"Alaskan420" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Alaskan420" wrote:
"rw" wrote in message
nk.net...
Warning: There's seriously gruesome photo in this article.

http://mountainsurvival.com/news_art...earattack.html

--
Snip

Alaskan
Browns have this funny habit of burying their kills for a few days to
ferment the meat and then circling around their territory and coming back
3-4 days later after it's cooked to taste. ( See Bear Spray recipe.) I have
run across numerous mounds over the years with moose calves and smaller
adult moose in them.

But that is *only* after they eat as much as they can to begin
with, and when the bear wants to come back and eat more.
Commonly they do that with moose, and commonly they *don't* do
that with humans. (Note that the remains of Timothy Treadwell
and his companion were not buried either, if I remember right.)

snip --
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Floyd,

Living in Barrow I will assume you have more than average exposure to Polar
Bears.

Well, yeah, I suppose so. For example, there was one out on the
ice right in front of town yesterday. As usual I heard about
this at roughly 11:38 PM, not at 11 AM when it was there... ;-)

(Actually what I heard is that there have been three of them
hanging around right out in front of town. But I never get to
see them, and usually do in fact hear about it only many hours
later.)

As you are aware they have been getting exceptionally aggressive over
the last 10-20 years. Even to the point of breaking into buildings. And they
do eat most, if not all, of their kill immediately. But we're not talking
Polar Bears.

Well, I've seen a lot of really exciting newspaper articles
written for Lower-48 audiences, if that's what you mean. Polar
bears are not very aggressive normally, but certainly are when
they don't get enough to eat.

They do in fact climb into houses, and have been for decades.
They seem to like the smell of cooking meat... ;-)

But they rarely ever attack humans, and it is even more rare
that they eat one. Only a *very* hungry bear (perhaps starving
due to injury or whatever making it impossible to catch food)
would try eating a human.

Generally they eat only the blubber from seals, and walk off
leaving the meat for Arctic foxes, ravens and seagulls. Humans
have no blubber, so bears walk away from them very quickly.

I am sure you are also aware that humans have been buried alive after having
been mauled. (not eaten until the bear was full), in the back country of
Denali. There is more than one documented case where an EPIRB "saved" a bear
victims life.

Yeah. Brown bears aren't really very good at killing things.
And they don't seem to actually be able to sense when something
is dead, so much as just sensing when it isn't moving. (Polar
bears are good at killing, basically because their normal prey,
if it can get out of the bears grasp, actually can escape by
swimming away. Anything in the grasp of a brown bear generally
is injured to the point of effectively being unable to escape,
and the bear simply eats it alive without concern for whether it
is dead.)

I am willing to bet that we could both do a little research and come up with
citations to back up each observation. BTW, Treadwell and his companion were
buried.

http://outside.away.com/outside/news...rothers_1.html

Okay. I didn't remember that.

It doesn't change anything though, because brown bears do not
*always* bury things. They might, they might not, and if
something is buried it is indeed a good indication that a bear
did it, but if it isn't that is not a positive indication that a
beard didn't do it.

I based my statement on the fact the the wounds to that hiker's leg appeared
very clean, with no debris in the wound, and the color of the remaining
flesh at the leg was still rather bright instead of "cooked". No sign of
having been buried.

None of that has any great significance though. Not being
buried is *not* an indication that it wasn't a bear.

My experience comes from decades of hiking in the
Chugach Mountains around Anchorage and fishing/hiking the trail systems
around Seward and Kenai. I believe these are the highest bear encounter
areas of the state.

Least others doubt it, let me assure everyone that you are
accurately describing the situation! Lots of bears, and half
the human population of Alaska, all crammed into a relatively
small area. There are several brownies that wander around
inside the City of Anchorage all summer long.

However, as I stated in my post, it could have been a
wolf or a young bear attack. From just the photo there is insufficient
evidence to claim strongly in either direction.

The photo is certainly not sufficient evidence. But then again
note the latex glove on the individual next to the body. We can
assume that this person also had the training to make
observations, and it seems to me there would have been little
doubt about whether it was a black bear or a brown bear. The
chances it was a wolf are virtually *zero*.

But of course the source of the photograph is clearly unreliable,
so nothing in the text provided should be believed. For all we know
it was a body eaten by a pack of dogs, an alligator, or a lion that
got loose from the zoo!

As for your assertion that there are no documented cases that could be
attributed to wolves. Read what the State of Alaska has to say.
http://wildlife.alaska.gov/pubs/tech...chb13_full.pdf
(adobe.pdf)

Do read it. Tell me how many wolves have killed and eaten humans.

The idea that a healthy wolf will not attack humans is just plain false.

No, it is basically true. It is not *guaranteed* true though!
In general, if you don't have an habituated wolf or a sick wolf,
there is little to fear. (Which basically does mean that any
wolf you can get close to is *extremely* dangerous!)

But of course if you like to be really nervous, try what Mech
did, and video tape yourself crawling into a wolf den to examine
the pups while the entire pack paces around 20 feet away...

Maybe this comes from tree huggers? I don't know. Who knows how wilderness
lore gets started? It does appear that a percentage of the documented
attacks involve wolves who were discovered to have rabies.

Rabies, or they have been socialized. In fact attacks by
captive wolves are fairly common, and virtually all happen the
same way too. One person that the wolves are comfortable with
is accompanied by someone the wolves may or may not be used to,
and the second person raises a hand or arm above their head. To
a wolf that is a challenge for dominance, and it will jump up
and grab the arm... (Just one way that wolves differ from dogs,
as most dog breeds instinctively cower from a raised hand.)

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)