Hey Bear! No Bear!! Black Bear Unphased by Man and Beloved Dog

Hey Bear! No Bear!

The Yukon is a vast and wild land, and the road that runs through it, The Alaska Highway, is no different. Surrounded by 115 million acres of the Boreal Forest, the largest forest in the world, to say it had wildlife would be the understatement of the century.On my trip down from Alaska I saw every “must-see” animal you could possibly hope for: Moose, Caribou, Porcupine, Bison, Elk, Golden Eagle, Bald Eagle, Wolf, Arctic Fox, and bears, oh my!

You expect to see this type of wildlife and you plan accordingly, bear spray is a must, most people carry a high caliber pistol of some sort as well, unfortunately I do not.On our way down the Highway, whenever I saw a river that looked decent, I tried to stop and fish. It helped to break up the ride, and made me feel like I wasn’t just hauling through the beautiful country without experiencing it. One of these rivers, which shall remain unnamed, had a particular nice caddis hatch and some serious rising grayling.

Naturally my dog Nala and I stopped to do some fishing, and had a wonderful night on the water.It was getting late, around 10:00 pm, which is hard to tell when the sun is still high in the sky, so we decided to head back to the truck. As we turned the corner on the trail I heard a low guttural growl from Nala. When I looked up, standing about 50 yards from us, on an adjacent trail, was a large black bear. No big deal, I’ve come across thousands of black bears on the trail, “hey bear, easy bear”, I said as I stood up as tall as I could. The bear just stared at me and didn’t move, I knew to stand my ground as turning and walking away could be seen as fleeing and could make the bear think I was prey. I continued to talk to the bear, a bit louder, to let him know I wasn’t threatened. He returned the favor by walking directly towards Nala and I.

As I reached for my bear spray on my pack, my hand came up empty. In my haste to get to the river, I forgot to transfer my spray from my hiking pack to my fishing pack.Panic flooded my body, I remained calm on the surface in order to not alarm the bear, but at this point I decided being louder and scarier might help. I yelled, I growled, I put my hands above my head and waved my fly rod around. Nothing changed, at this point the bear was about 40 yards from me. We slowly started backing away, and the bear picked up the pace, we were only about 40 Yards from the camper so we decided the best decision was to move a bit quicker and get to safety.

We got to the camper and closed the door just as the bear popped out of the woods and strolled up to the window. I continued shouting, but all my commands fell on deaf ears. The bear stood up on its hind legs bit at the window, and began to shake the camper. Moving from the window to the door, to other windows, desperately trying to find a way in. My heart was racing, I held a 5 inch blade in my hands, hoping it would come through some small window so I’d have a chance to stab it and scare it before it got all the way in.After about 10 minutes, which felt like about 3 hours, of looking for entry points, the bear seemed to get bored and walk away. I retrieved my keys from the gas cap of the truck (I’ll never do that again), got Nala in the truck and drove as fast as I’ve ever driven with my camper in tow, for about 30 minutes until my heart rate finally slowed down.The moral of the story? No fishing is worth losing your life over, keep ’em tight, and don’t forget your bear spray in your camper down by the river.

-Zac AKA @the_early_midlife_crisis

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