Bear Encounters

If you have spent any long period of time in Montana, you are bound to come across a bear, whether you are driving, camping, or hiking out and about.

The first time I came across a live bear was when I was hiking in the Rattlesnake with my boyfriend Aaron. It was a younger bear pretty far up ahead and it was running away, so we just decided to turn back. No big deal.

The second time I saw a bear was actually through my living room window. We live out side of the city limits right next to a mountain, so that wasn't too surprising. It was a cute little cinnamon colored bear that ran through our neighborhood, and went on his merry way.

My most recent encounter was a bit more involved. My friend Tara and I were hiking through our favorite spot, the Rattlesnake. We had hiked in quite far, probably farther than we had gone before, so when we turned back we still had a while to go. About 10 minutes after turning back, Tara stopped and asked if that was a bear on the trail ahead. At first it was just a big brown blob, I was really wishing it was just a big dog, but unfortunately it was obvious that it was a younger bear. We immediately turned around and walked the other direction. At that moment a 40 year old jogger came running up towards us. We told him there was a baby bear on the path. He didn't skip a beat, he just grabbed a stick and ran on through. Luckily this scared the bear off the trail.

You will always hear that you need to avoid mama bears at all cost, and you need to be loud and act big around bears, unless they do attack you , then you need to get in the fetal position, act dead, and cover the back of you neck.

We did wait a bit after the jogger went through, just hopping that the baby and the mom that was bound to

be around just kept running away towards the river. Just to be safe Tara grabbed a stick and I handed her my mace(she wasn't sure was she was going to do with it but eh) I manned the bear bell and my pugs leash. We ran through the area with our appointed objects while screaming at the top of our lungs. I was fairly terrified that an angry bear was going to just pounce on me from the bushes, but luckily that didn't happen and we were able to laugh at the thought of seeing ourselves running down the trail looking like legitimately crazy people.

Black Bear that is brown in color. It has big ears, and no hump on his back.

Grizzly Bear. It has small round ears and a hump on his back.