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Editor’s Note: We originally told this story back in 2016 when Bob Eder told his chilling account of a brutal bear attack to Tyler Freel, who has spent a lot of time hunting in grizzly country. The story is a sobering reminder that although we may think we have bear safety figured out, reality can be much different.

It seems like every spring here in Alaska, we are faced with stark reminders of how dangerous bears can be. Especially in the spring, after a winter of not really having to worry about it, we can get really complacent. It’s been a somewhat early spring here this year, and already there have been at least two confirmed maulings by either grizzlies or brown bears.

Even though I am in bear country frequently, and have had several close encounters, I also get complacent, because I know the chances are slim that I’ll be attacked when I’m unprepared. The unfortunate fact about bear attacks though, is that if we knew they were going to happen, they wouldn’t.

In that way, bear attacks are a little like lightning. We know when the conditions are ripe for a strike, but we don’t always take the necessary precautions to avoid one. And, just like lightning, by the time you realize you are vulnerable, things happen so fast that it can be hard to avoid the consequences.

I was reminded of this analogy during a conversation with Bob Eder, a friend of my uncle, who survived a brown bear mauling in 2012. His experience really pounded home the seriousness of what can happen when things go very wrong.

Bob was going for a routine hike with his dog on a trail up the mountain above his house in Eagle River, Alaska, when he walked into a perfect storm. He told me he had gotten a ways up the trail and realized he had forgotten his bear spray. Since the likelihood of encountering a bear was low, he decided to continue without it. Just as he crested a rise in the brushy trail, he saw the heads of four brown bears (a sow and three sub-adult cubs) pop up “less than 15 feet” in front of him. He had been making noise, talking to his dog, and even the dog (who usually goes ballistic anytime a bear is near) failed to smell the bears as they approached.

Bob instantly turned around, but before he could take a step, the sow caught him on the back of his head with her claws, ripped open his scalp, and flipped him over. He said that he remembers seeing the bear upside down as she flipped him over but that was the last he saw of her. He said the attack lasted no longer than 15 seconds, but as they tumbled down the hill together, she bit his back and shoulders, slashed his chest with one swipe, and ripped open his thigh, tearing a chunk of muscle out. He told me that the swipe to the head really hurt, but he didn’t really feel any of the other wounds due to shock or adrenaline.

After the bear left, Bob slid down the hill to the trail. He didn’t have cell service and he could put weight on his leg, so he knew he would have to walk out. He took off his shirt and tied it around the wound on his leg, “not as a tourniquet,” he said, but just to hold the wound together as he walked out. He eventually made it down to a private driveway and phone service and was able to direct police officers to his location. He said it was over an hour from the attack to when they found him, but he remembers the entire trip to the hospital. After getting to the hospital, he woke up four days later to find out that they had to give him over 10 units of blood to make up for what he lost, and his body temperature was down to almost 90 degrees.

If you want to read the original news release of Bob’s encounter, click here.

After 12 days in the hospital, Bob walked out under his own power. It took a month of doctor visits, 20 days of antibiotic treatment, and a lot of effort, but eight months after the attack, he completed a half-marathon.

Fleet of Fang

I asked Bob if he thought bear spray would have prevented the attack, but he said there was no way he would have even had time to reach for it, it all happened so fast.

If you’ve seen the movie “The Revenant,” you’ve seen the bear-attack scene. Especially for Hollywood, I think it is pretty dang realistic. When you see the bear’s head pop up, then it charges, well, that speed is no exaggeration. Bears will sometimes charge extremely fast. In a piece I did last year talking about a sow grizzly that charged my buddy Nick and me, we calculated that she covered 13 yards in less than a second. Bears, whether they are black or brown, are extremely fast and powerful animals, much more than we often realize or give them credit for.

Now that the bears are out, it’s time to carry not only some form of bear protection, whether its bear spray or a firearm, but also to keep yourself in a cautious mindset and pay attention to your surroundings. The best thing you can do is try to prevent a situation like that in the first place. Bob told me that he doesn’t have nightmares from the attack, and it doesn’t keep him from hiking and enjoying the outdoors, and although he won’t be leaving his bear spray anymore, the biggest thing is that he is much more cautious and aware of his surroundings. I hope everyone is out enjoying spring in the outdoors, but always remember that a dangerous situation could be waiting right over the next rise in the trail.

Read Next: Details Behind a Mysterious Idaho Bass Record Finally Come to Light

What Duke and story author Martin Koening ultimately figured out was that Mrs. W. M. Taylor was Alice Hurt Taylor, and she caught the fish in October of 1948. Most interesting, it was discovered that despite recreational angling not being very popular among women in that era, Taylor was an avid bass chaser who caught a largemouth weighing more than 9 pounds in the same lake, earning her sixth place in a Field & Stream fishing contest in 1944. As for all the missing data in the record book, it turns out that Idaho didn’t start documenting records until the late 1950s, at which time they asked for retroactive entries. The first bass to hold the spot weighed 9 pounds 15 ounces, and was traced back to 1949. Not long after, Mrs. Taylor must have caught wind of the new record archive, and she submitted her 10-pound 15-ounce bass. Despite a lack of specifics, Idaho accepted the catch.

So, why was I intrigued by this tale? Simple. Because it’s an actual story full of twists and turns. It’s part of fishing lore and was likely discussed on and off for decades at bars, around campfires, and in tackle shops. And it’s certainly not the only old fish record that had anglers choosing sides and speculating over bourbon, scotch, and beer. What’s sad is that I don’t believe modern record fish stories can infect fishing culture in the same way as Mrs. Taylor’s mystery bass.

Changing Forums

Nor was Albert McReynolds. In September of 1982 — the year I was born — he caught a 78.8-pound striped bass on a jetty in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which happens to be my home state. As a kid I would gawk for what felt like hours at a replica of the fish in a marine mammal rescue center at the Jersey Shore. The striper fishing community, however, was always divided on the validity of the catch. Some folks claimed it was far too rough for McReynolds to have been on the jetty that night. Others said the bass was caught in a commercial fisherman’s net, not on his Rebel plug. McReynolds wasn’t fishing alone, either. His friend, Pat Erdman was out there that night, but remained largely tight-lipped and hazy on details. When Erdman passed away a few years ago, he took his side of the story to his grave.

In 2011, angler Greg Myerson beat McReynolds with an 81-pound 14-ounce striper from Long Island Sound. I remember the news breaking. And I remember thinking the catch would never generate the long-term scuttlebutt and lore of McReynold’s bass. I was, by all counts, correct.

Myerson has a reputation for being a hell of an angler who put years into pinpointing the location of big bass in the area he fished and monitoring their seasonal movements. He would later reveal that he was confident his program would result in a record, he just wasn’t sure when. He certainly deserved to catch that fish, but when it happened it felt so … matter of fact. This angler went out looking for this bass, he put in the work, found it, and hung it on the scale. Case closed.

While there was some speculation about what happened in the hours between when Myerson weighed the fish and when he gave his first on-the-record interview, the actual catch itself was disputed very little. Myerson also inadvertently proved just how much better and capable anglers have become. Neither Perry, nor Hayes, nor McReynolds went out seeking a record fish. They all went fishing for fun and got lucky. If you look at some of the more recent world-record catches, many were claimed by fishermen who were on a mission to claim them. There’s certainly nothing wrong with being a record chaser, but in my view, the story of those catches will not be getting retold in bars 20 or 30 years from now.

For the Record?

Given how fast information travels, record fish stories are mere blips in a Google news feed these days. We assume — occasionally incorrectly — that if it’s been certified, sufficient research went into the catch, and everything is legit. Sure, that’s necessary for accurate record keeping, but a byproduct of the internet age, at least in my opinion, is the loss of the barroom banter that wove records like Perry’s and McReynolds’ into the fabric of largemouth and striper cultures. You almost need a contingent of non-believers for the story to travel and live on. But seeing how obsessed we are with details and proof, and how much goes into signing off on world-records in particular, there’s less room for valid conjecture. You’ll have keyboard commandos spouting off, no doubt, but we’ve grown so accustomed to seeing people criticized from behind a veil of anonymity that it becomes noise instead of a conversation, least of all an oral history.

In 2009, when angler Manabu Kurita caught a 22-pound 4-ounce largemouth bass in Japan’s Lake Biwa, it rocked the bass fishing world. For 77 years, George Perry’s record had stood. Kurita didn’t beat it, however, he tied it.

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Like many modern record hunters, Kurita was looking for that fish. He knew Lake Biwa had the potential to produce it, just like Myerson had a feeling he would stick a new record striper someday. Though I’m in no way a largemouth fanatic, part of me was glad it was a tie. It’s unlikely, but I love the idea that the door to glory has been left open for an unsuspecting angler out for a casual day on the water. Imagine the story you could tell if you pulled a 22-pound 6-ounce bass out of your local lake with your favorite spinnerbait.

But the aftermath is less fun to think about. Could you handle the social media onslaught if you decided to have it certified? Even if you knew every aspect of the catch met record qualifying criteria, that you had nothing to hide and had, in fact, just gotten very lucky, would it be worth the hell you’d endure in the comments section to potentially become a legend?

Many state wildlife agencies similarly don’t pay for impacts of big game on private land. Agencies insist that the presence of wildlife is a condition of the land, and that management responses, including public hunting, are the preferred tools to reduce populations of meddlesome wild ungulates.

But hunting seasons occupy only a portion of the year, while elk occupy private land in the valleys north of Yellowstone National Park for longer every year as public-land habitat has become less productive, and as wolves and bears roam farther from the protections of the national park. Valley-floor field and pastures have long been favorite winter range for Yellowstone’s elk, but ranchers note that herds are staying longer into the spring, and some are spending the entire summer on irrigated hay pivots where they’re largely protected from public-land hunters as well as large carnivores.

The net result of these changes is that elk occupancy has become onerous on many of the working ranches in Paradise Valley. Unlike many Western valleys that are being carved up for rural subdivisions or amenity ranches, Paradise Valley, which starts at Yellowstone Park’s northern boundary and follows the Yellowstone River north to the town of Livingston, still has an abundance of open space provided by multi-generational ranchers.

But tolerance for elk is less abundant. When listing economic pressures on their operations, ranchers cite elk for impacting agricultural forage and fences, and for their ability to transmit the bacterial disease brucellosis to livestock.

The Bozeman-based Property and Environment Research Center last month announced a program called “Elk Rent,” in which private funds are used to compensate ranchers for providing elk habitat. PERC’s payment-for-presence program combines cameras powered by artificial intelligence with landowners’ knowledge of their ground to quantify “elk days” that are then eligible for payments. The more elk for longer durations, the more ranchers can make in occupancy payments, which are capped at $12,000 annually.

It’s not the first time PERC has offered a market-based solution to a nettlesome wildlife issue. The group previously created an insurance indemnity fund to pay Paradise Valley ranchers for the impacts to their operation created when brucellosis is transmitted from wild elk to domestic cattle. But the “Elk Rent” model has implications that run through common themes related to wildlife management, including the role of public hunting, tolerance for wild ungulates, and even the carrying capacity of public land that’s not actively managed by the Forest Service and other land-management agencies.

“In the years of outreach that PERC has done with ranchers in the valley, it became really clear that what keeps them up at night is elk,” says Whitney Tilt, a PERC fellow and coordinator of the Paradise Valley campaign. “When it comes to wolves, bears, endangered species, or hunter management, landowners have support and flexibility and people they could call for assistance. But when it comes to elk, the state says, ‘Aren’t you glad to have them? By the way, they’re not yours and we’ll tell you what you can do with them.’”

Consequently, ranchers tend to get all the problems and little of the benefit from elk, says Brian Yablonski, the CEO of PERC, whose mission is the pursuit of applying free-market economics to natural resource issues.

“Elk are often viewed as uninvited guests on a rancher’s property,” Yablonski says. “Ranchers are essentially feeding the elk at great personal expense. Ultimately, we need these private open lands to remain intact if we want to preserve this unique migratory ecosystem, and paying ranchers ‘elk rent’ for providing this public good is a critical step toward accomplishing that.”

Camera Traps and Artificial Intelligence Helps Calculate Rent

PERC is partnering with Montana-based Grizzly Systems to set up detection cameras to record the presence of elk on Emigrant Peak Ranch, the first ranch to participate in the pilot project. Cameras, powered by artificial-intelligence software that can learn over time to identify elk out of a mosaic of other animals, record when elk move onto the ranch’s fields and when they leave, if they leave at all.

Once the cameras document at least 20 elk in a single 24-hour period, that “elk day” is then eligible for payment. When populations increase to over 100 elk in a single day, the payment similarly increases. (Payments are variable depending on factors like time of year and whether elk are grazing native pasture or high-value crops like irrigated alfalfa.)

PERC hopes to expand the initial effort to other ranches in Paradise Valley. Funding for the pilot comes from Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Spruance Foundation, and Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

Tilt says the initial reception among Paradise Valley ranchers has been positive, with several keeping tabs on the success of their neighbor’s pilot project.

“These ranchers are getting pressure from just about every direction,” notes Tilt. “Land prices are skyrocketing, the cost of maintaining their businesses is increasing. Many of these ranchers already have some sacrifice zone that they give over to elk in the winter in the hopes that they can keep them away from where they’re calving in the January-to-April time period. And many ranchers recognize that elk are increasingly common on lower-elevation private land. That may be a combination of the increase in activity on public land, even outside of hunting season, or an increase in large carnivores, or because range conditions on public land are deteriorating.

“Often hunters will say that landowners are drawing elk down onto private ground, but we don’t think that’s a valid claim,” says Tilt, “because there’s no more land under irrigation now than there was when the Yellowstone [elk] herd was at its zenith, but even with reduced elk numbers, ranchers are seeing more and more of them on their ground. For whatever reason, elk are coming to these ranches, and increasingly they’re not leaving.”

The Role of Public Hunting in Montana Elk Managment

The situation begs the question: Can’t hunters be deployed to keep crop-eating elk off private ranchland? It’s a tool that’s been tried on many ranches, several of which are enrolled in Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks’ Block Management hunter access program. But Tilt notes that the presence of huntable elk on these ranches is neither constant nor predictable.

“The vast majority of these ranches provide hunting to the public,” says Tilt. “It’s not necessarily to hunters from Bozeman who walk up and knock on their door, but rather to teachers and firefighters, and members of the local community. The problem with managing hunting is that elk move seasonally, and even week to week. So they might be here today, but by the time a hunter comes out, they’re gone. Ranchers have additional problems with hunters who might shoot one or two elk, but then push the rest of the herd through fences, creating more problems than they’re solving.”

Tilt says solutions have to extend well beyond hunting seasons.

“This is an overly broad generalization, but most hunters think that ranches are owned by rich people from Texas, or that they’re outfitted or leased,” says Tilt. “But what seldom comes up in these discussions about ranches and wildlife is the huge cost to the landowner when you put 50 or 100 elk that each eat a half an AUM [or animal unit month, a way of quantifying the amount of forage a cow and calf consume] on the same ground where you’re trying to manage your livestock. We observed that ranchers are feeding a lot of mouths they have no control over, and that there haven’t been a lot of tools in the toolbox to manage that impact.”

That’s where the “Elk Rent” program hopes to provide some sort of scalable alternative to either hazing elk off private land or profiting from the presence of elk by leasing to a hunting outfitter.

While the pilot program currently is concerned with a single ranch, the expansion of the cash-for-occupancy model is worrisome to some Montana hunters. Some are concerned that public funds might be tapped for payments, and others have expressed apprehension that landowners might be incentivized to harbor elk on their lands in order to qualify for more cash payments.

“We appreciate PERC’s innovative attempts to encourage private-land conservation, but we don’t believe that wildlife tolerance necessarily warrants monetary compensation,” says Jake Schwaller, board member of the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “The ‘Elk Rent’ pilot program is intriguing, but we question the scalability and worry about the precedent this may set.”

Schwaller notes that, based on a famous 1940 court decision, living with and accepting wildlife on a ranch, quite literally, comes with the territory.

“We acknowledge that, as the State of Montana so eloquently put it in State v. Rathbone, ‘A property owner in this state must recognize the fact that there may be some injury to property or inconvenience from wild game for which there is no recourse.’ We think it’s best to concede this while working collaboratively to use some of the many tools already available to reduce impacts of our wildlife.”

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Meanwhile, Tilt says PERC is actively looking for additional private funding sources to extend the “Elk Rent” pilot into next year, and perhaps in other areas of Montana.

“In talking with ranchers up in the Blackfoot [Valley of northwest Montana], where they’re covered up with wolves and bears, and where they’re doing trumpeter swan releases, and where they’re managing bull trout redds on their private ground, the number one issue those ranchers cite also has three letters: E.L.K. So we think there are other places where the ‘Elk Rent’ model could work.”

Murray and game warden Dalton Bluey suspected a processor had dumped the parts and began investigating. They collected 172 legs and, working through the state’s hunter database, got in touch with many of the hunters associated with the confirmation numbers. Each one reported taking their deer to the same meat processor.

The following day, Bluey and wardens Mike France and Tim Campbell interviewed the processor who had been named. The processor explained that their business gives leftover legs and offal to multiple people, who use the parts for everything from fertilizer to chicken feed. Additional interviews led Bluey to an individual who received the discards in question from the processor. That suspect confessed to dumping the piles and charges are now pending, according to the Oklahoma Game Wardens Facebook page. Illegal dumping is a misdemeanor in Oklahoma. Penalties can range from a $500 to $5,000 fine and up to 30 days in county jail. It is possible additional charges for improper carcass disposal will also apply.

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“He piqued my interest mainly because he had hooks coming off his G2s,” Ankley tells Outdoor Life. “He was a young deer, I estimated him to be about 3.5 years old at that time. He only came around at night, and we would get pictures of him randomly. He showed up once in the daylight that year, and then he completely vanished.”

Ankley didn’t see evidence of him again until 2022, when a trail camera captured a daylight photo of the buck on Oct. 31.

“Then he vanished again, and we didn’t see him again for the season,” Ankley says. “Then, going into this deer season, we put our cameras out mid-August and didn’t get any pictures of him until the second week of November. At that point I didn’t even know if he was still around. We were close to some forest reserves that were getting culled, so I didn’t know if he got [killed by another hunter] or moved on and found a new domain of his own. But after I got that picture I was determined.”

On Nov. 18, Ankley set up in his stand on the south side of his property. Last light was creeping up on him. Around 4:40 p.m., Ankley heard sticks breaking behind his tree.

The buck closed to 23 yards. Ankley predicted the deer would hop on a trail that ran parallel to Ankley’s stand.

“I had one shooting lane on [that trail], maybe two feet in diameter,” he says. “I knew if I stopped him in that spot I was going to get a shot. So when he got about three steps in there I drew my bow back. He stopped just past the opening, far enough to where I couldn’t really see his head, but I knew he was a shooter. I took the shot. He reared up and kicked, ran out about thirty yards, and stopped out in some marsh grass behind a bunch of brush. I remember thinking to myself, I just killed the biggest deer of my life.”

Ankley waited about 45 minutes and climbed out of the stand to return home. He and Munson eventually went out to pick up a blood trail.

“We found decent blood right off the bat where I’d shot him. As we started tracking the blood trail got thinner, we saw a spot where it looked like he bedded down, so we made the decision after about an hour and a half of tracking him to pull out. I didn’t sleep great that night.”

The pair went back out the next morning right around sunrise to pick up the trail again.

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“We started where we had left off, and I’d say 30 to 40 yards from there was where we found him. I walked up and was just dumbfounded,” Ankley says. “I couldn’t believe I’d killed this buck I’d been chasing for three years, and I had no idea it was even him. It was a really, really exciting moment for me.”

Ankley took a green score twice and feels confident that Captain Hook will end up a 190-class deer. When he took the buck to get tested for CWD, the biologists aged him at 5.5 years old. Once the 60-day drying period is over, Ankley plans to get the buck shoulder-mounted.

After watching the buck struggle from only 60 yards away, Olson thought about putting it out of its mystery. But first, he called a local game warden.

“I wanted to make sure what I was going to do would be legal,” Olson says. “I had my bow tag with me but didn’t have my bow, so I called up a buddy that lived nearby and he brought me his bow. I shot [the living deer], tagged it, and the game warden gave me a salvage tag for the dead one.”

When Olson approached the pair, he realized the 8-pointer had been dead for some time. The back half of the carcass had been eaten away, and its hide had started turning green. The buck’s eyes were pecked out, and the whole carcass stunk with rot.

Olson took all the salvageable meat from the 13-pointer but had to leave some behind due to all the blood (from the exploded vessels) that had saturated the muscles. He dropped off the bucks, still locked up, with a taxidermist in the area. He plans to turn the pair into a double shoulder mount.

While the experience was a unique one, especially for Olson’s first archery buck, he also sleeps a little better at night knowing that he sought the game warden’s guidance on the situation.

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“He was initially shocked. He sounded as surprised as I was on the phone,” Olson says. “But he said ‘Either you shoot it with your bow and tag it or we come out there and try to break them apart.’ And I knew I wasn’t going to pass up that opportunity … Some folks, I’ll call them ‘haters,’ said this wasn’t fair chase. But I know what shape the deer was in, and even if they would have broken him free, he probably would have died anyway. He was getting skinny and had a hole in his head, and probably had a fever from getting so worked up.”

Know That There Is Always a Risk

Animal attacks can occur anytime and in many different places, not just the wilderness. It’s natural for us to be more wary when hiking in remote areas, especially where predators are present. It’s also common for us to let our guard down in areas we perceive to be safe, like campgrounds and the suburbs. The tragic bear attack that took Ms. Lokan’s life occurred in a campground with other campers close enough to hear the commotion. The risk of being involved in an animal attack is always low, but it will never be zero. It’s up to us, as outdoorsmen and women, to manage our risks. For example, you should never keep food in your tent, whether you’re in bear country or not. This may have been a factor that lured the bear into the Montana campground where Ms. Lokan was attacked.

Learn which predators are present in your area or in any area you’re traveling. Learn their behaviors and how to avoid trouble. This is the correct mindset for survival. To study the threats you face, limit your risks, and know how to respond in the most effective way.

Choose Between Instinct and Insight

So instead of giving in to basic instincts (running like hell) you’ll want to respond in a way that’s more effective. That means thinking through different scenarios ahead of time and deciding how to respond in each.

Decide to Fight or Freeze

For actual big cat attacks, like mountain lions, you’ll really want to fight the urge to turn tail and run. Instead, use your understanding of the animal’s behavior. A large male mountain lion could weigh more than 200 pounds and like other felines, they are ambush predators. They like to wait for prey to pass by and fast-moving targets are particularly stimulating (this is why trail runners and mountain bike riders are often attacked by lions). The cat is looking for a meal, not a fight.

If you don’t have a firearm for self-defense, then yell at the animal, throw rocks, make noise, and try to make yourself look bigger (for example, try opening your jacket or shirt to change your profile). While preforming these aggressive displays and acts of blustering, back away slowly to a safer location. Even though the instinct to run away from a mountain lion may be overwhelming, use your insight to make a safer retreat. Get to a vehicle, a structure, or into a group of people.

Bear encounters can be a different story. Say you’re hiking down a familiar mountain trail and enjoying your day. Everything seems postcard perfect, until you hear a deep guttural growl. You realize that a momma bear was standing in the bushes on your left and her two cubs were playing on your right—and now you’re standing between a mother bear and her cubs. Making yourself look bigger and getting aggressive won’t work in this scenario. You’ll only look like a bigger threat and inspire more maternal aggression.

For years, it’s been said that you “fight a black bear and play dead with a grizzly.” There’s still some logic to follow there, but a better way to categorize bears would be “defensive” bears and “predatory” ones. A bear that you surprise, for example, may charge at you. This animal believes you are a threat and it is defending its territory. The kind of bear that would be classified as predatory circles you, or tries to enter your tent.

You can use bear spray on both animals. Without it, you can play dead with the defensive bear. Lie face down, leaving your backpack in place to protect your back. Don’t let the animal roll you over. Stay on your stomach, even if bitten and scratched. Defensive bears will leave when they perceive you are no threat.

Predatory bears, on the other hand, should be fought with any means at your disposal. Thankfully, the majority of bear/human encounters is with defensive animals and there’s an easy way to maintain distance with these huge animals. Make noise as you travel through the backcountry. Talk, whistle, or hang bear bells on your backpack. The most experience guides in Alaska simply announce “hey bear” when they approach of section of bush that looks especially beary. The noise will inspire most bears and other animals to move away as you approach. Distance is the key to safety with predators.

Bear Spray and Firearms for Predator Protection

Even though bear spray is marketed as a bruin deterrent, this burning liquid can repel all sorts of predatory creatures (including two-legged predators, when used in an off-label manner). This is not a product sold by fear mongers that cater to the paranoid. This is a defensive tool that is a proven deterrent and it’s a smart product to carry in bear country. That being said, it does need to be on your person and accessible to be of benefit. It should never be buried at the bottom of your backpack or left behind in your vehicle. Choose a product that includes a holster and carry it on your belt, on the hip belt of your backpack, or on your bino harness. While you’re shopping for bear spray with a holster, look for EPA registered products too. These will have the maximum percentage of capsaicin, and deliver the most irritation money can buy. It’s also best if the product can spray at least 25 feet, since you don’t want to be too close when using it.

Bears are highly intelligent animals. They are also creatures of instinct. We can’t read a bear’s mind or ask it to compare products for us, but many bear researchers speculate that the orange colorant added to many bear spray products is a significant part of the deterrent action of commercially available bear sprays. Many manufactures don’t even mention the colorant on the product packaging, but it can be seen in demonstration videos. When a screaming human creates an orange cloud that makes a loud hiss and stings a bear’s sensitive nose, the majority of bears tend to flee. Most bears will run away, then turn around and try to figure out what the hell just happened. It’s during this window of the bear fleeing, that you should be quickly backing away (but not turning and running). Now, here’s the game-time decision that will be hard to make when your body is pumped full of adrenalin. Do you unload the whole canister in one shot, or reserve a little for a second spray? Some experts recommend that you never spray the full canister in one shot, unless you have a second spray can holstered and ready to use. Everyone in a party should have bear spray (more on this in a moment).

Many experts from bear country suggest carrying bear spray and a firearm for backup bear defense. Outdoor Life has covered firearms for bear protection plenty over the years, and we’ve also covered concealed carry options for hikers and joggers. If you’re trekking through predator infested country, it’s wise to have a firearm, but you must train with it to be effective.

Predator Attacks Happen in a Flash

All of this planning is useful for preparing for predator encounters. But here’s the grim reality: A true predator attack often happens so quickly that you don’t have any time to react until you’re already in the heat of battle. There’s no warning growl or bluff charge. Just a rush of fur, fangs, and claws.

In this scenario you do the best you can, either playing dead or fighting back and hope that your companions save you. When hunting, fishing, or hiking in areas of high predator populations, it’s always smart to use the buddy system. Talk through possible animal attack scenarios with your partners, check that there’s enough survival gear and first-aid equipment  to go around, and make sure that they are trained with bear spray or firearms, if they’re carrying. A panicking companion with a weapon can be just as dangerous as any predator.

“[Some of] these deer are behaving like a northern migratory deer,” says Luke Resop, a graduate student at Mississippi State University and one of the researchers in the Deer Lab study. “In Michigan or Northern Pennsylvania or New York, deer will go from their summer range to their winter range where they can get better thermal cover from snow and find resources. Obviously, we don’t have really severe winters in the South, but we’re noticing some deer still do those things.”

The University is currently conducting two studies on whitetails in the Magnolia State. One is taking place in the South Delta, where Buck 140 lives for most of the year, while the other is located further north in the state’s CWD zones. Both are looking closely at deer movement patterns in order to help the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks better manage whitetail populations. The two studies will wrap up sometime this fall.

Responding to Hunting Pressure and Environmental Conditions

Researchers say there are a few reasons why deer in the South might travel long distances on a regular basis. One factor that previous studies have looked at—and one that most deer hunters can agree with—is the connection between hunting pressure and deer movements.

Demarais explains that bucks in those studies tended to move out of these heavily hunted areas during the daytime and return at night. These temporary movements might pale in comparison to the seasonal migrations from public to private land that animals make in Utah and other Western states, but they show how quickly deer can adapt to predators on the landscape.

“It makes sense. They learned to avoid risk. It matches ecological theory that when prey are exposed to predators, they learn pretty quickly,” Demarais says.

There are, of course, other factors besides hunting pressure that will cause deer to move. Going back to the seasonal migrations that are common among Northeastern and Western deer populations, Mississippi’s South Delta region might not get much snow, but it does flood on a regular basis. This leads Demarais and other researchers to believe that seasonal floods could be enough motivation for deer like Buck 140 to travel long distances each year.

The ongoing studies support their current theory, which is that whitetail deer are more likely to be mobile when they inhabit areas with frequent high-water events. Interestingly, the deer that regularly migrate don’t just leave one area when it floods. Instead, they’ll move to one area during the late winter or early spring, which is when flooding typically occurs, and then they’ll return to their core are in late summer in preparation for the rut. This movement occurs during both wet and dry years.

Although the Deer Lab’s studies are the first to use GPS collars to show this seasonal behavior among whitetails in the South, Resop says that previous research in the state also supported this theory. In an earlier study that was conducted near the Big Black River in 2020, a deer known as Buck 27 traveled roughly 13 miles to get to a secondary home range during flooding season. Around a third of the deer sampled in that study behaved similarly.

“We were under the assumption that this was just an outlier for this one region of Mississippi,” Resop says. “We didn’t have any good data to suggest that it applied on a broad scale across [the state] until this more recent project that includes Buck 140.”

Every Population Needs Pioneers

Since the Deer Lab is also tracking whitetails in the northern part of the state, where floods are less of an issue, they are able to compare and contrast the two populations. What they’ve found is that none of the GPS-collared deer in the northern part of the state undergo migrations like the one that Buck 140 has undertaken the past two years in a row. During that time, nearly all of the collared whitetails in northern Mississippi have stayed within a home range of roughly 800-1,200 acres.

“The mobile deer in these areas are just hardwired to move whether the area floods or not,” says Resop, adding that Buck 140’s pilgrimage across the Mississippi River and back isn’t even the most impressive of all the deer they’ve tracked in the South Delta.

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“We’ve got one doe now. She makes Buck 140’s movements look like a kid’s playtime,“ Resop says. “He’s going 18 miles, and she went about 35 miles this past year.”

A final takeaway from the Deer Lab’s ongoing study is that every wildlife population relies on some individuals to take risks and pioneer new areas. Those deer tend to discover new locations when stressors increase, Demarais explains, which can open up new territory for whitetail populations and ensure that the species thrives regardless of conditions in one specific area.

“Every species of animal, including humans, has to have a few risk takers,” Demarais says.

Everett Sluga, 90, spotted the deer while driving through farmland outside of Independence, Wisconsin, in late December. Stopping for a closer look, Sluga recognized that the two deer weren’t just fighting—they were locked together. Since deer season was still underway, he decided to let the landowners know about the situation. Rebarchek and Keenan are farmers as well as dedicated deer hunters. When they heard what Sluga had seen, they responded right away and soon found the two bucks struggling in a large, snowy field.

The couple walked toward the bucks, driving the pair into the nearby woods—where the deer got their antlers even more tangled around a small tree. Rebarchek had an arrow nocked on his crossbow, but found himself unable take the shot, writing in a Facebook post that he had one in his sights but“just couldn’t pull the trigger.”

“I just didn’t feel it was right shooting them in the situation they were in,” Rebarchek told WEAU-13 News last week. “It just didn’t feel ethical to me … I looked at Tami and I said, ‘I can’t shoot these deer.’”

A video of the rescue itself, which was filmed by Keenan and shared on Facebook by Deer and Deer Hunting, has already made the rounds on social media and racked up nearly half a million views.

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“I’m a hundred percent positive we made the right decision by saving them rather than shooting them,” Rebarchek told the local news outlet, adding that he had since seen the bucks on his property and they both looked healthy.

Referring to the two working groups tasked with providing input to CPW, they argued that these groups have “tilted what should be an aspirational conversation towards a cynical one that has focused on livestock owner compensation, artificially limiting populations, and when, where, and how to kill wolves.”

The most obvious discrepancy between the two plans is that CPW is aiming for a population goal of roughly 250 wolves, while the plan proposed by wolf advocates pushes for a minimum population of 750 wolves on the state’s Western Slope. The newly proposed plan also says that gray wolves should be allowed to disperse east of the Continental Divide, and that CPW should consider reintroducing Mexican wolves in the southern part of the state.

Comparing the two plans highlights the stark contrasts between the many stakeholders involved in the reintroduction process. While wolf advocates argue for the maximum number of wolves on the landscape, Colorado’s rural communities are growing increasingly concerned about the prospect of living with wolves—a concern that has been exacerbated in recent months as wolf packs from southern Wyoming have made their way across state lines without any help from CPW. These communities are advocating for fewer wolves on the landscape and the ability to kill wolves that harass their livestock.

How Did We Get Here?

In the fall of 2020, Coloradans voted on legislation that would require CPW to reintroduce gray wolves into the state by the end of 2023. Proposition 114 passed by a margin of only 60,000 votes.

The breakdown of these votes fell largely along geographical lines. Urban residents in the Front Range carried the pro-wolf vote, while residents of the state’s more rural Western Slope voted overwhelmingly against their reintroduction. The irony here is that unlike the rural voters in the Western part of the state, the Front Range residents who supported wolf reintroduction won’t have to deal with wolves living in their own backyard.

In an effort to balance these conflicting views, CPW created two working groups to help guide the reintroduction process. The technical working group includes wildlife experts and agency professionals, and its focus is on outlining the plan’s conservation objectives. The stakeholder advisory group is comprised of livestock owners, outfitters, and environmentalists, who are speaking up for the needs of different communities throughout Colorado.

“I think CPW has done a good job of putting a well-represented stakeholder group together. It’s got a lot of diverse opinions,” says Adam Gall, a member of the stakeholder advisory group. “Everyone is respectful. They’re passionate about their opinions. Everyone has invested a lot of time and energy.”

Gall, a former wolf biologist who now runs Timber to Table Guide Service in Hotchkiss, highlighted how hard the members of the stakeholder groups have worked to construct their reintroduction plan. Gall noted that although the groups have made significant progress, creating a plan that people can agree on has been a challenge.

“I mean, you’re talking about people’s livelihoods being jeopardized, you know, whether it’s an outfitter or a livestock producer,” says Gall. “It’s those types of potential impacts that require a lot of thorough discussion and an exhaustive conversation trying to figure out what’s the best approach and what’s the best tools to give CPW from a management standpoint, so they can respond and react accordingly.”

A Community at the Center of Debate 

In June, the Western Landowners Alliance and the North Park Stockgrowers Association organized a meeting in Walden, Colorado, where they discussed some of challenges of living with wolves. The event brought together more than 40 ranchers from Northern Colorado with decades of experience tending their lands west of the divide.

“Colorado livestock producers are now carrying the burden for America’s interest in wolves,” rancher Cat Urbugkit told the group.

Urbugkit shared a few tactics for deterring wolves, including guard dogs and flashing lights, but noted that these deterrence mechanisms will only work to “minimize the damage”—which is something the local community is all too familiar with.

That’s because this winter, a wolf pack naturally migrated south from Wyoming and killed a calf on the Gittleson Ranch outside Walden, Colorado. The event marked the state’s first confirmed livestock kill by wolves in nearly 70 years, according to the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association.

But it was just the beginning. Two more depredation events occurred in the county over the next thirty days, and over the following five months, Gittleston would lose five more cows to the North Park wolf pack.

“I’ve lost more animals to predators in the last six months and more animals to wolves than I have to any other predator in 40 years,” Don Gittleson told The Colorado Sun in June. “And I’m not sure it’s over yet.”

Although wildlife agencies and managers provided Gittleston and other ranchers with non-lethal deterrence mechanisms, such as flagging and burros, the wolves have continued to harass livestock in the county. These repeat events have frustrated the local community, and many fear that bringing additional wolves onto the landscape will only lead to more issues.

In an interview with Outdoor Life, Adam VanValkenburg, a fourth-generation rancher in North Park and president of the NPSA, described the local community’s frustration.

“The ranchers and the community have done a lot of work to help prevent more depredations, but depredations still happen,” says VanValkenburg. “Our important thing is lethal control. Not in the sense of going on hunting expeditions, but having the ability to kill wolves preying on our cattle.”

Not surprisingly, these calls for lethal control are the major flashpoint between the livestock community and environmentalists in the state. Ranchers see it as a necessity, while wolf advocates view lethal removal as a last-ditch option.

“Wolves can only fulfill their ecological role if their family groups are intact and not disrupted by human persecution,” says Delia G Malone, wildlife chair for Colorado Sierra Club. “Where wolves are protected from recreational killing and lethal control, their benefits reach to enhancing biodiversity, improving climate resilience, and even enriching our own lives.”

VanValkenburg, meanwhile, points to the valuable role that ranchers play in Colorado. The livestock industry contributes roughly $5.14 billion annually to the state’s economy, according to the USDA. More than half of the agricultural lands in the state are dedicated to livestock production, and most of these farms are smaller operations that bring in less than $10 thousand a year in economic revenue. A lot of these ranchers can’t afford to lose many animals to wolves—especially when they are already dealing with the effects of a changing climate, wildfires, drought, and development pressures.

“We are stewards of the land,” says Vanvalkendburg. “If the land is sick, we are sick.”

How Many Wolves Are Coming to Colorado?

Based on its current proposal, CPW has separated wolf reintroduction into three distinct phases. The first phase involves reintroducing eight to 10 wolves annually while keeping the species listed as endangered. For managers to reclassify wolves into phase two, which would change their status to threatened, there would need to be 50 wolves in Colorado for four consecutive years.

In the final phase of CPW’s reintroduction plan, which would reclassify wolves as a non-game species, there would need to be 150 wolves in Colorado for two consecutive years or 200 wolves at any one time.

Overall, the state agency is proposing a reintroduction goal of 200 to 250 wolves over time. This number acts as more of a baseline, and once populations reach non-game status, CPW will have more options for managing the species. At that point, the state would likely start considering the regulated hunting of wolves as a management tool.

Wolf advocates in the state say these numbers wouldn’t be enough to sustain the gray wolf population in the long-term. Their proposal also has three different phases for wolf reintroduction in the state, but it seeks to put at least three times as many wolves on the landscape in roughly the same amount of time.

The plan being touted by Wild Earth Guardians would involve the introduction of 13 different breeding pairs in 12 pre-defined zones. For managers to reclassify wolves from endangered to threatened, the plan calls for either 30 breeding packs or 300 wolves in the state for four consecutive years. In order for the species to be reclassified as a non-game species under the WEG proposal, the state’s wolf population would have to hold steady at 750 or more for four consecutive years.

“Part of the overall goal and vision [of this plan] was to elevate the benefit of having wolves on the landscape,” says Andrea Zaccardi, carnivore conservation legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are emphasizing that 750 wolves, or 150 packs, would be necessary to have a self-sustaining population of wolves in Colorado.”

The CBD has explained that it’s basing its population threshold on carrying capacity calculations and past research, including a study from the 1990s, where the University of Wyoming researched the suitability of wolves in Western Colorado and concluded the habitat suited 1,128 wolves. Although the work is dated, the CBD maintains that these studies still provide a good framework for restoring wolves throughout the state.

“Colorado supports the largest herd of elk in the United States,” the groups point out in their plan, “creating a prey base far more abundant than that found in Yellowstone National Park.”

Meanwhile, some members of the stakeholder advisory group are focusing less on carrying capacity and more on the social tolerance of wolf reintroduction. They say that only time will tell how many wolves Colorado can realistically support.

“The approach we’re trying to take with the plan is a kind of a live and let live ideology,” explains Gall, the former wolf biologist and current hunter. “If wolves are at 1,000 in the state, and they’re not causing problems from a social and biological standpoint, there can be 1,000 wolves.”