DENALI NATIONAL PARK - Dealing With A Rash of Young Aggressive Bear Attacks This Year.

Denali hikers escape bear

Young problem bear/Betty Snyder
As the hunt continues for a sub-adult grizzly bear with an attitude that has been threatening people near the Savage River in Denali National Park and Preserve, photos have emerged of rangers saving hikers from the troublesome animal.
It first showed up near the popular Savage pull out in mid-June. Rangers closed the area temporarily that month and hazed the bear in an effort to teach it people are bad news. The effort didn’t work.
On July 1 , the bear attacked 28-year-old Fangyuan Zhou, who was visiting from Anchorage with two friends. Confronted by the bear on a Savage River trail, they made the mistake of dropping to the ground and playing dead, even though they were carrying bear spray.
When the people hit the ground, the curious bear approached, scratched Zhou and then bit her. At that point, her two friends jumped to their feet and start throwing rocks, which drove the animal off, according to park service officials.
People are advised to stand up to young grizzly bears, animals still learning their limitations. Young bears will sometimes approach people just to see how the people react. Betty Snyder, a visitor to the park from Florida, caught people behaving badly on June 19 until a pair of rangers intervened to offer professional advice on dealing with bears.



Rangers on the opposite bank of the waist-deep river spot what is happening and start shouting advice.



Told to stop, group up and make themselves big, the humans cluster.



Once they do that, the bear halts its approach and reconsiders what it should do. As they become more vocal, it pivots away from them.



Intimidated now, it starts to slink away.



And finally it wanders off as the people push their offensive.



The photos are a lesson in how groups of people should deal with sub-adult grizzly bears.
Snyder credit rangers with saving two different groups of hikers while she was stopped along the Savage.
“It was amazing how the stand tall procedure actually worked for these hikers,” she emailed. “Thanks to the rangers calling out instructions to them.”
When rangers intervened to shoo the bear away, she said, it went back across the river. “After he went on shore, he concealed himself in the bushes,” she reported. “Some hikers (then) came down to the water not even noticing that the bear was right behind them….It was like watching a movie play out not knowing what was going to happen next.”

“The people start to run, but the rangers from the other side are telling them not to run and to huddle together and put up their arms,” she said. “This was such a once in a lifetime event to witness. It could have gone very badly, but with the help of the rangers and the people doing as they were told, it turned out very well.”
It would be almost two weeks before it turned out badly, and then in part because the people involved lacked for experience in dealing with young bears, and there were no rangers handy to offer advice.
The Park Service now plans to kill the bear, but the agency has been hunting futilely since the start of the month. The park road from Mile 13 to 17 remains closed to foot, bicycle and private vehicles as the hunt continues.
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This was just sent to me via my FB private message; this lady requested a paid tour hike with my buddy and a small group of well seasoned hikers - they were in front of these people that encountered this scary bear incident. 
But as the group that my buddy was with listened to her admonishments about what to pack: non-meat protean meals due to the scents that would travel and catch a hungry bears scent glands - [size=16]those bears are SUPER SNIFFERS and her group did as she suggested - that group behind them did not! 
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This has been the worst aggressive Bear Season up at Denali National Park - since my buddy has been doing her seasonal tour bus driving there; unseasonable warming cycles are bringing the bears out of their hibernation earlier then the migrating food sources that they normally feed on are ready - fruits/berries/breeding rabbits and other predatory carcass type of meat sources.
So these young'ns are being kicked off of nurturing mothers bears - being left to scavenge on their on limited sources - finding so many more humans walking the hiking/pack packing trails due to the warm climates and the interactions between the 2 are happening more often.
Her photo's and her professional photo journalists images were taken with their Ipad phones ...pretty amazing. 
I thought they'd hauled some professional camera's up there with them

should have let the bear eat em....darwin at work IMO

bet they were "good ole city folk" with zero idea of life in them there woods

think that theres nothing but to it...
and then get all "hot and bothered by the local wildlife

I was once savaged by a large Rabbit, il'l never forget it.

nicko wrote:I was once savaged by a large Rabbit,    il'l never forget it.

It could have been worse nicko....you could have met this fellow

nicko wrote:

I was once savaged by a large Rabbit,    il'l never forget it.

WHEN I was still back in high school, I was out in the bush with some schoolmates one weekend, when one of them decided to chase a goanna down out of a tree (peacefully minding it's own business, up until that moment..).

IT then ran up another boy's leg and back, and up over his shoulder, before jumping off and racing up another tree  !!!

Never seen anyone jumping around as hard and fast as that bloke did..          

I was home on leave and shot in Oxfordshire when I could.

Two guns standing on the back of an open Landy, one driver and a picker up.

The driver would drive around one field at night whilst the two guns shot rabbits on the move then drive around again picking up and dispatching any which were not killed outright by banging their heads on Landy wheel, then drive into another field on the estate and repeat the same process.

We had 127 dead rabbits on the back of the Landy where we were standing, so we thunk, one was NOT dead and bit into my mates shoe, was he shocked, could not stop laffin.

We would then throw them all into a big chest freezer for a game dealer to collect, they would be frozen solid by then and be dug out with a spade, sometimes the game dealer would come the same day and getting them out was easy, same with pheasants, partridge and so on.

This may cause outrage amongst an odd sob sister or two but this is real life in the country.

If we shot a deer we would hang it in a tree with its lags apart, bleed it through a smallish hole in its throat by poking a stick up it to free flow the blood, then cut it wide open and the entrails would naturally fall downwards onto the ground for animal food, nowt was wasted.

In those days and up to recently to some extent I have eaten loads of rabbit and venison, I prefer bunny.

This is again real life.

How about shooting an injud lamb, and cooking it over a dying ember bonfire in a field on a piece of cast iron fencing.
The cooking would be uneven so you went around it with your sharp knife cutting off the bits around the outside which were cooked.

Some of you ain't lived.

This again is real life.

Lord Foul wrote:should have let the bear eat em....darwin at work  IMO

bet they were "good ole city folk" with zero idea of life in them there woods

think that theres nothing but  to it...
and then get all "hot and bothered by the local wildlife

THOSE four look more like  strollers to me, rather than genuine "hikers"   !!!

Blue jeans, Santa hat and all..

And, looking at that clearing and well-worn track, they weren't exactly in a wilderness setting.

Which makes it look like some of those bears are growing pretty bold, and venturing closer to more well-travelled parts of the park..                  

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

nicko wrote:

I was once savaged by a large Rabbit,    il'l never forget it.

WHEN I was still back in high school, I was out in the bush with some schoolmates one weekend, when one of them decided to chase a goanna down out of a tree (peacefully minding it's own business, up until that moment..).

IT then ran up another boy's leg and back, and up over his shoulder, before jumping off and racing up another tree  !!!

Never seen anyone jumping around as hard and fast as that bloke did..          

Wolfie, is this a Goanna?