Travel blog
About bears and people
We are sitting in tents - it’s raining outside, we’ve had such a bad day hiking around Tolbchik in Kamchatka. And suddenly I hear an approaching sound, as if the stadium stands during the World Cup are moving towards us. I poke my head out and see/hear a group of about 15 people approaching along the hillside - everyone is screaming heart-rendingly, whistling, banging with sticks, and all this does not stop for a second. “People, why are you screaming like crazy?” - I ask the first members of this strange delegation approaching me. "There's bear poop on the trail - FRESH!!!" - they answer with eyes widened in horror. "And what?" - “Don’t you understand? There’s a bear here! There was just one!” “Well, he lives here, he grazes on the slope all day long,” I say, but for some reason this does not add peace to the frightened group. As a result, the group thinks that I am showing off and goes further along their route, offended by me, especially their guides, who, apparently, were the initiators of this theatrical performance. In the evening they returned back and, judging by their reaction, they saw not only poop, but also the bear itself, because they began to scream louder and also shoot from all sorts of shooters. In general, complete savagery.
Yes, people are afraid of bears. This is all cultivated and fueled by the media and good friends, each of whom, if you are going to, say, Kamchatka, will have two or three stories about bears who visited tourists’ tents, ate from their bowls and slept in their beds - in In general, they behaved extremely bloodthirsty. In fact, bears are no less afraid of people. I am by no means an animal psychologist, but the habits of bears have been described many times, their behavior in very rare cases is predictable, and all this suggests that bears do not perceive people as food (a deer is food, a hare is food, even another smaller bear is food, a person is NOT food), but they perceive them as a potential danger to themselves and therefore always try to avoid meeting people, that is, they themselves move out of your way. Even if you are alone in the forest, especially if there are 15 of you.
And my personal experience confirms this. I walked alone through Kamchatka, Yakut and other forests many times, the number of encounters with bears exceeded a hundred, but I am still alive and well, I didn’t even have to be scared even once. And all because I follow the unwritten law of nature: don’t touch anyone and no one will touch you. Unless, of course, you are food for someone. But humans are not food for bears! All conflicts and scary stories begin when people show stupidity or excessive activity towards bears - they feed them and begin to associate themselves with food in the eyes of the bear, leave food or behave aggressively. Imagine: a bear is grazing in a berry patch, not bothering anyone, and suddenly there are screams, whistles, and shooting next to him. Most will get scared and try to quickly leave this troubled place. What if there is nowhere to go? Or is the bear hungry and irritated? Or does the mother bear not have time to lead the cubs away from danger? He may well perceive people’s too loud behavior as aggression and counterattack - a terrible story is ready for the media and rumors. At a minimum, the overly loud and intrusive behavior of people, who are becoming more and more numerous in the territories of bears, cannot but irritate the latter. Need I say that a nervous bear is much less predictable and more dangerous to humans than a calm one?
Photo taken by @alexander_rizado - a bear’s visit to our camp during the last hike just a couple of weeks ago. We cut raw smoked sausage for sandwiches, its smell was pungent even for the human sense of smell, but for the bear it served as an excellent reference point in his wanderings around the territory, so I went “on the spot” to find out what and how. He came out of the bushes literally 15 meters from us, assessed the situation and decided that he was not hungry enough to get involved with these strange creatures - he left in good health.
What is the conclusion from all this? Be calm and friendly to wildlife, respect it and it will repay you in kind.