unfolding. Personally, I try not to get into this type of close confrontation, but as a wilderness guide and wildlife photographer I find that these encounters happen frequently enough.
It’s one thing to be looking for large animals to photograph or study, it’s quite another affair when they either seek you out, or you come in contact by sheer chance and circumstance. Seeking out wildlife by design requires a stout knowledge of animal behaviour; you control the situation so long as you don’t push your luck. A couple of years back I was hiking the tundra in the Thelon River headwater area, about eight kilometres west of Whitefish Lake in the Northwest Territories. It was open country, defined by sand eskers, small kettle lakes, felsenmeer (broken rock), and willow scrub.
Tundra wolves were a common sight, but I was looking specifically for muskoxen. I climbed a high ridge for a better view beyond and came upon a herd of oxen — four calves and twelve adults, grazing on the flats across a pond at the base of the hill. The wind was in my favour and, so long as I kept the pond between me and them, I could get quite close to the herd. Approaching them as if I were just another muskox, bent over and pausing every few moments to “graze,” I was able to get within fifty metres to snap the shots I wanted. The bulls had formed a circle around the females and the young muskoxen. When I approached a bit too close, two bulls broke away from the circle and made a wide swing to come in behind me. I retreated slowly. The one bull was now downwind of where I stood and caught my scent; in an instant the whole herd was on the move.
Muskoxen can be dangerous at close range and they have been known to gore people to death with their horns. Normally, oxen are seen ambling along the shores of northern rivers and lakes and confrontations are unlikely. One of my clients, however, while paddling the Coppermine River, had an unforgettable experience with a muskox while fishing. We were camped at a rapid, still within the treed zone of the river, and Norm went off downstream to fish for trout. Lake trout were visible at the surface along the shore and it was no problem to catch one. After latching on to an exceptionally large trout, Norm had to walk along the shore in an attempt to keep it on the light line he was using. While doing so, he almost tripped over a muskox that was lying on the turf beside the river. The animal was not at all pleased at being disturbed but Norm refused to let go of his rod with the trophy lake trout that was to be our dinner still attached. Norm and the muskox backed away from each other and retreated safely; the trout ended up in the fry pan for dinner.
This was a case of sudden and unexpected encounter, and in almost all instances, regardless of species, the abruptness of contact sends both parties scurrying for safe cover. This has happened to me on a number of occasions, with wolf, moose, and bear, and each time the animal has bolted. It’s not good practice to run from a bear, but to back away slowly without making eye contact. Three situations can be of concern: getting in between the mother and its young (primarily moose and bear); paddling a canoe directly in front of a swimming animal; and disturbing a bear’s fresh kill site.
My own research into fatal or near-fatal animal attacks puts humans as the cause of the confrontation: hiking in restricted zones where bear have been sighted and noted as a risk; getting too close for photographic opportunities; despoiling the campsite with garbage or fish cleaning; ignorance of wildlife habits and their respective environments.
While camping in polar bear country, usually along the Hudson Bay coastline, I always employ a “watch” system through the Arctic night, each camper taking a one to two-hour watch. Polar bear have been known to stalk humans, and now with the shortage of food offshore and the effects of global warming, these predators range several hundred kilometres inland. This alters the dynamic of Arctic travel and the level of caution employed. Modern voyageurs are well-equipped with hard gear but often naive about wildlife and their habits, failing to learn enough about potential problems so that when something does happen, they are ill-prepared. Some wilderness guides scoff at the idea of bringing a rifle along during trips in grizzly or polar bear country, and have never had a confrontation. Others who carry guns regularly seem to have more incidents of wildlife “events” simply, perhaps, because of the questionable gun karma. I stopped taking a gun along on my trips because of the weight and general nuisance trying to keep it from rusting. Instead, I carry a bear-blaster pen that lobs power-packed firecrackers about seventy-five metres, hopefully in front of a nosy bear and not behind it. It takes a couple of shots to get the distance down to an art — one displaced shot could turn the bear at a fast sprint toward you.
My late friend Bob Hunter, co-founder of Greenpeace, of whom I had the pleasure of sharing a canoe with on many a wayward adventure, was deathly afraid of bears. On a trip down the Caribou River in northern Manitoba, near the Nunavut border, we came into contact with a polar bear near the Hudson Bay coast. Our group was enjoying a quiet shore lunch when a bear approached across the river and ambled down to the shore. Everyone grabbed their cameras and took pictures. When the bear slid silently into the river, no more than seventy-five metres away, and started to swim toward us, the cameras were quickly dispensed and everyone turned to me — the guide — wondering what I was going to do to protect them. I had a twelve-gauge shotgun with me with two magazines — one with bear-blasters, and the other with hollow-nose slugs. The last thing I wanted to do was to shoot a bear. Knowing that a polar bear is a proficient swimmer, I quickly peeled the gun from its case and loaded the clip with the blasters. Before I could fire a warning shot, the bear seemed to sense something and abruptly turned back toward shore where it quickly disappeared over the boulder field downriver. Since we were heading in that direction not knowing exactly where the bear would be, fear and trepidation prevailed until we cleared the area and had paddled a good five kilometres downstream. Bob was now paranoid about bear confrontations and insisted on setting his tent up close to mine because I had the gun. Bob was a dear soul to me, and he had some residual habits carried over from the Greenpeace days — he liked his bit of weed and a mickey of rye before he crashed for the night; he would practice drawing his knife from its sheath (not to stab the bear but to cut a retreat hole in the back of the tent), test to see how fast he could take the safety off the can of bear spray (much to the chagrin of his tent-mates), and finally lining his knife, bear spray, and whistle alongside his sleeping bag. Bob would pop a couple of sleeping pills, slip on his eye mask, and then fall asleep literally dead to the world. I told Bob that he wouldn’t have to worry because the bear would probably think he was dead, anyway, and move on.
I had a black bear step over me as I slept in the open on a beach in Algonquin Park. He was on his way to the food pack which was leaning up against a tree nearby. I was sixteen at the time and I was terrified. Three boys had been mauled to death by a black bear earlier that season on the Petawawa River. They had been fishing and had wiped the fish smell on their clothing. My friends and I peered cautiously out of our sleeping bags as the bear wrestled with our pack. We had been windbound for two days and had run out of food so the bear quickly lost interest in the empty pack and wandered off. Since then I have had no less than a hundred bear encounters, mostly while homesteading north of Mattawa, Ontario, — a community renowned for its bear poaching prowess.
Every bear has its own personality, much like humans do, and that’s why the bear was revered by people of the First Nations as a sacred being. Skinned out, a bear looks just like a human, except for the skull and claws. It’s also smart. A bear can quickly figure out how to get a suspended pack down from a tree hoist (bear piñata), or set off a leg trap by dragging brush over it … or tear open the side of a tent to get at the package of trail mix buried in the side pocket of a day pack. Bears are moody creatures, and if they find food at someone’s campsite they are reluctant to leave it; and they’ll keep coming back no matter how many pots you bang, air horns you blast, or sticks you throw at it. The only recourse is to move to another site. It’s actually not hard to tell if a bear has been frequenting a campsite. Campers could save themselves a lot of grief if they were to first scan the general area looking for bear scat. If previous campers left garbage, fish entrails and even human feces scattered about, then it’s best to move on. Overturned rocks and logs signature a bears search for grubs, hornets, and ants — what they’ll eat between visits by campers.
Makwa — sacred bear — just doing her job.
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