You come across a bear. Your next move is very important. Do you know what to do? You're out for a hike on a glorious fall day. Suddenly, you spot a bear. And the bear has spotted you, too. Would you know what to do next?
Beth Pratt sure would.
She was once on the Old Gardiner Road Trail in Yellowstone National Park, enjoying her run in wild nature. Her reverie came to an end when she came upon a grizzly bear eating flowers.
"I stopped. It stood on its hind legs and looked at me. I knew that wasn't a threatening gesture," she told CNN Travel. "I'm not kidding, it waved its paw at me as if to say, 'just go on your way,' and went back to eating."
"And I walked slowly away and put some distance between us, and the encounter ended fine."............
.....................First rule of 'bear fight club': Don't fight
The best strategy is to never get in harm's way by enticing or provoking a wild bear. Trying to give a bear food or approaching cute cubs are particularly terrible ways to start an encounter. That's just looking for trouble.
The US National Park Service site points out each bear and each encounter is different, but there are general guidelines useful in most situations.
First of all, keep your distance if you happen upon a bear. Don't approach it, and give it plenty of room to walk away from you. Yellowstone tells you to stay at least 100 yards (300 feet or 91 meters) away; Shenandoah National Park in Virginia suggests 200 feet (61 meters) for its black bears.
You can run afoul of the law as well as the bears if you get too close. Just this week, a woman was given four days in federal custody and fines for staying too close to a grizzly bear and her cubs at Yellowstone..............
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/bear-encounters-prevent-attacks-wellness/index.html
