Real Life Grizzly Encounters with Mothers and Cubs

I'm going to start out with this one, mainly because this is what I really don't want to do. You'll see the mom, she's going to detect me here and start running. But I'd rather not frighten her that much and make her run. And you'll see in the rest of this video, the behaviors of moms with cubs is going to surprise you. Anyway, she's looking up, she's looking at me again. Trying to figure out where I'm at. I'm just standing right here in the open. She's still running. Those little cubs are pretty strong to be able to keep up like that. Stops again. Looking. Now I'm not moving, so she's having a hard time spotting me because I'm standing right in the open, but I'm not moving. This is one of my favorites. I'm just walking along a 20 mile hike up Slough Creek. On my way back and not paying much attention. Just right there is a mom and a cub. Turns out she's going to have a couple cubs here. So, I just stop, get my camera out. This is a black bear. It's kind of funny, she sees me, so what does she do? She decides to sit along the trail and nurse her cubs. She's obviously not alarmed. I've been very quiet. She looks over at me again. Yep, I'm still here. She keeps a pretty good eye on me, but she's got her priorities. She's had about enough of that. Swats her cub away. Those cubs are really cute. Hope that one's not sitting in an ant pile. But, as you'll see in this video, you're not going to see any moms attacking me or threatening me in any way. What I'm doing is I'm hiking quietly. Like I say, very peacefully. Not threatening the bears at all. And what works for me is to always hike quietly. Keep the bears in a nice, calm state, which they are to start with. That's why, for me, I don't like to alarm them with my human voice. That startles them and gets them upset, surprises them. Especially if they don't know where your voice is coming from. She's going to react. What I like to say is, if you're sitting down at the dinner table having a nice, quiet meal with your family, and someone comes busting in the front door yelling and hollering, you're going to react in a negative way. I kind of think bears are going to react the same way, in a negative way. She's going to have to respond to protect her cubs. But if she sees you in a calm state, detects you, just like all these bears you'll see do, they just remain in a calm state. Now this one is the kind of thing that might scare some people. I'm just sitting here, taking a rest, and I notice something moving. And I see this little bear. And initially I'm thinking it's a black bear because it's so small. But these are going to be two sub-adult grizzlies. I don't know if the mom is around anywhere or not. These are probably grizzlies going on their third year. I'm guessing they've been thrown out by their mom. So at this point I think they're on their own, but you never know. The mom's probably somewhere. I decide to just sit here and not move. I don't want to get up and startle them or scare them or anything. So I'm just going to sit here. I've got a white shirt on, sitting right in the open. And you're going to notice this one. This is where this one first sees me. He doesn't quite know what to think. And by their behavior, I think I'm probably the first person that these bears have seen. He's really studying me. What is this? So at this point I just decide I'm just going to sit here and hold my ground. It's not like I'm scared or anything. Because these bears are not very big. In fact, I didn't even get my bear spray out. Now if this was a 300-pound mother grizzly looking at me like this, that would be a different situation. I'd have my bear spray out. I'd probably be standing up and ready. Even though I've never had a bluff charge. I did have a bluff charge. Well, I had a charge once, but I think it was just the bear running the wrong direction. Because as soon as that bear spotted me, it stopped, looked at me and turned and went the other direction. But other than that, I've never been bluff charged or charged by a grizzly bear or a black bear. This is a black bear with a cub. Just walking along the trail and standing right out in the open here. I just spotted her a minute ago. Not moving. Now I'm going to move over to another position so I can watch her a little bit longer. I don't know if I've actually seen her look at me, but you would think she knows I'm standing right here. But she's starting to work her way up the hillside and away from me now. Now this one is pretty interesting. I just walked right through there. I must have walked right by this mom grizzly bear with two cubs and didn't see her. Just looked back and there she is. Obviously she watched me walk by and she's pretty much just ignoring me. I'm just standing out here in the open like always watching her. She's probably 150 yards away. Here's the same thing again. This is a black bear with a cub. I walked right through that spot where she is right now just two minutes ago. Apparently she was just right up there on the hill watching me walk by. I didn't see her. Obviously she sees me. She keeps looking over at me. But I was walking by very quietly. Just minding my own business. She watched me walk by and just comes out right behind me. Lets me see her. This one I'm not so sure about. These may be two cubs but I think they're two sub-adult siblings. Which means they're probably three year olds. Walking through the high grass here and I see this little black hump sticking up. At first I think there's only one bear here but I can tell it's a grizzly. You can see that little hump up there. Anyway it turns out there's two bears in here. There's the second one right there. And that's the thing. When you're walking through sagebrush and high grass just all of a sudden you'll run right into a grizzly bear. So I'm actually backing away a little bit. Just backing up. I really don't want him to spot me. This mom and cub is a couple hundred yards away. Don't know if the cub spotted me or not. And I don't think the mom ever does. Looks like the cub's looking right at me right there. But the mom, I don't think she ever did spot me this time. And this is easy to see that she's a grizzly bear. This one, she's looking my way but I'm sure she didn't see me. What normally happens is I come up over a small hump, small ridge or something, and right there is where you run into a bear. This is a grizzly bear. There's the cub over to the left. She's probably a little over a hundred yards up in front of me. Picture quality is getting a little better. The fog has gone away. One thing I'm always conscious of is wind direction. The wind is kind of really not blowing much but it's coming slightly towards me. So she's not going to pick up my scent. And as long as I don't move, it's very unlikely that she's going to recognize me standing here. I'm still kind of over the hill with just my head and camera sticking up. But most likely she won't spot me. This was amazing. I'm on my way back from a three-day backpacking trip. Walking along a creek and suddenly I hear all kinds of noise and splashing. And this mom grizzly bear with two older cubs was in the creek. She detected me and ran up the hillside here. As soon as I heard all the noise, I pretty much had a good idea of what was going on. It took me 30 seconds or so to get my camera out and she's already running up the hill. It would have been nice if I spotted her right down in the creek first. But she's just going to politely sit right here on this little mound with her cubs and they're all just going to watch me. Let me walk on by. I'm walking through deep timber and maybe 50 feet in front of me I see this black bear and cub running away. They were in a little grassy meadow right in front of me. I didn't see them. But she runs up here 15-20 yards and her cub runs up the tree. I get my camera out. She sits there down at the bottom of the tree watching me and watching her cub. My camera really won't focus through all this brush very well. This is why you should try to look up in the trees while you're hiking. I'm not very good at it. It's hard to do. This cub is way up in the tree just playing like nothing. Like there's no danger. Nothing to worry about. They're very adapted to trees. I feel right at home up there. Their mom's playing with the cub. Pretty cute. Here I am setting up my tent. It's not a great spot. It's got streams running on either side of me and it makes a lot of noise. You can't hear anything. But anyway, from right here I can look up on the hillside and see this mom grizzly bear and cub. They're probably 500 yards away. This one, this black bear with these little tiny cub of the year cubs saw me coming up the trail so she jumped off the trail and her cubs ran up the tree here. They are really cute. Just tiny. Of course I'm making no noise as always. And I'm just going to stand here. She's not alarmed or anything. I haven't done anything to upset her or to alarm her or to be a danger to her. So I'm just going to stand right here and film her cubs. Eventually the mom and the cubs decide there's nothing to worry about. She pulls the cubs down. So they come climbing down the tree. They really stick to it. And she ends up just walking off up the hill. This is a mom black bear with two cubs. She's a couple hundred yards away. Really not paying much attention. I don't think she ever saw me. I'm standing on the trail kind of behind a log. Looks like she's looking at me but she's not really seeing me. This is early morning with that little cub standing up. Early morning is a very good time to see grizzly bears. This grizzly bear with a couple cubs. There's that little cub standing up again. The lighting isn't really that good because it's still kind of dark. Looks like she's looking over towards me. She's being alert but I don't think she knows I'm here. She's probably at least 150 yards away. I'm right out in the open. This is the case where I don't want to be walking away fast or anything. See how she's looking up, looking around? There. I think she's probably smelling me. She's looking right at me. I don't dare move. The last thing I want to do is be walking quickly away from her while she's looking at me. I have found, and this is for me, I have found that not moving, especially when you're in full sight of a grizzly bear like this, especially a mom with cubs, just don't move. Don't alarm her in any way. Just by the fact that you're not moving an inch, she can look right at you and not even notice you. Here's another early morning mom with three cubs. They are all standing up, looking around. It looked like the mom was looking right at me. She did look my direction, but I don't think she sees me. I'm not going to move. I'm just going to stand here. The light isn't that great, so even for this camera, it's hard to pick up the light very well. It kind of looks like the cubs might be detecting something. They keep standing up, looking around. This one is interesting because I don't know it at the time. I am standing between this mom black bear and an older cub. The cub is behind me about 100 yards away. So I'm right in the middle of both of them. I never did get the video of the cub because I didn't discover the cub until I started walking away and ran into the cub. It almost looks like she's not happy with me. It almost looks like her hair on her back is standing up. So while I'm filming the last bear, this bear came walking by in front of me also. Another black bear. This is another very early morning. It's just getting late. And here's a mother grizzly with a cub. She's a couple hundred yards away. I'm kind of up on top of a hill. Just came over the hill. And looking down, I can see the mother and cub down there. So I'm a pretty good safe distance. Not much of a breeze. If she happens to come my way, I can come back down the other side of the hill and move away quickly. Now the trail goes right up to the left through the trees there, and that's kind of where she's going to head to. I'll be able to show you the trail here in a second. But if people were walking down that trail, they'd be walking right by this mom and cub and not even know it. So you can kind of see the trail. It's sort of right up there in the upper right corner. So it comes down around and through the trees. She's walking right towards the trail. These are black bears. Notice how almost all the black bear videos, moms with cubs, are in the deep forest or close by the trees. Whereas the grizzly bears are normally out in the open. So it's kind of a different habitat. The black bears like the deep forest. The grizzly bears, which are diggers, like it out in the open where they can dig up gophers, ground squirrels, roots, that sort of thing. This was pretty amazing. I started out hiking in the dark. It's really cold out. But I can see the black dots over on the hillside. So I stopped and I stood here for a long time waiting for it to get light enough. It turns out there's a mom with three older cubs, grizzly bears. Stood here as long as I could. Like I said, it's really cold. They are, I don't know, 200 or 300 yards away on this hillside. They're digging wild onions. You can see the elk up above there. She's paying no attention to the elk. The elk aren't alarmed by her presence. Of course, they can run away. If she tried to go after them, she'd have no chance of catching any of them. But that little hillside is famous for wild onions. And every year I video grizzly bear right there digging up wild onions. Even this year I've videoed a couple and it's probably one of these bears. I'm looking down on a mother with a cub. I probably hiked right through there and hiked up this hillside probably an hour and a half ago so she was around when I hiked up. But she's probably a thousand yards away right now. I'm up on top of a little mountain and looking down. So the question is, where was she when I hiked up here? This is a mom black bear with a cub working her way down towards me. I'm on the Slough Creek Trail. That's Slough Creek down there. You can tell it's early spring by the high water. Here's another early morning mom grizzly bear with one cub. I'm out in the open just like she is. So I'm not going to move. She actually has two cubs. As most people know she can cover a distance from where she's at to me pretty fast. I'd have no chance of running away. So the last thing I want to do is do anything that would alarm her. And the best thing for me is to not move an inch. She could smell me and may start moving away. She can look my direction and she won't notice me because I'm not moving. It doesn't matter what I'm wearing. As long as I don't move she's not going to spot me. Now this grizzly encounter I will admit was a little scary. I was kind of walking quickly from the top of this hill over to the right coming down this way right towards this grizzly bear. I didn't know she was here. I was moving away from another grizzly bear that I just spotted. It's actually in a video. You can see the whole thing in a video called Way Too Close to Mother Grizzly Bear. But anyway I was walking down and I got to within about 25 yards of her and I saw that black hump in the grass and immediately I knew it was a bear so I started moving away. I started this video after I was at least 100 yards away and I thought I'm just going to stop and get a quick video. I noticed she didn't really notice me yet. Now look at her. She's got her nose up. Now she's smelling me. Now she knows I'm around. What's she going to do? She's going to call her cubs and say let's get out of here. Now here's another one. The wind is blowing towards me. This mom and two cubs doesn't know I'm here. I'm kind of up on a hill. Just came out of the trees and right out in the open is this mom with two cubs. With the wind direction and my location it is almost zero chance that she's going to discover me standing here. Now if I go moving around or start talking or something she could hear me but I'm doing nothing. Now eventually she's kind of going to start working up towards my direction and I'm going to end up heading back through the trees and heading back the other direction. I don't want to disturb her and I really don't want her to know I was even here. So she keeps coming this way. It's time to head out. Here's a mother black bear with a cub on Slough Creek. Probably 500 yards away. 400 yards away. Look at her looking around. The cub copying her doing the same thing. Is she smelling me? I don't know. I'm pretty far away. She may smell something but she's a little bit alarmed. Mother grizzly bear with two older cubs. Now watch, she's going to stand up. There's something over to the right which I can never see or figure out what she's looking at but they're all looking over there. Now look at them stand up. There might be another bear over there somewhere but I never did see it. They're all down in the hole digging. Well, there you go. There's actual video. These are my videos of encounters with moms with cubs in the backcountry. People are going to believe what they want to believe but I'm showing you that no, I don't get attacked when I surprise a mom with cubs. I don't get charged when I surprise a mom with cubs. What I always try to do like I said in this video plenty of times is keep everything in a nice, calm, peaceful state. Respect the bears and they show you the same respect back. This is the way I do it. You should do what you think is right for you but mainly I just want to show people that are making all these comments that if I ever run into a grizzly bear with cubs that's going to be the end of me. Well, I've been doing this a lot of years and the video tells the story. Thanks a lot for watching.