How to Use and Not Use Bear Spray

     After work one evening, two young men drove the truck three miles down a narrow logging road looking for a perfect fishing hole where cutthroat trout patrolled picking up floating salmon roe. It was salmon spawning season on the river and the valley reeked of rotting fish mixed with berry engorged bear scat. Gulls, crows, and eagles perched in the huge spruce, fir and alder trees overhanging the river waiting for full crops to digest before going for more of the plentiful feed. Large padded, five-clawed prints marked the sandy river banks as the men made their way to the river edge loaded down with fishing rods, hooks and carefree optimism. As they cast their roe baited hooks into the pool they could see flashes of silver flicker out of the deep dark shadows checking for easy red meals. One cutty went for the bait and swallowed it greedily, unaware of the danger until the hook set suddenly and securely into its bony jaw. It shook its head and tugged violently against the sting, pain and resistance that incessantly towed it to the exposed shallows. It ran hard, down stream towing Jack along the sandy riverbank. They fought and tugged to and fro for a couple of minutes before the three-pound trout lay panting on the shore. Jack quickly released the hook and cast it back into the river. Fishing was great and both men soon had a couple of fish lined up on the river bank when a bear emerged from upstream, slowly and methodically casting his huge nose back and forth searching for the fresh smell of free meal. Andy was further downstream and noticed the bear coming behind Jack and called a warning. Jack spun around reaching for his bear spray canister hanging from the holster on his hip. 

Hungry for Fish

     The bear spotted the fish lying on the bank and sprang forward, splashing downstream claiming the beached trout. Andy, wisely backed off, abandoning his catch, but prepared to defend himself if the bear wanted more. He popped the safety clip off the trigger as he continued to make his way downstream. Grizzly stopped and nuzzled then ate his free fish and the men managed to make their way safely to the truck.

     Before they boarded Jack struggled to replace the safety clip onto the trigger of the canister.  Andy supervised passing out instructions, as Jack got more frustrated. They were both soon huddled over the canister, trying in vain to snap the clip into place. Somehow, Jack’s finger slipped onto the trigger, releasing a sudden orange bomb of spray directly into the palm of his hand, which deflected the fire into both fellows’ faces. Instant burning, gasping, swearing, fumbling, can’t see, can’t breathe, and can’t drive.

Laughing Bear

     “Where is that bear?” they are wondering through the foggy background of pain and confusion. Need water but got none; the river is right there but so is the bear. All these thoughts ricochet around their fogged brains and burning sinuses that are trying to get reloaded with fresh oxygen but can’t. They are finally able to get in the truck but can’t see to drive through tear filled eyes. The radio doesn’t reach camp from here. They finally are able to get turned around and fumble their way toward safety. Finally they reach camp and rush into their rooms, shed their clothes and pile into the shower, fighting for the same nozzle of cold relief. By this time a crowd of very unsympathetic co-workers arrived in time to hear renewed gasps and cries of burning pain, now expanding downward. The oil-based pepper is flowing down onto tender bellies and cascading even further downward over even tenderer, dangling body parts. It seems to have no mercy on the men and their laughing mates seem to have even less. There seems to be no end to the fire and even cold water cannot extinguish their anguish.

     Finally someone takes pity and calls the hospital to try to figure out what to do. The sympathetic but snickering nurse orders the burning men out of the crowded shower. This is about the worse first aid you can provide. “Flood them with whole milk.” she advises. “The milk will absorb the peppery oil and don’t rub it in any more. After a bit get some Dawn dish soap and slowly rinse off the milk and pepper spray. They should be okay in a little while!”

     Bear spray is probably the best and safest deterrent you can take to the bush if there may be bears or other predators in the area. It is light and easy to carry on your belt where it can be easily and readily grasped if required. It does you no good to be buried in the bottom of you pack. If a bear approaches, slowly back off while speaking in a calm voice trying not to stare a challenge eye to eye. Get your bear spray out and release the safety. Make sure your companions are also slowly and calmly backing off, not running. If the bear continues its advance with ears back, lips curled be prepared. You must wait until it is quite close to you, ten feet or a bit more before you spray a short two or 3 second burst in a sweeping motion toward its face. Hopefully it is downwind from you but be sure to make sure it is making contact with the bear. You may need another burst so try not to empty your canister.

     Studies have found that good bear repellent is about 95% effective in stopping bear attacks or advances. A rifle or shotgun is effective in about 45% of the time in skilled hands. Pepper spray can also be used if the bear already has a hold on you or your partner. You can spray him but you probably should not shoot your rifle into that squirming, squalling mass of fur and friend.

     Before you ever get in the position of needing it, you should practise. Go out with your hiking companions and practise drawing the canister, releasing the safety and pressing the trigger. Aim the spray down toward an imaginary bear face and fan it back and forth being sure the charging bear has to pass through the peppery cloud. By all means don’t intentionally entice a bear to your camp or your body. Keep food away from both, make a bit of noise and hike with a group when in bear country. Get out and enjoy the wilderness and her critters but be prepared for all emergencies of which charging bears are probably one of the fewer.

     The above episode is true and happened more or less like explained. The guys suffered no permanent harm except for the emotional scarring caused by unending teasing and long memories of all who were witness to their embarrassing episode.

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How Do We Tackle Difficult Issues

     I am just wondering if there is any sense of continuing a formal environmental committee such as Wolf Matters.ca. Are we gaining any ground what so ever? I don't want to sound defeatist but what are we accomplishing? I feel like the NDP party of Alberta must feel. They will only ever get 20% of the vote in this province. We all complain about how bad the conservatives are but cannot defeat them.

     I ran into a situation last week to demonstrate what we are dealing with.

     My brother-in-law, a great guy, big farmer and upstanding citizen from small town Alberta who works hard, is honest and very red neck. He, his son and a few friends went ice fishing on their skidoos to Bistou Lake in far Northern Alberta last winter. They try to do this manly trip annually and to tell you the truth, I would also enjoy that very much. The thing that got to me was that while they were fishing, a pack of 8 wolves decided to cross this very large lake and were spotted by my family of red necks. The guys ran them down with their snowmobiles and managed to kill 6 of the pack. They are still bragging and laughing about this slaughter. They were able to salvage 3 hides as the rest of them began slipping their hair as they were packed so tightly on the skidoo toboggan. It is bad enough to me that these good people would slaughter these wolves very quickly around their farm land where there might be some possibility of the wolves doing harm to any cattle in the area, but up at Bistou Lake, there is nothing but natural prey for the wolves. I felt the tears well up in my eyes as they told their gruesome story. To maintain family harmony in an already unstable family group, I chose not to say anything.

     How do we combat this ingrained lust to kill one of our great predators? There is a culture of manly right-of-passage ingrained into such a large percentage of our population that it seems impossible to defeat or even slow down. My family continues to raise generation after generation of people ingrained with this lust to defeat the predators of our land. Their grandsons now have rifles and enjoy hunting coyotes, squirrels, along with deer, moose and elk. I don't mind hunting, I think it is a good thing to know how to feed your family in tough times. I get that. I am very much a part of this culture. I was raised within it and took part in many hunts. I also shot bears, wolves and coyotes and hoped at one time to get a shot at grizzly but never did.

     I have other brothers who have sons and outdoors lovers who cannot wait to get a shot at any wolf, bear, cougar that steps into their sights. I have listened to other people wishing they could be in the helicopter shot gunning wolves. My Dad one time shot 6 black bears in one sitting and another friend shot 5 in his grain field at one time for no other reason than bloodlust. I remember arguing with my brother over the salmon harvest. He would go annually salmon fishing to B.C. His truck carried a deep freeze and generator and he carried every fish he could back to Alberta with no thought to salmon and halibut stock declines. He paid for his license and the boat ride and was dam well going to get his money’s worth. His is not the only deepfreeze/generator package that I know about travelling annually to B.C. for the salmon fishery.

     This is the culture we are battling and trying to open their very closed minds to the possibilities of beautiful nature. Lord help me if I mention anything at all about trying to be environmentally aware of the destruction of our wild lands. Being an environmentalist is akin to being a Southern Baptist preacher spewing hell fire and brimstone at our family reunion. Right now many members of my family work and make their living with the companies in the very region of the province where the caribou are threatened by clear cutting and oil extraction. Getting that oil out of the ground and chopping those trees down right now is paramount to any environmental damage and be dammed if this isn't their right. I once worked for a sawmill owner who would have liked to put a bounty on Spotted Owls in B.C. so there would be no excuse to hold up logging old growth forest depriving him of more millions. It doesn’t matter that certain populations are extirpated here as there are still more in another places.

     This is the same dilemma that we are facing with the governments and resource extraction companies who are working here. They feel that they have the right to bull doze everything in their path for corporate profits and re-election. They have the right and the power to use all tools at their disposal to destroy whatever stands in their way. Poison, snares, traps and helicopter gunners will go out to destroy hundreds of predators under the guise of protecting a few caribou when they admit in their own correspondence that habitat fragmentation is the number one reason that caribou populations cannot grow and be sustainable. They seem willing to sacrifice this caribou population for resource corporate profits while accusing and hanging the wolves and bears.

     Both federal and provincial governments muzzle their scientists to prevent any educated information from reaching the general population. If you don't know about what is going on around you, you cannot raise a ruckus and  you will think things are just fine. Governments are happy to see us constantly distracted by meaningless celebrity news with the hope that we will talk more about Kim's booty job than any real issues.

     I do feel that there are many people who do care deeply about the wilderness in this and other provinces. We see every summer caravans of holiday trailers heading to some semblance of wilderness to experience a bit of nature. People do need rejuvenation that nature provides and we can see the desire to see predators by the "bear jambs" along any highway.

     Somehow we have to try to raise awareness to more people to what we are doing to our wilderness before it is so depleted that we will be confined to a few small parks. How do we do this? I truly look forward to showing my grand children something of the wilderness that I have seen. I don't want them to just see a moving benchmark of wildness that they may think is natural and real.

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Letter to the Premier

     This is a letter I just sent to our Provincial Premier, The Honourable Jim Prentice

     Our Provincial government is trying to figure out how to save the dwindling populations of caribou in the little Smokey region of north-central Alberta.

     The simplest solution is to stop habitat fragmentation in caribou country. I have never been able to understand government and industry need to extract every resource right now! The oil, gas and timber is not going anywhere, it will be there years down the road. The noise and activity of all the traffic and equipment disrupts the very shy and reclusive wildlife even further reducing the land base they have available for use. I suggest opening an area to extraction, do the job, fix the mess, restore the land and move on. Leave meaningful corridors through which wildlife can migrate. Limit the amount of traffic to times of year least disruptive to them. Right now we see miles of destruction with little evidence of restoration. I have looked at several examples over the past year:

     Coalmines south of Hinton have literally moved mountains. I see grass growing on some of their reclaim but not a tree to be seen to replace the forest that has been removed.

     I looked at logging south of Grande Prairie where I used to work. Instead of an 80 year cycle to maintain an annual allowable cut in perpetuity, there are few mature trees left standing as well as miles of new roads, gas and oil facilities, pipelines and continued logging due to pine beetle, a disaster not accounted for in the past. Forest fire could have also happened instead of beetle. The cut cycle has occurred in 40 years, ½ the time required for a forest to be replaced. Is the company now going to request another, even larger land base and stretch even further into marginal territory which encroaches even further into wildlife territory?

     Is anyone actually doing any restoration work in the oil sands mines and settling ponds? Is there any new forest growing to replace those that were removed? Are they going to keep digging and pumping sludge until the companies go broke or quit saying they can no longer afford to clean up? This remediation work needs to be ongoing and finished before new mines started.

     Medicine Hat and a gas company want to destroy the last small bit of land that is home to the Sage grouse. They have written that: "It doesn't matter if the grouse is extirpated here, there are still a few of them surviving in the USA!" Is this legacy the will of our population and the heritage that we want to leave our grand children?

     The government is extremely concerned about a few wild/feral horses in western Alberta that seem to me to be doing very little harm to their environment. Leave them alone to be enjoyed by tourists and outdoor enthusiasts and get concerned about the habitat destruction by logging companies running amok causing trap line destruction and contributing to massive flooding and river destruction.

    

     The mad rush to get every drop out of the ground today is also probably contributing to the world over supply/ low price issues. Now the government is using this issue to threaten us with dire economic consequences!

     The land along the eastern slopes and stretching out into boreal forest was all caribou range a few years ago. I remember when there was a caribou hunt still allowed until almost 1980. This traditional caribou territory was healthy for all types of wildlife until it began to be opened up by logging and petroleum companies. Prey and predators lived in harmonious balance until we began to interfere. It was a spectacular land.

     I don't understand but if I am to believe the government, I am sure that poisoning, shooting, snaring and trapping every wolf and wild horse in the area will solve all of our problems and the caribou, and sage grouse will all suddenly thrive!

     I must apologize for our recklessness to my grand children now!

     Please Mr. Prentice, help us get this madness under control. I don't believe that you want as part of your legacy to be known as a person who had the power to preserve our wilderness and did nothing. You don't want to be remembered as the Premier who lost the last caribou or sage grouse. This is much more real and long term than some corporations profit.

Sincerely

Robert Scriba

Old Stomping Grounds

     A few days after Christmas we headed for Grande Prairie for a visit to see friends and relatives. I also wanted to tour the area south of Grande Prairie where I worked as a logger for Proctor and Gamble at the time. When I left the city around 9:00 it was -27 degrees Celsius but the sun was bright and lightening the hoar frost and snow covered forest. The main haul road south from the Weyerhaeuser pulp mill was in beautiful shape as it used to be with the help of winter frost and snow filled potholes. It was 1979 when I last travelled this road, 35 years already. Where has the time gone? As I drove along I remembered incidents and landmarks from my past.
     Mile 11 was the spot a loaded log truck driver dodged a coyote and ended up out in the swamp, still upright but now jobless.

Coyote

     Here at mile 29 was the spot another fellow tipped his truck over and scattered logs for more than a hundred yards after hitting a bump and losing control on the down hill slope.
     Right here we were travelling home after a late shift around 2:00 in the morning. I was driving a crew cab with three or four work mates, including my friend Smokey, an East Indian immigrant. It was a bright moonlit, cold winter night when suddenly several timber wolves crossed through the high beam headlights. I immediately stopped and shut the truck off, hoping to see more wolves. We stood outside the truck and enjoyed listening to the wolves howl back and forth from each side of the road. We were surrounded by spectacular wilderness symphony. What a memorable few minutes. I could not convince Smokey to sit beside the road while we drove away.
     There is the spot I shot a moose while hunting with my wife and first son Michael when he was around a year or a bit more old. I remember having a friend of mine help carry that moose to the road. He was a big strong Frenchman who broke trail while I staggered along behind trying to hold up my end of the moose load.

Trees planted around 1975

     Mile 32 corner is where I planted my first trees into the naked cut block. Those trees now stand more than thirty feet tall. It worked! This was the same area that the company helicopter landed in front of one of our delimbing machines to inform the operator that he was on fire. The rear engine was burning giant billows of smoke and flames while he was driving down the road.

Compressor Station

     It is difficult to see some of the landmarks as there are new roads, oil well sites, compressor stations, pipelines and gas plants scattered all the way along the road. The old airstrip is not even noticeable.

5 or 6 year old Lodgepole Pine 

     There are no more mature trees left, or very few. This forest has been infested by the Mountain Pine Beetle which has destroyed millions of Lodgepole pine from B.C. through Alberta and beyond. The company is trying to salvage as much of the dead and dying timber as possible. When I was logging here the plan was to cycle through the forest on a eighty year cycle. Timber was supposed to last forever if this allowable cut could be maintained.

Mountain Pine Beetle Infested Trees 

     It is now 40 years since the first trees were cut in 1972 and there are few mature trees left in the Weyerhaeuser district one area. I wonder what will happen in the next few years to the forest, the wildlife and the land. What new pest or fire will come through to disrupt man's best laid plans.

Healthy Looking Coyote

      I did so enjoy spending time with a coyote who has discovered that there may be a few scraps of food at a mandatory truck stop where the drivers must check their load security and equipment. This coyote will hopefully not become another blotch on the road, himself food for scavengers. This is mile 42 and it is plus 2 degrees C. It always seems to be warmer out here than in town.

Snowy Cattails

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