bear spray better defense than gun?
Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:52 am
The NY Times reports that red pepper spray is more effective at repelling bear attacks than guns are...
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/200 ... ei=5087%0A
March 28, 2008, 12:26 pm
Bear Attack? Not to Worry
By John Tierney
Tags: bears, explornography
A shot of spray keeps the brown bear away — and a polar bear, too — according to a new study in Alaska. The red-pepper bear spray, which can be effective out to 20 or 30 feet, seems to offer better protection than a gun. (Photo: Alaska Department of Fish and Game)
When I went on a dogsled and ski expedition in the Arctic, we carried a rifle and a flare gun for protection against polar bears, and we still worried about being attacked by the bear we’d heard was the most fearsome on the planet. But we were mistaken both in our strategy and our concerns, according to Thomas S. Smith, a biologist who has analyzed close encounters between humans and bears in Alaska.
A rifle apparently doesn’t work as well as a cannister of red pepper spray. Dr. Smith and colleagues report in the Journal of Wildlife Management that in encounters during the past three decades where humans used the spray against black, brown and polar bears, the spray stopped the bears’ “undesirable behavior” more than 90 percent of the time — and in none of the incidents did any person suffer serious injury.
Most of the incidents involved brown bears, not polar bears. Dr. Smith, an associate professor of wildlife science at Brigham Young University, explained to me that the polar bears have an undeserved reputation for ferocity, particularly by comparison with brown bears like grizzlies:
We show in the paper that bear spray was 100% effective for the five polar bear incidents we were able to collect. As a bear biologist, I can think of no reason why it would not. I think people have an expectation that it wouldn’t due to a false belief that polar bears are amongst the fiercest bears in the world. The data argue otherwise, however. In collecting 600 bear attack incidents spanning 125 years of Alaska history, I could find only six polar bear-human conflict incidents, including two fatalities. Interestingly, these two fatalities (and one severe mauling) were the fault of humans, partly, for putting bears in situations where they found attacking the best option. What I’m saying is, that polar bears act much more like black bears (very risk averse) than grizzlies (much more aggressive) and hence we find few incidents.
Many hikers and park rangers have been skeptical of the bear sprays, fearing that they wouldn’t deter a bear or might not work in the wind. But the cannisters, which can be carried in holsters and work like fire extinguishers, eject the red-pepper spray at more than 70 miles per hour, and the new study showed that they reached bears even in windy conditions. It’s a lot easier to aim a spray than to fell a bear with a rifle shot, said Dr. Smith, who found in a previous study that rifles were effective only two-thirds of the time in human-bear encounters.
“People working or recreating in bear habitat should feel confident they are safe if carrying bear spray,” said Dr. Smith. “Working in the bear safety arena, I even found a lot of resistance to bear spray among professionals. There was no good, clean data set that demonstrated definitively that it worked, so that’s why we did this research.”
Well, if the bear spray works better than a gun against half-ton ursine intruders, does that lesson apply to human intruders, too? Should you keep one of these cannisters at home?
“It would be highly effective against humans,” Dr. Smith told me, “but I’m sure the EPA would not like you doing that (odd as that sounds) since it is supposedly only to be used on bears. However, if I were a woman (or women) in the backcountry, I would certainly take comfort in knowing that this spray is not only highly effective at deterring unwanted advances by bears but by two-leggers as well. My daughter will have a can by her nightstand.”
You can read more about Dr. Smith and the study here. I’m not sure if I’ll be equipping our home with this spray, but if I go into bear country again, I won’t leave home without it.
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/200 ... ei=5087%0A
March 28, 2008, 12:26 pm
Bear Attack? Not to Worry
By John Tierney
Tags: bears, explornography
A shot of spray keeps the brown bear away — and a polar bear, too — according to a new study in Alaska. The red-pepper bear spray, which can be effective out to 20 or 30 feet, seems to offer better protection than a gun. (Photo: Alaska Department of Fish and Game)
When I went on a dogsled and ski expedition in the Arctic, we carried a rifle and a flare gun for protection against polar bears, and we still worried about being attacked by the bear we’d heard was the most fearsome on the planet. But we were mistaken both in our strategy and our concerns, according to Thomas S. Smith, a biologist who has analyzed close encounters between humans and bears in Alaska.
A rifle apparently doesn’t work as well as a cannister of red pepper spray. Dr. Smith and colleagues report in the Journal of Wildlife Management that in encounters during the past three decades where humans used the spray against black, brown and polar bears, the spray stopped the bears’ “undesirable behavior” more than 90 percent of the time — and in none of the incidents did any person suffer serious injury.
Most of the incidents involved brown bears, not polar bears. Dr. Smith, an associate professor of wildlife science at Brigham Young University, explained to me that the polar bears have an undeserved reputation for ferocity, particularly by comparison with brown bears like grizzlies:
We show in the paper that bear spray was 100% effective for the five polar bear incidents we were able to collect. As a bear biologist, I can think of no reason why it would not. I think people have an expectation that it wouldn’t due to a false belief that polar bears are amongst the fiercest bears in the world. The data argue otherwise, however. In collecting 600 bear attack incidents spanning 125 years of Alaska history, I could find only six polar bear-human conflict incidents, including two fatalities. Interestingly, these two fatalities (and one severe mauling) were the fault of humans, partly, for putting bears in situations where they found attacking the best option. What I’m saying is, that polar bears act much more like black bears (very risk averse) than grizzlies (much more aggressive) and hence we find few incidents.
Many hikers and park rangers have been skeptical of the bear sprays, fearing that they wouldn’t deter a bear or might not work in the wind. But the cannisters, which can be carried in holsters and work like fire extinguishers, eject the red-pepper spray at more than 70 miles per hour, and the new study showed that they reached bears even in windy conditions. It’s a lot easier to aim a spray than to fell a bear with a rifle shot, said Dr. Smith, who found in a previous study that rifles were effective only two-thirds of the time in human-bear encounters.
“People working or recreating in bear habitat should feel confident they are safe if carrying bear spray,” said Dr. Smith. “Working in the bear safety arena, I even found a lot of resistance to bear spray among professionals. There was no good, clean data set that demonstrated definitively that it worked, so that’s why we did this research.”
Well, if the bear spray works better than a gun against half-ton ursine intruders, does that lesson apply to human intruders, too? Should you keep one of these cannisters at home?
“It would be highly effective against humans,” Dr. Smith told me, “but I’m sure the EPA would not like you doing that (odd as that sounds) since it is supposedly only to be used on bears. However, if I were a woman (or women) in the backcountry, I would certainly take comfort in knowing that this spray is not only highly effective at deterring unwanted advances by bears but by two-leggers as well. My daughter will have a can by her nightstand.”
You can read more about Dr. Smith and the study here. I’m not sure if I’ll be equipping our home with this spray, but if I go into bear country again, I won’t leave home without it.