Not quite everything,Pucknuts61 said:
NH_Mtn_Hiker said:Not quite everything,
This was a Coastal Grizzly and they live on a diet of up to 95% fish. (depending which expert you ask) This explains their larger size compared to inland grizzlies. These people parked their tent right in the grizzly's front yard....and coastal grizzlies in particular don't like trespassers.
To me, camping along a river in Grizzly country is not much different than swimming in a pond full of piranha..... It's just a "Wilderness" version of Russian Roulette, and some people aren't as lucky as others.
Barbarossa said:When I was taking orders from Uncle Sam at Fort Wainwright, part of the Greater Fairbanks Metro area, people referred to bears 'South of the Range' as brown bears, and the conventional wisdom was that they were larger and meaner than bears 'North of the Range', which were referred to as grizzlies.
I think there was a similar story last summer in the news about a photographer who brought his girlfriend up to camp literally amongst the grizzlies along a river bank. They met a similar fate. So...back to the second paragraph of my earlier post.
Barbarossa said:Disclaimer:
This is second or third hand rumor, but it was acquired in ALaska, so it must be true ;]
When I was taking orders from Uncle Sam at Fort Wainwright, part of the Greater Fairbanks Metro area, people referred to bears 'South of the Range' as brown bears, and the conventional wisdom was that they were larger and meaner than bears 'North of the Range', which were referred to as grizzlies.
You just read it on the internet, folks. It must be true!
Barbarossa
As I said, this is just the conventional wisdom, as I understood it. The 'range' in question is the Alaska Range. It sounds like what you are calling coastal grizzlies are the same as what I heard called brown bears.
Even Marlon Perkins agrees with me.The coast of the North Pacific is home to some of the largest grizzly bears known to man. Stretching up to 15 feet tall, these Aleutian Grizzlies would challenge the size of most SUVs. Despite their size, however, cinematographer Andreas Kieling captures a gentler side to the enormous grizzlies that wander this stunning land.
NH_Mtn_Hiker said:It's late, maybe I'm confused.
Did you think I was referring to the South coast, The attack mentioned in the first post took place on the North coast of Alaska, lots of room for (North) "coastal grizzlies" and "inland Grizzlies".
'South of the Range'?
Brooks Range, Alaska Range? It doens't really matter. There are grizzlies in Yellowstone, that's South of both Ranges
NH_Mtn_Hiker said:Speaking of which, I saw a picture recently of a polar bear attacking an American nuclear submarine. That's one baaddd bear.
Quack said:I saw a travel show about camping in Finland, it's the one with the British guy on PBS. Anyway, he went camping within the arctic circle and had to set up a trip wire around his camp that would set off a few of those scare charges when Polar Bears came to visit. He also had to learn how to use a very large rifle. Maybe it would be a good idea to rig up something like that when camping in Alaska?
That was a joke, I'm sorry you didn't get it. OK, it was a bad joke.NH_Mtn_Hiker wrote
Brooks Range, Alaska Range? It doens't really matter. There are grizzlies in Yellowstone, that's South of both Ranges.
darren wrote
Now that is a SUBstantial bear!
NH_Mtn_Hiker said:I agree! If I was going into grizzly or polar bear country, and everyone was going to be sleeping at one time, I'd want some sort of perimeter alarm in case the bears approached. How about a big electric fence like the one in Jurassic Park.
"All the indications now are it was a predatory attack. It just hardly ever happens," Fish and Game spokesman Bruce Bartley said. "Even more baffling is that these people had taken all the precautions."
The 300-pound bear attacked the campers in their sleeping bags and tore at their bodies but did not devour them, officials said. The grizzly was tracked and killed by North Slope Borough Search and Rescue officials who flew by helicopter to the scene from Barrow.
The bear's body is being taken to Fairbanks for a necropsy but showed no obvious signs of illness, injury or starvation that might account for the attack, Bartley said.
"It was apparently a healthy male, 5 to 7 years old, which adds to the mystery and improbability," he said.
In Alaska, about six people a year are injured by bear attacks, Bartley said. Two-thirds of them are hunters who surprise bears in the wilderness. Every other year, on average, somebody is killed, usually by a brown bear, he said. Usually the bear is defending itself after being surprised or is protecting its young or a fresh kill.
That's really not much, Bartley said, considering there are people all over Alaska's bear habitat, along with 35,000 brown bears and three times as many black bears.
"If bears wanted to eat you, they would. We'd lose one a day," he said.
Anchorage Daily NewsThe Huffmans were so careful with bears that they customarily stopped one place to cook and eat dinner, then floated on to a different site to camp, said Veronica Galvan, whose sister is married to one of three Huffman children.
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