Some Thoughts on Bear Spray

Brooks Camp bear management crew lead Michael Saxton engaging in debate with a 

couple of subadults.  Our experience is that, with Brooks bears anyway, pointing

works better than you might think.  

The letter below is something I wrote back in 2021.  It was written for friends with experience around bears and who, at least for the most part, were already familiar with bear spray basics. It's not meant to be an introduction for those new to the subject.

Of course these are just my opinions, but they are opinions stemming from over 30 years of being around bears in the Alaskan wild,  and having spent five years as a member of a bear management team that has, arguably, had to spray as many bears per capita as any such team in the world.

If I didn't think the ideas had value I wouldn't have written them, but my main hope is that they will in some way help to further the discussion of bear spray use.  While one of the best things about bear spray is its simplicity, public discussion of its use is almost always very basic.  There is a value in this of course, but there is much more that can be said and that can be of value for people who spend greater than average time in bear country.  I hope this will be of some help along those lines.

Friends who live or travel in bear country,

Once again my time at Brooks helped clarify my understanding of bear spray and its uses, and in ways that make me want to pass along what I’ve learned to friends who are fortunate enough to share the wild with bears.  It continues to be true that unlike with, say, martial arts self defense, there is very little detail out there about bear spray in application. I believe it’s important to try to fill that gap.  Let’s go!

This tour I ended up using bear spray twice and being involved in a third spraying.  I also had roughly a dozen aggressive encounters in one form or another where I didn’t spray.  (As always I feel obligated to say that bear management is a radically, radically different experience from just visiting Katmai.)  All of the sprayings and most of the aggressive encounters took place during my first week, when the salmon were late and the bears were exceptionally hungry and edgy.

In each of those sprayings I ended up getting a good bit of the stuff in my face and down my windpipe.  In the two times that I did the spraying, the blowback was at least partially because of wind direction, which wasn’t all that strong but enough to push it back my way.  In the third situation, I had received a radio call from my fellow bear tech Julie Hower, asking me to come help her with a particularly cocky and aggressive subadult at the north end of camp.  (It’s not uncommon for bear techs, at least ones that work well together, to ask for assistance with particularly difficult bears.)  As I was getting near the location she called from I thought “Hmm… Why do I smell hair spray?”  (That should have been enough to alert me, but as you all know I can be rather dense).  The next (perhaps even denser) thought was “Huh, my nose is tingling…”  This was followed quickly by “Oh *&^^%!, okay, I guess she must have sprayed the bear.”  (Usually bear techs have their hands too full to take time to immediately announce spraying bears over the radio, which is why I did not know this in advance.)

Julie was on the other side of some alders and not visible, nor could I see the still-potent cloud of spray, but since I wanted to find her quickly I just pressed through the cloud.  Almost immediately I was wheezing and with eyes aflame.  I soon located her and we dealt with the bear.  The spray had stopped its immediate aggression but it had not left camp, and still had some cockiness left.  Had the incident taken place away from camp we could have just left the area. 

One of the other times I sprayed a bear this season is mentioned in another field report.  The remaining incident involved having to spray 284 (I knew I would have to join that club at some point) near the lodge bathhouse, where she and her cubs were grazing.  I had been hop-lunged by her  from a few yards away a few days before, and didn’t spray then.  As we all know, she’s just that way.  This time it looked like she was turning her hop-lunge into a galloping charge from about 6 yards away, so I sprayed her.  She stopped immediately, as expected.

There are two facets to this that are important.  One is that while she stopped the charge and did not try again, she and her cubs continued to hang out in the same area, bear spray very much in the air.  I’ll treat the significance of that below.  For now, the important thing is that both I and Jim Baker had to continue to push to get the family out of camp.  We both were hacking and coughing, along with working to keep burning eyes open.  The key element here is that we were able to finish a difficult job in spite of the pain.

This brings me to a point I may have mentioned before but don’t feel like I can emphasize enough:  Don’t psych yourself out about the possibility of having some bear spray come back on you.  It’s not pleasant, to say the least, but while you are not going to be able to write a sonata or do quadratic equations (at least I’m not), you can almost certainly do whatever really needs to be done.  Be very clear about this before you ever need to use it.  People often fail to do things in stressful situations that they are perfectly capable of doing, merely because the media or “common sense" make them think they can’t.  If I’m being a bit dogmatic here I hope you’ll forgive me, because I hear about people's concerns about returning spray, and don’t want such concerns to put people in danger.  You can still do what needs to be done.

The other facet of that incident with 284 was that while it’s very likely that your bear spray will stop the bear, what that bear will do afterward is hard to predict.  In my experience, some run off so quickly that they virtually disappear.  Some just walk off. This is the most common response from what I’ve seen, but Brooks may be unusual that way.  Some bears just stand there.  Whatever the case, don’t let it phase you.  As long as they don’t persist with aggression, just be aware of where they are or went, and then deal with your safety and that of any bystanders, and get out of there.  

The bear may return or eventually shake off the spray while standing there.   Both have happened to me, but never in a way that would be a problem on my own (i.e. outside of bear management), though I have heard of it happening.  Spray the bear again, of course, as required.  But not more than necessary, which brings me to my next point…

I’ve been asked many times about how long to spray.  My answer is, spray until the bear stops coming your way.  No more.  If the bear just stands there, don’t keep spraying to try to make it go away.  Just get out of the area unless you have an emergency situation which requires you to stay, and then just monitor the bear or haze it off.  In any case, don’t spray any longer than you have to.  You may think that’s obvious, but situations can arise where you are frustrated or angry or frightened enough that you may be tempted to basically hose the  bear down.  Don’t do it.  For one, it’s unlikely to make a difference in their future behavior, but more to the point, you don’t know when or how much more you’ll need of that spray in the immediate future. That applies even if others in your party have spray, or you have more in the pack. You just never know.

As to when to spray, my thoughts continue to evolve.   “When" is usually synonymous with “how far out” and circumstances vary a lot.  In fact, situations vary so much that I’m hesitant to give concrete numbers, but I will say that it would have to be a very, very fast charge—or very unusual circumstances--for me to spray before 7-8 yards.  With maybe one exception, every bear I’ve sprayed has been within five yards.   That said, the distance that a brand of bear spray will travel matters a lot to me, but this is primarily a matter of stronger spray working better in the wind (no small matter!), and wanting to be prepared for very oddball situations.

Be all that as it may, my experience is that pulling the trigger on the spray is almost never a conscious choice.  It usually just happens.  And the only way to influence such subconscious “choices” in a better direction is by practice and thinking ahead.  Be very careful about how you imagine bear encounters happening, and don’t be self-indulgent about how you see yourself acting, because when the time comes and you do have to spray a bear, how you imagined it is going to be part of the “instructions” your subconscious pulls from, whether you would really like them to be treated as instructions or not.  This subject can get really crazy really quickly, and I don’t want to sound like I’m endorsing a lot of stuff out there that I am not. Nonetheless, there is a core of important truth to all this working with the subconscious, and it matters enormously.  

Visualize and practice with care.

For those considering a visit to Brooks Camp, I want to say again that bear management's experience is radically different from that of visitors. On a busy day in camp, an individual bear tech can do dozens of hazings. I'm not a fan of visitors bringing bear spray to Brooks, and one of the main ones is that it is like wearing a crash helmet on a weekend drive to visit family.  Sure, it's not impossible that you'll need it, and if you need it you'll really need it, but...

Away from bears that expect to see dozens, if not hundreds, of people during their day, I always carry bear spray.

Even the best spray and technique is no guarantee, still less “brains in a can” as the saying goes, but I still think it’s one of the best things that ever happened for people who travel in bear country, and for the bears.

See you downriver,

Carl