I wonder how many bears have died in the process of a 'bluff charge'?
Who cares?
The primacy value is that the human(s) in the encounter survived unmauled and alive, and were not mauled or killed because they failed to “correctly interpret” the charging bear’s “intentions.”
There is no statistical difference in using firearms against bears then not using anything:
https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley....1002/jwmg.342
Wrong. Another skewed study hard at work. Thanks for identifying it.
I wonder how many of us are trained to proficiency in making lethal shots at close range on a charging 500 lb animal?
That’s for each individual who lives, works, or recreates in “bear country” to figure out.
If you are looking for an excuse to kill an animal, well I guess a 'self defense' shooting suffices. If you are looking for a way to avoid an attack and not kill the animal, bear spray is your best friend.
Alaska’s DLP law allows for defense of self and others against attacking/aggressive bears. It has nothing to do with
hunting bears or poaching them.
As it should, the DLP law recognizes the primacy of human life over the animal’s life in the gravest extreme of circumstances.
All the bias pro-spray studies of human/bear “incidents” are result-orientated, in that they’re premised on the bear surviving the encounter alive and unharmed,
regardless of whether the human(s) are mauled or killed. So they commingle the data, combining spray cases against bears which are vague or ambiguous and usually casual with cases where the bear was aggressive or attacking.
Then they say: “See? Spray works.”
They intentionally fail to distinguish between the types of bears involved - between the cases of spray used on causal or “curious” bears and the cases of spray used on clearly aggressive/predatory bears. In the latter cases, spray seldom prevented the human(s) from being mauled or killed. And that’s notwithstanding the wind-direction and distance issues that diminish or negate the spray’s effectiveness.
OTOH, where gunfire was used, it was nearly 100% effective against aggressive/predatory bears. The charge was stopped or turned and the human(s) walked away unmauled and alive. True, the bear was either killed or seriously wounded (and later put down), ... but again there’s that sticky question in these encounters of whose life do we value more.
We certainly know how the anti-gun/animal-rights folks answer that. They reveal it in their bias, result-driven “studies.”
