For years, bears have made bluff charges, thundering to within a few feet of hikers before slamming on the brakes or veering off on a new tangent. For years, no one had pepper spray hanging from their pack straps. For years, the bears and the hikers scared the heck out of one another but seldom did they actually hump noses.
"You hear these stories about bears charging to within a few feet and then cutting off the charge after hitting a fog of pepper spray, and you begin to make assumptions," said Kyle Johnson, the parks wilderness manager. "It would he easy to think it's the pepper spray doing it, but I’m not so sure.
Twice in the past week, park employees have hosed charging bear with the spray. and the bears have bolted. The same story has been repeated for most of the past decade, ever since spicy pepper spray hit the market.
But surely not all those charges would have ended in mauling, Johnson said. In the years prior to the spray, maulings were infrequent while bluff charges were the norm. To attribute all the recent happy endings to the spray, he said, just doesn't make sense. And it could lead to a dangerous false sense of security.
"I think it's normal bear behavior," he said. "They bluff charge, then run off into the woods. The fear I have is that these stories are giving us this false sense of security. People tend to replace common sense and careful back country practices with a can of aerosol. The idea is, ‘I've got my bear spray, so I can check my brain at the trailhead."
Johnson knows more about bears and bear spray than most. He has sprayed bears with the pepper concoction. He has himself been sprayed. He has seen bears sit unconcerned while he emptied an entire can in their direction.
"It didn't instill a lot of confidence," he said.
