quite often. They don't mean to. It's always an accident, but the injury is just as bad. It's against the rules. Why can't you obey the regulations? Which is interesting to me because now the Rangers are just like, here's the citation. You know, it's not like, please do this. Like this guy, you know? And she says, Oh, bother the regulations.

You rangers are always harping on regulations. This bear is hungry. Look here, I'll show you how eager he is to get even a small morsel of bread. The ranger shook his head. I really wish you wouldn't feed the bear, he said. And he rode away without waiting for the lady to demonstrate how hungry her pet bear was. Life was probably pretty dull for this woman. Staying all day in a camp with nothing much to do but admire the scenery.

When a car drove up a few minutes later after the ranger had gone, she called to the people. Let me show you my bear's trick. He's just too cute for any. They gathered around the woman as the woman held a piece of candy at full arm's length above her head. The bear, a great black fellow, rose on his hind feet and easily reached the candy. The woman backed a few steps away and offered another piece. The bear followed, walking on his hind legs, and took the candy as before. It was fun to make such a big fellow walk around and eat candy out of her hand.

Everybody laughed and applauded. Such quaint creatures, these bears, exclaimed one of the ladies from the automobile party, so tame, ever so cute and gentle. They watched until the woman tired of the game. She stood directly in front of the bear, facing him but offering no more candy. Go away now, she ordered. No more candy for you today. She did not move, and as the bear dropped down on all fours, he put out his feet, toward her,

much as he would a tree or any convenient object to ease his descent. The women screamed as his paws touched her shoulders. His claws, sharp as knives, seeking a support, ripped through her clothing and skin. They tore deep cuts a foot long across her breasts, and blood spurted from them. The woman fainted. The bear backed away and disappeared in the pandemonia. One of the men ordered an ambulance by telephone, then drove post-haste to the ranger station. There the apprehensive ranger heard the familiar tale.

Something terrible happened. A bear just tore the breast off a woman. Kill the bear. He must be killed. He is a dangerous bear. Kill the wicked bear. So the story went. People who very few minutes before thought the bear was cute.

So this happened all the time in Yellowstone back in the day. There was a, somewhere in here, it talked about how many. Oh yeah, it said for the month of September in 1924, they had 88 bear bites and yellow of stone, no, in West Thumb alone. So just one little tiny part of the park. In one month? Yeah. What? And it's because people are feeding them and they're just getting like so used to people. And this woman got her breast rip off because she, you know, was just so comfortable with this bear. Yeah. And it just kind of shows that yeah, they're, they're an animal that doesn't, you know, they're not like a vicious animal. They're not an animal. Like you couldn't do that with a tiger or

lion or something like that. But they also are a predator and they're an animal that's equipped to kill things. So even one just kind of like falling down on you can rip you up real bad. And that's completely different from Elena's story where she was actually, you know, hunted by one. Right. But those are both like two very different stories about Black Bear attacks. So you said that one, that bear was unjustly accused? What happened? Did I like go to court?

Did they, you know, have a knockdown, drag out legal affair? No, it was just, I just mean it was an animal that was just doing what people were trying to get it to do. They didn't kill it, though. I don't know. I can see this being like... Or at least some bear. Yeah. Yeah, they probably want to kill the bear to make them happy.

Yeah. Man. So, yeah, those are two kind of very different black bear attack stories. Yeah. The second one being much more kind of a common thing that happens, someone invites a black bear into their campsite by leaving food out or doing something like that. And generally, most black bear incidents, in quotation marks, revolve around bears that are food. condition that for some reason they've gotten used to human food and they like it so much that

they're willing to kind of jump over that fear of that natural fear that they have of us and that's not a good thing for humans or for bears but in the other case with elena hanson that wasn't the situation that was a bear that just decided to be a predator so the moral of the second story cover your boobs yeah we're like a breastplate maybe the bear could like sense that she had breast cancer or something. It's trying to help her out. Or maybe she had like way more candy and the bear's like, dude.

Come on. What kind of candy you think it was? Probably biddo honey. How old was she? It didn't tell. It sounded like she was an older woman. Over 50 years had to be butterscotches, right? Probably.

Yeah. Or those like weird strawberry ones. We could talk about this for a while. All right. Well, do you want to go to categories? Yeah, we can, we can jump into categories. Or do you want to do? what yeah I want to know if I were in either of these positions yeah well obviously I'm not

gonna feed a bear out of my hand but like what is the general consensus as to what you should do to prevent these kinds of yeah so with black bears uh in in elana's case she didn't do anything wrong yeah you know aside for maybe like being out by herself but she had two big dogs with her so she was probably fine she just ran into the wrong bear uh with this other person obviously you don't want More candy. Yeah, more candy. Small. Yeah, no.

You don't ever want to feed them. You don't ever want to, like, attract them into your campsite or leave anything. Once food is in the mix for them, a lot of their natural kind of instincts go out the window. Right. Because our food is so calorie rich and so attractive to them that eating a handful of candy to that bear is the equivalent of hours and hours of eating berries. So it really is something attractive to them. In the wild, if you're out hiking or something, It's great to have bear spray.

Bear spray will stop any black bear attack. But really, it's grouping up, it's being in groups of people, making noise. And if you do encounter a black bear, honestly, if you continue making noise and just kind of let the bear do its thing, it's going to run away. They don't attack groups of people. If you're by yourself and you see a bear that's stalking you, kind of like Elena Hansen, then what you want to do is make yourself look as unappetizing as possible. You know, and you do that by like throwing rocks, making a ton of noise.

Not showering for a couple months. Exactly. So you should be perfect. I'm ready. No, but just making the bear realize that you're not going to be an easy meal. And then if it does actually come at you and a black bear ever, it does actually attack you, you fight it off. You don't go into the fetal position. You don't do any of that because it means it wants to eat you.

They'll give up easier than a lot of animals. Yeah. Well, and you just don't have any. any other option. Because if you do decide to lay down or whatever, then you're just giving it an easy meal. So you do want to fight it off. But like a grizzly, you're not going to be able to fight it off. Like a black bear, you might be able at least deter it a bit. Yeah. And with the grizzly, your chances are that the grizzly is attacking you just because you're in its territory. Yeah. And it's just trying to neutralize you. But with the black bear, if it attacks you, it's probably

trying to eat you. So laying down doesn't do anything. So fighting it off is, that's kind of what you do. but bear spray is a great tool. Yeah. If you're in bear country, having bear spray with you can't hurt. And especially because we work on like a mount lion or a moose or a person, you know, there's a lot of things you can use it on.

And to piggyback off of West, so like for the second story, just don't feed animals because they're always going to want more food. You know if you're out of food, that's a problem. Right. And that's not just bears. Like just don't feed wild animals. Yeah.

Because they don't understand that you're out of food. Right. Exactly. You're just bringing them in closer. Yeah. And then just Black Bears in general, I think it's important that everyone understand almost always they won't attack because the best thing you can do is hold your ground. So don't get too afraid if you see one in the woods. Try not to because the worst thing you can do is turn around, run away type of situation.

So even though there is the small chance to attack you, if you act confident, that's still your best. option. Because suddenly it's, okay, this isn't food. Like, it's not acting like food. Because food for an animal like that for Black Bear runs away. And so if you do run away, it triggers that predatory response. You know, it might be trying to figure out what you are. And then when you start running, it's like, oh, that was food, you know, because it ran. And so then it chases you down. You're probably not going to get attacked. But like Elena, for example, she was attacked and she didn't do anything wrong. You know, the thing that might have helped her is she had heard from so many people that black bears don't attack and had she had maybe like a little bit healthier fear of them she might

have had bear spray with her or called the dogs right away yeah or had the dogs with her at all times so that is the thing is like you should have a healthy respect for these animals and understand what they can do to you because you know getting your face ripped off isn't cool which story you think is better jeff not the breast one or the face i like the quotes in the second one the yellowstone one Yeah, it was too good. But the face one was more exciting. Yeah, it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of these people in 1930. I fantasize about being able to go to Yellowstone when there just was no rules because it seems kind of fun.

That's the funniest, like, the funniest thing for me is that the ranger is just kind of like, okay, do what you're going to do, I'm going to leave. You would think they'd be like, so this month alone, we've had 75 people die. They used to like hot tub in the hot pools there. Yeah, it just seems. It seems like the Rangers were there to give advice. Yeah. You probably shouldn't do that. It might rip your boobs off, and she's just like, oh no, he's gentle.

He's cute. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. This summer, serve up the cookout classics. Oscar Meyer hot dogs and Heinz mustard. Grill up a dog, add classic yellow mustard, or loaded Chicago style. We all know it's not a cookout without Oscar Meyer and Heinz.

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Grizzly bear's killing it. How fast will the tiger kill it? The American black bear getting killed by a tiger is pretty quick. So say this is March Madness. Where would this black bear? Like what seed would it have, do you think? Would it be like a five seed? Well, we got to know that.

We don't have enough animals. Right, but like 64 are the strongest animals. I'd put them somewhere in the middle. In the middle? Yeah. So like a six or seven. I would like a mountain lion versus black bear it would be a pretty good fight, I think.

Right. I'd probably have my money on the black bear. But they're not beating like lions or tigers or grizzlies or polars or anything like that. Okay. But there's, I mean, like... North American animals, they're going to do pretty good. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, they're up there. Yeah. A pack of wolves would kill a black bear, though. One, full-sized wolf. It'd be a good fight. A dire wolf. It'd be a good fight. Dyer wolf.

Okay, so I think we know where it ranks. Should we do our favorite bears? Yeah, sure. Okay. Let's try. Pride black bear, but if you want to just throw a bear out there, we'll let it slide. My favorite bear is probably the one that attacked the woman in Yellowstone in 1930. Yeah, it seemed like I had some cool tricks.

Yeah. I like those hockey bears. I think those are grizzly bears, though. Oh, are they? Yeah. You have a favorite bear from our project? Yeah, I mean, my favorite bear from our project was probably Libby. Why?

who was like, Libby was a little cub that we caught, and she was small enough that we put a little coyote collar on her, and then we followed her later and put a normal size color on her. And it was just fun because we saw her whole life. And we caught her with our good friend Clint, who was like the coolest dude that has passed away, but he was just such a cool kind of backcountry camp cowboy kind of guy. Yeah.

Yeah. Mova is the one we kept catching over and over. We caught her like four or five times. I think that is my favorite. Yeah. Because like... She was pretty trap happy. We pulled her out of the trap and she was like kind of pretending to be asleep and ran off.

We have a video of. Like fell asleep like 100 yards away. And then she just, every day we caught her again. And then we had to chase her with dogs so that she wouldn't be comfortable around humans. In the traps. Yeah. Because we didn't want her thinking to the traps like a good source of food. We had to do the dogs to show her like, okay, sometimes this is really going to suck.

And so she, after that, we didn't really catch her. The bear in the Simpsons is a good choice. That's a good bear. That's a funny bear. Winnie the Pooh, you said was a black bear. Winnie the Pooh is based off of a black bear. There we go. You're sticking to one of the Poe.

You love one of the Poe. He's got some funny. Pooh's making a good comeback with like the meme age. He's got some funny memes. So yeah, I'm going to go with Libby, our bear Libby that we caught. She's my favorite black bear. Cool. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So where can you see them? So we're talking about North America. American black bears here. There is an Asiatic black bear as well. But North American black bears range from Mexico up to Alaska. So anywhere in their territory, you can see them. There are places that are a lot easier to see them. So somewhere like Yosemite or Yellowstone or glacier, some national parks that have really good, healthy black bear populations. And then British Columbia

has a lot of black bears too that are pretty easily visible in Alaska as well. We've seen them out there in British Columbia. That's true. How many, how many black bears would you say you've seen in the wild? I bet I've seen over 200 black bears in the wild. Holy man. Yeah. Yellowstone's a great place. Yeah, I mean, we had one Yellowstone trip where we saw 15 bears in one trip.

If you go, what? Yellowstone, go to Hayden Valley, you'll probably see you. Yeah, Tower Junction is where you see the most. And again, mostly by and large, it's a safe experience. It is. I mean, especially if you're in your car, you're fine. If you're not feeding them candy. Yeah.

If you're camping in Black Bear country, it's really important. that you keep your food out of your campsite. So put it in a bag and hang it or put in a bag and keep it away from your campsite. But that's the main thing is like avoiding feeding bears by accident. That first story took place in what, Sequoia? Yeah, it was near Bakersfield, the Sequoia Mountains. And they're good at climbing trees. They are.

You think they climb those sequoias? The sequoias. This wasn't in like Sequoia National Park. Oh, that'd be sweet to see a bear climb like a four mile. I did have a random question. You know like those Hawaiian guys who are superiors? super fast at climbing a coconut tree. Yeah.

You think climbing a coconut tree, they could outclimb a black bear? I don't know. This is a good question. Yeah, I really don't know. Okay. You mean like the guys from like the South Pacific and Hawaii and everything? Yeah. Maybe you have a real bear expert call in that knows the answer to these kinds of questions.

Wes is a real bear expert just so we get it there. What do you say? 20,000 black bears? Yeah. In one trip that one time? That's crazy. They're flourishing. Are there bears in the south?

Like deep south? Yeah. Is that a thing? Yeah. So like Florida has bears. Louisiana has bears. Wow. That's interesting.

And an interesting thing too is in the deep south, like in Florida and stuff, they don't really even hibernate like they do here. Oh, because it's so warm. Yeah. Yeah. Because they have food throughout the year, so they don't really need to. Oh. Yeah.

Okay. They're missing out. Yeah. Exactly. Three months straight of sleep. Yeah. Longer than that for some of them. I mean.

Have you kind of. Our bears, it's like five, five months. So how are we messing things up for them? This is a, you know, they, they do pretty well. They live pretty well on the fringes of society and they do a good job of adapting to human presence. And they're such an adaptable animal just in what they can eat and what they can do that they're doing all right. They're not endangered or threatened or vulnerable or anything like that. But really, it's just habitat loss and hunting are both pressures on them. But for the most part, Black bears are doing pretty well. Oh, good to know. Yeah. Yeah. That's nice after these past few where there's like one tiger left in the wild. Exactly.

My last episode was kind of hard. Yeah. Okay, so do we like this animal? This is our last category. This is one of my all-time favorite animals. I mean, a good part of my career has been spent studying Black Bears. So they're, yeah, they're a favorite for me. Yeah, definitely like it.

If I were to get like an animal tattoo, it's probably number one on my list right now. I would agree. A black bear. Yeah. I mean, we work with them. Yeah, I don't know. I'd probably have to put this in the top ten. I don't know.

I feel like if I had more time with pandas, that would be my favorite bear. But right now, it goes grizzly black bear panda. Huh. I don't know. I don't like, I think I don't really like this animal all that much. Like, with most of these animals we talk about, they pull on the heartstrings a little bit because they're endangered or they're like rare a little bit. Or we're messing things. up real bad. Like, they're doing fine. Yeah. Plus, they're like the 10th coolest looking bear.

Well, you're wrong. I think pandas and polars and grizzlies are like, I'll give you, I'll give you the, like, of all the bear species, koalas, black bears, black bears and brown bears are like, koalas aren't bears. Yeah, they're not bears. Coala bears? No, they're marsupials. So, but, but closely related. Black bears and brown bears are kind of what you picture when you see like a bear. There's nothing that, you know, incredible about them, you know, visually they're, like, some of the bear species have these really intricate markings like a panda or like a sloth bear has this really beautiful V on its chest and stuff and black bears get those sometimes too but I'll give you that they're not the most interesting looking bear because we're all so familiar with them not the most

interesting bear raves west and jazz no that's not what I'm saying I think they're so beautiful still I'm a big fan you ever see them well they're cool too because you can see them a lot of places yeah You know, they're like more accessible. That detracts for it. Because Mike's not going to go out and see him anyways. So like for him, having a rare animal is cooler. Yeah. But you like black bears.

He doesn't. I just don't see any reason to like them any more than any other animal, to be honest. All right. So if you, if I were to say, hey, let's go look at some animals. We can either go see an elk or a black bear. You wouldn't have any preference, really. That's a, it's an interesting way to frame the question. Yeah. I don't see either of them, really.

I think you'd rather see the black bear. Probably. Yeah. But elk are like bottom tier. Okay. And elk for you is just like a horse with antlers. Yeah. It's a bad animal. Anyways, we hope you guys enjoy black bears. Don't be afraid of them.

They're an animal that you can go out and see in the wild and have a really incredible experience with in a really safe way. But do be prepared for them. So take your bear spray. Learn what you're supposed to do if you encounter a bear, hike in groups but if you do see one have a good time you know take some photos and enjoy the experience all right sounds good well that's it all right let's be done bye see you guys