Through the Lens: a close call
By Leon Lorenz
I can only give a bit of an educated guess why the mother grizzly suddenly changed her mind from passing by me with her family to suddenly and unprovoked charge straight at me. Grizzly bears are unpredictable. Note the sod and grass being kicked up by her long claws in the second picture. As I had mentioned earlier the bears had fed into my space and they were fully aware I was there for a number of minutes.
Late fall berry patches for the bears is an important food source as they pack on the pounds for the upcoming hibernation which could make them defensive of. I was also unfortunately filming from a standing position which could be perceived as me wanting to be dominant and possibly threatening to her. For me generally being in a low crouched position has a number of clear filming advantages and I also must add a much less chance of shooting too high if I have to defend myself with repeated shots from my revolver on a fast approaching angry bear at close range. Unfortunately I had unstrapped my loaded 44 Magnum a few minutes earlier when I stopped to rest and eat my lunch so as I wheeled around to my right to grab at my holstered gun on the ground she wheeled to her left and with her cubs quickly took off.
The speed of a charging grizzly is so crazy fast that words don’t do justice to describe the reality of it. I probably had barely 2 seconds left before she would of reached me which wouldn’t of been enough time to draw out the revolver, turn back around and fire a lethal shot. I praise God for the protection he gave me. I learned a valuable lesson to always keep my gun strapped on for quicker access. I can only remember one other time I didn’t have my gun strapped on when filming a grizzly. I was on a remote river bank and had taken my clothes off and hung them up to dry when this grizzly came looking for spawned out Chinook salmon just below me. I managed to get some pretty good footage of the bear wearing just my birthday suit.
It’s been 14 years since I was last charged by a mother grizzly at very close range when I had to fire my gun. If you haven’t seen my film “Wildest of the Wild” to see this dramatic footage you can see the footage by Googling BC filmmaker attacked by grizzlies as CBC, National Post, The Globe and Mail, Daily Motion, Wilderness Survival among others that carried this story.
To further add to the drama the grizzlies gave me this past fall in the Muskwa-Kechika wilderness the fog rolled in so thick later in the afternoon that I had to literally watch my compass needle almost constantly to descend off the high mountain plateau in the correct direction to reach my camp before dark.
