Fighting off the bear with Internet technology

By Carol Purcell
Sun contributor
One beautiful week last September I headed to the Upper Peninsula for a solitary camping trip. The Hurricane River Campground is a small campground reached by dirt roads, 12 miles west of Grand Marais, right on Lake Superior in the Pictured Rocks. It has 11 sites, one water spigot and one outhouse — basically in the middle of nowhere. At this time of year there are very few campers. Nevertheless, I could tell that the site next to me was occupied although it was 50 feet away and screened from view by trees and brush.

I had been swimming in the lake and messing around in the river until about 6:30 p.m. when I went back to my site to change. I was changing at the picnic table because no one was around, and I had just pulled on my pants when I heard a noise behind me and turned around.
I should backtrack here and mention that my sister Chris gets very concerned when I go out into the woods by myself. She is very afraid that I’ll be killed by a bear — a most horrible death in her mind.
She does have some justification for her nagging … Last year I camped at the same spot at the same time of year. I had some equipment failures that included my air mattress popping. I attempted to buy a new one in Grand Marais, but came up empty. Luckly a nice lady at the local bakery offered to give me some foam that came with her packed waffle cones. She told me she had made the same offer to other campers and she figured they had worked pretty well. So I accepted the lady’s offer and actually slept fairly well for the rest of the week. When I returned home my sister pointed out that I had spent the week sleeping on something that smelled like food and proceeded to refer to me as “Waffle Cone Woman” for the next several months. At least she refrained from using her favorite saying about me: “Six years of College for this!”
Because of my sister’s nagging I promised her that I would go online and learn all that I could about dealing with bears should I encounter one, and that I would take all the necessary precautions.
Fast forward to 6:30 p.m. at the campground … I heard a noise and turned around, and there he was, about 16 feet away (I paced the distance later on). He was beautiful, on all fours about the height of a Great Dane. He looked very healthy and his coat was lush, glossy and very black, though I thought he looked rather small.
Not being an expert or having much experience, I assumed that if I encountered a bear he would be in the range of 400-500 pounds. This guy probably weighed 200 or 250. The thought crossed my mind that he was just a yearling and I briefly considered worrying about Momma bear. I learned later that an adult bear in the Upper Peninsula can weigh anywhere from 125 to 500 pounds.
If you read what the experts say about bears or talk to locals who live with bears, they always tell you the same story. Bears are shy, reticent, easily startled and are more afraid of you than you are of them.
Not!
But I wasn’t really afraid. Looking back, I remember feeling focused, alert and aware. I knew that I was in a potentially dangerous situation and that I had to do everything right. He wasn’t aggressive or threatening. In fact, he looked like he was in an agony of indecision. He was sniffing the air like a dog sometimes will, and I knew he could smell the food in my trunk. Naturally, I had not left the food in the body of the car because I had read that a big bear will sometimes tear off the car doors to get at the food inside. My trunk was closed but not latched.
The bear really wanted to get that food, but to do so he’d have to go through a strange looking creature (me) who was by now following Internet instructions and yelling at the top of my voice such intelligent things as “Go on Git!” (“Git” What the heck is “Git”?) and “Bad Bear”!
But even more baffling to the bear, he’d have to get through the hammock that I had strung between two trees. I think that’s all that kept him from walking right up to me when my back was turned. He came up to the hammock and didn’t know what to make of it. Startled, he made a kind of blowing noise that bears do when frightened, and that’s what I heard that made me turn around.
You can’t run from a bear, they’re too darned fast. They can run 30 miles per hour and climb trees very well. So your only option, if you can’t back quietly away, even if they charge is to stand your ground, and stand I did — loudly. But the bear was not impressed. So I went to the next item on my Internet list and picked up one of the stones I had collected just in case a situation like this occurred. (I confess that my stockpile was pretty small because I was only collecting stones to keep my word to my sister and I didn’t expect to have to use them.)
My pile was small but adequate, as it turned out. At this point I was about 12 feet away from the bear and I began to wonder if I could actually hit anything with a rock because I’d never tried before, and I had no idea if my aim was any good. I figured I could hit him from only 12 feet, though successfully thumping him in the side with a rock said more about the size of the target than it did any latent skill of mine. Yet my rock attack only backed him up another 20 feet or so. Hmmm. This was not the way a bear was supposed to act. All of a sudden he began heading over to the site next to mine.
I hadn’t realized at the time that he had come from that campsite in the first place. The next site was occupied by a young German couple whom I later got to know pretty well. Michael had been building a fire when he turned around and discovered a bear only 10 feet from him. Michael and Bettina apparently didn’t have sisters who nagged them repeatedly about the dangers of bears because I don’t think they knew what to do in that situation, other than to get their cameras and take pictures. (I didn’t see that on my Internet list so I didn’t think to do so).
Or maybe they were just too polite and civilized to yell at a bear, unlike myself. I began yelling, “Hey you people over there! Bear coming your way!” and continued yelling out instructions to them on what they should be doing, like making noise, prefaced with the words, “The Internet says you’re supposed to …” Yes, that’s me, big bad wild wilderness woman.
Suddenly I heard a voice in my head … perhaps the voice of reason? It told me, “Carol, I know that’s a small bear but it’s still a bear. You might want to put some shoes on and give yourself an escape route by finding your keys and unlocking your car doors.” “What an excellent idea,” another voice in my head responded. “You just hit a BEAR with a ROCK! Are you INSANE?” the first one asked. I told that voice to shut up and I put on my shoes. While I was at the car, I laid on the horn. The bear didn’t like that and it backed up another 20 feet. But, he still was not leaving. Hmmm. Very persistent. He was now 45 to 50 feet away and angled into the woods between the two campsites.
I opted for number three on the Internet list and started beating on my metal camp coffee pot with the butt of my hatchet. The bear was still undecided. He kept his distance and began to circle my site to the right, moving in total silence in a kind of bumbling but graceful manner, as he went back and forth trying to decide whether it was worth returning for the food. Finally, Michael came over to my site with a whistle and that made the difference. I think because there were two of us now, both making noise, the bear decided we weren’t worth it and moved on.
To this day my coffee pot is bent out of all recognition.
Bettina and Michael and I bonded after chasing away the bear and they offered to let me sleep in their RV. I also briefly considered sleeping in my car, but after standing off a bear with a pile of rocks and a coffee pot, giving up the ground I had so valiantly fought for seemed rather faint hearted.
I had also read that bears go to sleep two hours after sunset and rise a half hour before dawn, so I figured that I’d be OK if I built a good fire and stayed up late, to prevent the bear from coming back. Of course, that information came from the people who insisted that bears are more afraid of me than I am of them. Hah! Anyways, I did sleep in my tent that night and there was an absolutely glorious thunderstorm with lots of heavy rain. I’m sure the bear took refuge somewhere that wasn’t my tent.
I found a ranger the next day and made my report. He agreed with me that it was very “unbear like” behavior and said he would consult the wildlife biologist. The ranger came back the next day to check on me and gave me the following information:
This is pre-hibernation time for bears and they are very focused on eating as much as possible. It’s also bear hunting season (I saw the hunters and their dogs) and the bear are rather stirred up.
There had been many bear sightings in the campground that summer but the bears had kept their distance and not approached humans. The ranger thought the bear had come close because there were fewer people around.
The Department of Natural Resources usually handles these kinds of situations by relocating the bear, but they won’t tranquilize a bear to move him within 30 days of hunting season for obvious reasons.
And so, because the bear hadn’t done hurt someone the ranger told me they would keep an eye on him.
I remained vigilant but didn’t see any more of our bear that week. I met several really wonderful and interesting people, and my friend Ingrid joined me on Thursday night. We had a wonderful time hiking on the trail along the top of the Pictured Rocks cliffs and saw some fantastic waterfalls. I can’t wait to go back.
Coincidentally, at 6:30 p.m. on that Tuesday night when I faced the bear, my nagging sister in Stanton, Michigan sent her boys out the door for a swim date and she then had an anxiety attack about me strong enough to make her cry and call Mom. I’m of the firm belief that the world would be a better place if everyone had a sister like mine.
Weeks later the Germans Michael and Bettina emailed me pictures of our bear, and I think I may have underestimated his size.
To conclude, I feel very fortunate to have seen such a beautiful animal up close (and lived through it) and I hope with all my heart that the hunters with their dogs didn’t get our bear.