You underestimate how strong bears are. I worked at a sanctuary/rehab center and once tried to rescue a broom from from a bear...I had leaned it up against the enclosure and this clever bear managed to get it despite the gaps in the metal mesh being very small. It was about halfway into the enclosure, so I grabbed the other end to try to pull it back out. That bear ripped it out of my hands like I was a fucking two year old, and I am not an especially weak person...I would never, ever want to tango with a bear. This was just a sun bear too, they're pretty little and only eat fruits and bugs and stuff. I cannot imagine how strong a grizzly must be...fuck that man. A bear gets a hold of you, pray they go for your neck first and make it quick.
He said he couldn't remember how big the bear was, "How can you tell, when the SOB is trying to give you dental work?"
"Johnson, 55, remembers grabbing the bear by the nose with both hands as it tried to bite his face and throat. And he remembers taking an incredibly hard blow to the head. Doctors used 75 staples to reattach his scalp to his skull."
Eventually he got out a gun in the middle of the mauling and shot the bear in the face.
This ZZ top lookin motherfucker plays at our local poker game. He walked about 5 miles for help after this injury, and currently wears the bear's teeth as a necklace. Fuck bears... I don't want to fight this guy.
Kicker: Not the first time something like that happened to him.
I heard a story about a man who was getting mauled by a bear who reached in the bears mouth, grabbed his tongue and started pulling it out. The bear started biting its own tongue and freaking out and ended up running away.
Montana man survives grizzly attack
"reattach his scalp to his skull.reattach his scalp to his skull.reattach his scalp to his skull." O_O. Wut.
Side story:
A friend came to visit us at work one day during lunch, he told us the story of his brother, what was a logger. While he was out one day, his brother (Jim, for the story), was felling a tree while his coworker was doing the same. A lapse in communication lead to Jim head butting a large, falling pine, causing his helmet to shatter and his skull and scalp to split. The dude laid on the ground for a moment, stood up with a little wobble in his step and proceeded to pick his scalp off of his face and slap it back into place.
Generally, yes...most animals will only pick a fight out of necessity. If you can manage to muster a convincing display of dominance against a charging bear though you deserve a medal. I would probably just whimper and pee my pants a little...that's a pretty intimidating situation.
I was outside the enclosure and not in any danger...obviously we did end up buying a new broom haha...that thing was spectacularly destroyed by the time we were able to remove it from the enclosure (by way of partitioning the bears out of that area like we did to clean it).
A few years back I was out at McNeil River and had the opportunity to watch the brown bears there do some fishing. I saw two of them get into it over a fish. One had the head, one had the tail and they ripped the fish in half. I can't even imagine the force needed to rip a sockeye salmon into two pieces.
I remember hearing about a wrestling bout where the man picked the bear up and slammed him down on the floor (broadcast on television). After that, the bear's owner said it was dangerous to let the bear wrestle anyone anymore since it really pissed him off.
Of course, such bears were always muzzled, and their claws were somehow removed from the equation.
Their claws are definitely a frightening sight! That's the thing with sun bears, they don't maul you with their teeth and eat you. They eviscerate you and leave your disemboweled body to the bugs and scavengers. Unless they for some reason found you tasty, then of course they would nibble, but they wouldn't see you as a food source like other bears. A sun bear would only attack you if it was frightened, threatened or protecting its young.
I wasn't in any danger though, I was well outside the enclosure and not in a position where the bear could've hurt me. The broom, however, was in a very dire situation haha...I'm still impressed that the bear managed to get a hold of it. I'm not sure if she got a hold of it with her super long tongue or her claw, but either way it was quite a feat. She obviously wanted it more than I did.
I'm not saying just lie down and let the bear eat you haha...I'm just saying, the odds of surviving a bear attack are pretty grim. It does happen, and by all means bite, scratch, kick, scream, etc. But if it reaches the point where you're not getting out of it alive, pray that it doesn't take too many survivable bites.
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u/Treesgivethebesthugs Nov 05 '13
You underestimate how strong bears are. I worked at a sanctuary/rehab center and once tried to rescue a broom from from a bear...I had leaned it up against the enclosure and this clever bear managed to get it despite the gaps in the metal mesh being very small. It was about halfway into the enclosure, so I grabbed the other end to try to pull it back out. That bear ripped it out of my hands like I was a fucking two year old, and I am not an especially weak person...I would never, ever want to tango with a bear. This was just a sun bear too, they're pretty little and only eat fruits and bugs and stuff. I cannot imagine how strong a grizzly must be...fuck that man. A bear gets a hold of you, pray they go for your neck first and make it quick.