View topic - Escaping a bear by canoe

http://www.nelsonstar.com/news/405787676.html

I usually use my canoe to escape civilization... I haven't used it to escape any type of threat but has anyone out there had to?.

I'm guessing he was on a river. We have ( don't do this) chased a bear swimming, on a lake in Wabakimi, with us in hot pursuit in a canoe.. We were't that stupid (maybe) but we wanted to see what sort of animal it was.. We were maybe a click per hour faster paddling madly but the bear got out well ahead of us.

We did overtake one on the Yukon river but he was crossing the channel and we did not try to annoy him.

So during the Yukon 1000 mile race, there is a mandatory requirement to stop for 6 hours and not paddle later than 11:00 pm at "night". We began looking for a good random place to set up camp just before that time on the last night of the race. Up ahead it looked like a good landing place coming into view on river left. As we approached we noted 3 black bears viewing us from that exact spot, so we moved on. An island in middle river on our right seemed to offer the next best landing before we violated the"pumpkin hour". As we landed on the silty muddy shore, this is what we saw. So the ladies of the crew established a rope and bell perimeter with spray handy, and we stayed there anyway with no issues.

That dude in the article has a real Marlboro Man vibe about him.

Yeah, for me, the worst part of a deer hunt is that 20 or 30 minutes when you are field-dressing the deer, and you're covered with stuff up to your elbows and your hands are too slippery to aim the rifle, even if you were quick enough to grab it. Personally, that bear coulda had that deer - I could eat something else ........

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All good points and not to mention how difficult it would have been in this guy's case to keep his gun and let alone his eyes trained on the bear as he loaded the carcass into his canoe...

Did anyone read the referenced article - about the same man saving someone from drowning while using an old board for a paddle?

I've seen a lot of bears, but I've never seen one with "glowing eyes". A little literary license, or maybe just poor writing.

I noticed that too. The one thing I thought of was perhaps it was dusk and he was wearing a headlamp.

Alan

Well, to be picky, it was the author of the article that says he saw a bear's snout. The quote from the hunter mentions only glowing eyes and thrashing about in the bush. There's no evidence that it wasn't a Sasquatch, or that he'd even seen a Sasquatch with glowing eyes to compare to those of a bear. Maybe he just made a mistake. Could happen to anybody.

Thanks Krusty, but now my curiosity has moved onto as to whether it was a brown Sasquatch or a black one.

Well it doesn't say the bear chased him, just that he was in a sticky situation with one so he got out of there quickly, and the canoe happened to be his mode of transportation. By the same token I've used canoes to escape many a ferocious mosquito at portage landings. And I've certainly heard stories on this forum about people paddling away from bear encounters.

Impressed he could load the deer into the canoe while holding the bear at bay, though.