Close (okay not that close) Encounter

I had a pretty heart-pounding animal encounter during this last work week in the park. While in the field one day I encountered a grizzly bear. It turned out about as perfectly as you can hope for a bear encounter, but it still had me a little nervous.

I guess I should start with a little background for this whole story. One thing that I had never really thought about is what happens to all the roadkill in the park. You never see anything beside the road, and if there was that would be a massive problem because it would attract a lot of scavengers closer to people. Well this past week I found out what they do with the roadkill. If you go down a service road, through a locked gate and past signs that read "Closed to travel due to bear danger" you come to the "carcass pit". It is just a little clearing in the woods that is now littered with bones, and sometimes a fresh carcass when an animal is hit on the road. Naturally this area attracts all sorts of scavengers hoping to get a free meal. Including bears.

Part of the study area is near one of these carcass pits in the park. In order to try and safely access the areas around the pit, Boss called the head bear biologist in the park and asked what he recommended for us to do if we needed to work in the area. He said to stay at least half a mile away from the pit and we could hike in the area. So we took his advice, planned to stay well more than half a mile away from the pit and we would do our work. No big deal. Right...

Well we had some park workers take us on the road and through the gate and past all the signs that say closed to travel. The plan was to keep driving on the service road till we were well past the carcass pit and then start hiking. Before heading out, Resource Management (division in the National Park Service) told us that there was no fresh carcass in the pit, that the last one was there two weeks ago and was already completely clean of any meat. Well when we arrived at the carcass pit in the car we were a little surprised to find a fresh (and I mean like that morning fresh) bison in the pit. Apparently someone dumped a carcass... and didn't tell anyone. I was already a little nervous about this whole thing, this didn't really help any. I started thinking about how far a half mile really is. Hiking quickly in the backcountry I can maybe hike half a mile in 15 minutes. Figuring a bear can move quite faster than me, say he could cover half a mile in 10 minutes. Awesome, bears are being fed at a distance they can cover in 10 minutes away from me. This didn't make me feel to great. But we were actually quite further than that half mile and that was further than the bear biologist said, so everything should be fine.

That entire day I made sure I was extra loud, yelling much more frequently and louder than usual. I also found my hand drifting to my bear spray more often (which isn't used like bug spray if you didn't know). Boulders, logs, trees, stumps, shadows, and the ground all pretty much looked like a bear that day. So I was a little jumpy. However after a full day of hiking, no bear! I was quite happy to reach the car and drive back home. However passing the carcass pit on the way out we find a large pile of bear scat on the road and a new meatless bison skeleton. So a bear had been there.

The next day I was a little disappointed to learn that we would be working in a nearby area, still close to the carcass pit. We didn't drive by it this time, but were soon hiking in the area, although still quite far from it. Again I was doing a lot of yelling, but was a little more relaxed than the day before. Near the end of the day, I hiked out of the thick sapling forest and found myself in a little meadow area. I cautiously looked around, since bears like these types of areas, and made a few extra loud bear bellows. I continued across the meadow, walked through a little patch of forest again and dropped down a hill back to the meadow. As I looked up this thin, finger-like projection of the meadow into the forest I saw an odd, reddish lump at the end. I paused and thought "that looks like a bear". But after looking at it for a bit I concluded it must just be a big rock or maybe a log. And that's when it moved and I thought "Holy $#!%, that is a bear!"

It didn't see yet. Later I realized the wind was blowing in a direction that meant it wouldn't get my scent. And this probably had something to do with it not hearing my yells. That and the little hill probably didn't help either. I started backing away slowly, I made a little noise to let it know I was there and hopefully so I wouldn't surprise it too much. When it heard me it looked over and just sort of stared at me for a few seconds. Then it stood up on its back legs and put its front paws on a standing, dead tree. This unnerved me a little. Okay, a lot. But I think it was just trying to see and smell me a little better, but at the time it was a little intimidating to see a grizzly bear stand up to its full height. It dropped back to the ground and just stood there watching me as I continued to move away from it. I got on the radio and let Boss know what was going on. He was on a hill overlooking the meadow and scanned around till he found me and the bear. The next thing I hear on the radio is "Wow! That bear is really pretty!" Yeah, that made me feel better, it was a good-looking bear that I was in danger of being charged by.

The bear just watched me move away. I met up with Boss and we hiked the rest of the way out. Part of the time we had our bear sprays drawn because we were on a hill and weren't sure where the bear had gone. Looking back on it, I wasn't really that close to the bear ever, but it still was closer than I wanted to be. I was scared at the time, I think it was pretty amazing to see a grizzly bear like that. A little intimidating, yes, but also amazing. And Boss was right, it was a really pretty bear. It was a reddish-blond color. That is also pretty much as good of a bear encounter can go and what I thought of as intimidating actions from the bear, were really just it trying to figure out what I was. Boss got tired of listening to me go on and on about how I saw a bear. But seriously, it was a pretty memorable encounter.