BEAR SCARE: Non-Lethal Management, Deterrent and Aversive Conditioning!!

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Well, I'm all packed, ready to go to the bush. That's why I have my one bag over there, fully loaded to go. Yeah. Going to go camp in a little camper there about 100 kilometers west of Quinnell for the next 10 days to help make a bridge there. Going to rough it a little bit. This company does not use fancy camps or nothing like that. No, it's uh fullon bush survival with these guys, which is kind of what I like. And they pay you a little better for it, too. So, it's like win-win for a guy like me who hates the uh stuffiness of camps and the halls and the cubicles and the the trailers and just I'm not into it, you know? I' I'd rather just camp out in the bush and have a bonfire at night. So, looking forward to it. But because I'm leaving Wells, I thought I'd uh talk one more time about the bears. There's certainly a lot of debate going on in town about my actions, and I understand why, cuz people don't know bears as well as they think they do, first of all.

[00:00:43]Secondly, no one's ever told them that you can do this. It's just not part of the mentality in British Columbia. Part of that's why as uh you tell you know I don't like giving advice to scare bears because if you can't identify what's a grizzly bear, what's a male black bear, what's a female bear, you know, maybe you shouldn't at least not be acting alone. But I'm going to talk about bear scare one more time here to try to clear up the air on what's going on here in the channel. Let's go. There it is. This is bad news. My god. Falling out right now. ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN. GET >> WOW. I'll watch the video later.

[00:01:13]They dry up in this. There's actually been three bears in wells that I've been uh dealing with. Uh myself and a bunch of other locals have taken the initiative to put the run on them. And uh uh one of them, the small brown one, seems to be pretty skittish. My uh my um exchanges with it have been what I would consider good. It doesn't need hazing.

[00:01:36]It's shy. It wants to stay away. Maybe it comes into town for a little bit to eat, but then it, you know, at the first sign of trouble, it's gone. So that's good. That's good. Whereas the two big males with the different colored snouts, they are not willing to just leave without being forced out. So that's why I've had to take a number of initiatives and I change my tactics every time I've uh moved them out. And I'm going to tell you about my tactics, tell you about some of the ideas, tell you about why uh who confirmed this. This is stuff that I knew for a long time, but I took a course when I worked for the district called Bear Scare. We'll talk about Bear Scare Limited and what they want to do uh what they're trying to do. So this is a company owned by Dan Londo who used to be a conservation officer in British Columbia and he came and at the request of the district paid for by the District of Wales when I was a district employee came and spent a day with us going through all this stuff. And uh what I loved about it was he said things no one else had ever said but was stuff I found out was true. For example, my experience was having run into a mother black bear who for a second fainted aggression. I charged at her and she ran off and left the cub in the tree next to me. So, which I was like, "Well, that's not good." Uh, so I did my best to make basically make a lot of noise as I moved on to show her that the balling cub is behind me and I'm over here moving on.

[00:02:49]Um, but I learned at that moment I was like, "Wait a second. I thought that a mother black bear was supposed to be the worst thing to run into." It's not. In fact, the females are pretty well behaved most of the time. Uh, I way rather deal with them. And I have a suspicion that smaller brown one is actually female. And that's probably why she's a lot more sketched out cuz she's not just worried about us, she's worried about other bears as well. So that's just part of how it goes when you're a smaller female bear. So Dan Londo non-lethal bear wildlife management. One of the things they do first of all is well the site hazard assessment. So he goes in and checks out a a company will hire him to go and he'll check out their site. He'll tell them uh what's good, what's working, and then he'll also provide non-lethal wildlife management, which means that they haze the bears.

[00:03:29]They do exactly what I do. So you could be like at a Kiscoco resort. You hire bear scared to come deal with the bears that are hanging around the resort and uh you pay you pay Dan or somebody from the company to come and harass this bear until it leaves, you know. So people are saying, "Well, Joey, no one ever did that in Wells before." Ah, actually they did. They're called the RCMP. They used to be stationed here and they shot them with rubber bullets many times in my time here. So don't give me this no one's ever hazed the bears It's just there's no one here anymore to do it. That's why I took the initiative and why other people in town are taking the initiative. If conservation officers want to come deal with it, fine. If the Mounties want to come out here and deal with it, fine. I got better things to be doing anyways. But until then, I am not going to allow my neighborhood to have bears move in eating grass in the schoolyard when the kids are in school thinking that's fine. And everyone come by, take pictures. Oh, look, there's a bear. There's a bear. Send it the wrong information. Send it the wrong idea.

[00:04:19]Send it the idea that actually it's okay here. It's welcome here. People are fine. It'll be much harder to get them to move on. Especially these big fat lazy ones that their main problem is they haven't caused too much trouble.

[00:04:29]So, they're socialized, but they're not habituated. And I'm trying to keep them that way. And part of their socializing for me is to hurt them a little bit, scare them a little bit, freak them out, make them uh uncomfortable, make them know that when I'm coming to run. And both those guys run at the sight of me now. So, uh, it's working. It's working.

[00:04:44]They are socialized. They're not afraid of vehicles. Yelling doesn't have much effect on them. Throwing rocks though really bugs them. Uh, both of them really hate having stuff thrown at them.

[00:04:53]So, uh, I change my tactics every time.

[00:04:56]Sometimes I've used a firework.

[00:04:57]Sometimes I've thrown rocks at them.

[00:04:59]I've actually had bats in my hand and bashed everything around me real loud.

[00:05:03]So, I'm just super intimidating. I've I've held big things over my head and roared. I've I have a lot of tactics I've used over the I have a can of bear spray, which is the last case resort where if these guys get unruly at all, the bear spray is going to come out and I will walk up to them and I will let them have it from 5t away. I'm not scared to do that. If that's what it takes to get them out of the town for good, that's what'll be done. I don't want to bear spray them though because then you send them off in the bush burning. I've been pepper- sprayed by the cops actually by the hardcore mace and uh you can't do much for like two days. Your face especially, you know, a bear doesn't have access to milk or something to pour in his eyes, you know. So, for me, spraying them, it's one of the most effective things you can do. It's more effective than guns. So, Dan Londo does what we've been doing for free and they also do training and certification. So, that's what they came to Wells and did. So, I would like to see the community of Wells maybe put on one of these courses. Pay Dan to come out here. Pay Dan to come out here. Call that number 1877-450-6355.

[00:05:58]Train the employees in town. They can go scare the bear. Train the fire department. They can come out with the trucks and scare the bear with the horns and all this. Shoot it with fire hoses.

[00:06:06]I don't care what they do. If you don't want me doing it, find another solution.

[00:06:09]Okay? Until then, I'm going to do what Dan taught us to do and confirmed for me was the right thing to do. I love what it says here. It says bears are intelligent and try to communicate with humans as they do with other animals.

[00:06:20]That's true. And I, you know, I'll give you an example. When I lived out at my mom's house and there was no neighbors and it's just basically forest every direction, sometimes bears would come and start eating in the yard and eating the berries and whatnot. And what do we do? Nothing. Because there's no trouble they could get into there. I run into them in the bush.

[00:06:37]Nothing. If I'm camped out there and they're hanging around, maybe if I have a camp, I'll say, "No, you can't come near here right now." And be a little bit rough about it. But if I'm, you know, fishing in a spot and they show up, I'm just like, "Hey buddy, what's up?" You know? So like I have a different attitude and approach towards bears depending what the situation is.

[00:06:53]Bear scare monitoring service cuz they focus on non-lethal bear management using aversive conditions conditioning.

[00:06:59]A trusted wildlife management technique for 40 years that restores natural fear of humans to bears. Encourages bears to abandon populated areas. Includes public education to raise awareness of bear friendly conditions. They are highly trained and experienced in human bear conflict. In fact, as he's a conservation officer, he's even more experienced than I am. Although with my years of timber cruising, with my years of wildland firefighting, with my years of mountain climbing, with my years of being in the bush all the time, with my years of timber cruising, with my years of of working in forestry, with my years of growing up in the forest, I've had a lot of bear encounters. I've had a lot of time with bears, a lot more than most people do. And I spent a lot of time not just uh seeing them in the wild, but then saying, you know, like, everyone tells me things about bears that I know aren't true. So, what is the truth? So, what did I do? Uh, I read every book I could find, right? I dug deep in. Let's get into the bear psychology, bear mentality. Let's figure out how their brains work and why, you know, dig that little bit deeper. So, it's easy to say like, "Oh, we see them all the time. We all know bears. They're dangerous.

[00:07:54]They're scary." You know, and you the problem is they're they're not scary until they get habituated or until they're like too socialized. And that's what we're trying to prevent here in town. Okay. Who also are clients of Bear Scare who teach wildlife safety training, wilderness safety training, firearm, and non-lethal deterrent training. RCMP.

[00:08:14]RCMP. Well, that's who used to shoot them with rubber bullets here, and they're not here anymore. Then you got a bunch of other uh companies and whatnot.

[00:08:19]Any interaction with the bear carries an element of risk. This is much less than you would think, though. The program teaches basic bear biology, identification, behavior, and ways to prevent and respond to bear encounters.

[00:08:29]Non-lethal methods of deterring bears are taught in detail, including a practical demonstration of pepper spray and various noise deterrence. So, uh, I welcome you, District of Wells, put this course back on. Let's get some more people on board. Get your own employees on board. get the uh get the uh people of uh the fire department on board. Then they also teach wilderness survival.

[00:08:48]That's also one of my forte as you might know. Uh wilderness survival um survival instructor course is something I did when I was in the air cadets way back in the day and I've never lost that uh skill. Non-lethal bear management is a holistic long-term alternative to bear management. It is met with huge successor in Whistler, Mammoth Lakes, Yuseimite. Bear encounters have dropped significantly in these areas, resulting in fewer resources required to deal with problem situations and fewer bears being destroyed. How it works? Non-lethal bear management relies on negative conditioning to modify undesirable bear behavior using an arsenal of rubber bullets, pyrochnics, and pepper spray.

[00:09:22]When these methods are employed, bears quickly learn to stay away from people and their property. In fact, this approach capitalizes on a bear's innate tendency to avoid conflict and fit himself into a natural dominance hierarchy. They like to be the alpha.

[00:09:34]And if they're not, they don't want to mess with whoever the alpha is. They try to avoid conflict. So if they can fake being an alpha, they will do. So the problem is once they get habituated, then you're no longer playing with the same mentality of a bear. Then they start becoming like the one did 3 years ago here when it got into the dumpster over the apartments, then it became aggressive, huffing and puffing anybody who came near to try to scare it off.

[00:09:54]And when I heard that, I said, "Call the conservation officers." So are the bears in pro town a problem right now? Why have we not done more to call the conservation officers? because they've not been a problem bear yet. Neither of these two bears are problem bears yet and we're keeping them that way. That's the whole point of hazing them. Now, there's actually like states that have this as like part of like public programs. You know, I've seen this. I think it was Maine or Massachusetts, one of those East Coast ones where it's like just part of like their public service uh thing on their government site. This is how you scare bears off. You know, you just don't see that in BC. They're like, "Call a government person to come deal with it for you." Well, we don't have any government people here in town to deal with it for us. The more prepared you are for black bears, the bit easier to be. This is from Popular Science. But Aaron thought he'd done everything right. But the bear found him. He was in Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota with his camping companion. They hung away their gear and their food in a high branch to keep it out of the reach of bears and cleaned up food scraps. And they did everything they thought was right. But they returned to camp later. They stopped their tracks cuz a back bear was in the top of their flattened tent. He had honed in on a single mistake. A forgotten bag of trail mix and a pant pocket stashed away in a tent. Now Aaron's winter program director at Voyager Outward Bound School in Eli Minnesota had to figure out how to run off the curious black bear. When they succeeded, they breathed a sigh of relief, lowering their food bag and walk 40 ft down the trail to see some canoers off. They were gone for a few moments, but they returned and the bear came back cuz that's what they do. They like test you like, "Well, okay, uh, see if I can get away with this again." So, you kind of have to like stand your ground a few times sometimes with them. It takes sometimes more than one uh hazing event.

[00:11:23]They waved their arms. They threw rocks at them. They yelled at the top of their voices. And fortunately, they scared them off for good. They saved their only uh sustenance from being devoured by the omnivorous forest dweller. They were informed and prepared, and they properly responded. A bear in your camp seems like a terrifying situation, but Aaron's laughs as he tells the story. He said he's had so many encounters with hiking, camping, and canoeing in the wilderness, and he'll have many more. That doesn't stop him because he knows enough about bears to feel comfortable reacting in their presence. He knows black bears are timid and scared more often than grizzly bears are unless they're in that carnivorous predatory mode. Grizzly bears don't tend to be predatory. They tend to just kill you because you're in their way and they don't like you or they're enforcing their territorial boundaries. So, there's different mentalities and different triggers between their behaviors you have to be acutely aware of. And that's why uh for the most part, I've kind of left grizzly bears alone. I have uh twice scared grizzlies off. Uh but that's certainly like for the for the dozens and dozens and dozens of times I've chased black bears off, uh the grizzly don't count.

[00:12:18]So, the black bear can weigh 500 lb and have 2 in uh uh long claws. But, um then they're active in the spring. They come out hungry and they want to fill. That's what's going on here. They're just trying to get the easy food. Uh he also understands that mother bears are protective of their young and should be treated with abundance of caution. He says that, but that's it's how do black bears protect their young? We're coming on one of our first uh myths that we're finding here in our one of our articles is that the mother black bear is scary and she's not. Her first defense is to climb a tree and get the cubs out of harm. She does not want to risk fighting with you or anybody else. So just understand the mother black bear's intentions. They are the lowest category of dangerous bear. Whereas a mother grizzly bear is the highest category. So you have to understand what bear you're dealing with. You run into a mother black bear, things are probably going to go okay. Run into a grizzly bear with a with cubs, sorry about your luck. Let the bear know this isn't a place where it's welcome. Aaron says, let it know this is our home, not your home. It's our food, not your food. It's that simple. Okay, it's that simple. You're just playing an alpha game with them.

[00:13:21]Okay. Care bear spray. If it makes you feel protected, often simply making loud noises enough to scare the black bear away. Jumping up and down, wave your arms, yell or make noise with pots, pans, air horns. I'm very aggressive. I make them believe that I am serious and they they believe me. Throw rocks at the bear as you shout. This is unlikely to seriously harm them. They got big, thick skin and they got a lot of hair and uh they have a lot of muscle mass. It might leave a bruise or something like that, but it's you're not going to do much damage to a bear with a rock. So, throw away. Okay. Fireworks. I've used fireworks lots. They're useful. They convince a black bear to move on.

[00:13:54]They're less lethal than guns. And um you know, I I personally like um different kinds of firecrackers cuz I' I've never been able to afford bear bangers easily. Safe ways to scare a bear. Assert your dominance. Make eye contact with the black bear, not the grizzly. Don't make eye contact with grizzies every time. Don't be like me.

[00:14:12]Don't do what I say, not what I do.

[00:14:14]Don't make eye contact with Grizzly. But the black bear, look right at him. Show them you're not scared. You know, I don't show any I don't shy away at all.

[00:14:21]I'm fully present. I'm fully direct. I don't turn even my body a little bit. I face them directly. I stare at them. I yell. I get angry. I make noise. I blow whistles. I've used air horns. The car horns aren't working on these gig guys.

[00:14:35]Clapping the hands hasn't worked too well or banging pots. The rocks have really been working with these guys uh the best. Now, now they just hear my voice and uh they're starting to move.

[00:14:44]So, that's good. Shoot paintballs. I'd like to get a paintball gun. Okay. Use motion activated devices. Uh things like that can help. Electric fence around your uh your I know a few people have had them trying to get into their compost here. Just put a little electric fence around. They're very cheap. Go to the co-op, get an electric fence, put it around there. The bear will get zapped once. They'll learn. They'll learn. And not only will he learn, he'll recognize uh other electric fences and he'll avoid them from now on. So, if the bear is where it shouldn't be, eating garbage, bird seed, pet food, near a vehicle, building or chicken coupe, in a garden or campground, that's when you scare the bear. If you don't do it, if you would chase it into people, into dogs, into a busy road or another unsafe situation.

[00:15:23]So, generally, what I'm trying to do is just slowly move them to the edge, and then as we get closer to the edge, then I put on a uh a harder show of things and try to really push them out from that point. But, I'm trying to like herd them. It says if the bear is running away, uh, well, that's what I want. I want it to run away. So, like, if it's running away because of me, I'm probably going to chase it until the edge of my territory. I don't really agree with the leaving it alone if it goes up a tree, but if it's way up there and it's you're not going to get it down. So, like I do agree with that, but what I've tried to do is keep them from going up the tree.

[00:15:52]So, as I'm moving them off, sometimes they'll, you've seen this in videos, they'll go and they'll start to climb and I'll yell at them, "Don't you go up that tree." I'll throw something above their head so it waps off the tree and it makes them come down. And then often uh when they go to go up the tree, I kind of have to give them an out. So sometimes I'll kind of turn away for a second so that they see I'm not looking and then they'll run off. They don't want to disengage if they think you're coming for them. They think the tree is safer. I don't, you know, at least for some of them, that's what I found. So I just found like if I just kind of ignore them for a second once they go up the tree or they go halfway up and you know, I've I've thrown some stuff at them.

[00:16:26]I've told them get down, get down. Then I might turn away for a second and just give them that space. Of course, I'm acutely aware what they're doing out of my periphery. I'm not like fully turning away or like in the other case I went behind the tree so that he came down the tree and took off the other way. So, uh, if it's agitated, if it's injured, if it's sick, don't bother it. If it's approaching people, that's when we call the conservation officers. It's like walking up to people. And these bears, they are leaving when they get hazed.

[00:16:52]So, they're doing good. These aren't problem bears yet, okay? That's why they don't need to be destroyed yet. And hopefully, they will get the message and eventually move on this summer. Okay?

[00:17:00]Get some people together. First of all, don't do it on yourself on your own if you're not comfortable with bears. I'm very comfortable. I know myself and I know bears. I know how I'm going to react. I know how they're going to react. I read their body language. I decide if I'm going to willing to do it or not. There's been the one that I walked in the district 3 years ago and I said, "Can you get the the conservation officers to come take that bear away?"

[00:17:17]The myth of relocation that's people think like, "Oh, they'll just come trap them, then they'll go drive them down the road somewhere and let them go and everything will be fine." No. Bears have great memory. They have great sense of direction. They do not forget. They have a place they find food. they will come back to it. It won't matter if you put them a thousand km away. It might take them two years to come back. They will come back if they're garbage bears. If they have a good garbage source, they will keep coming back. Once they learn the wrong lesson, it's really hard to unlearn that lesson. That's why we try to teach the lesson before it becomes a problem. That's why we haze it ahead of time, trying to get that message to you.

[00:17:50]Get people together, bang your pots and pans. The things that happened out here this week were great. when like 10 people got together and chased him off.

[00:17:57]That was awesome. That was awesome. That same thing happened on the other side of town with a completely different bunch of Wells locals. That's what I want.

[00:18:03]Well, I'm gone for the next 10 days.

[00:18:05]Please keep on it. Please keep on it.

[00:18:07]There's tourists coming to town. There's kids at the school. There's people walking around. We don't need bears hanging around inside town. They got to get the message. It's June. The snow is melting off the mountains now. It's time to go. Don't corner them. Okay, they say don't chase, but I I do. So, I mean, that's the rules. You know, keep in mind I kind of break the rules a lot because I'm me. Uh, stand in a safe place. Make sure the kids and dogs are inside. They say now I have a healer. He's a great herd dog. He's only 20 pounds and he was big enough to make that 400lb bear run yesterday. Only 20 lbs, but he harasses.

[00:18:37]He's not going to go fight the bear. You know what you don't want as a dog that'll a run back to you scared and have a bear chasing it and b you don't want a dog that'll go and try to fight the bear. So, you know, great thing about my healer is he's just annoying as hell until the bear is like, I can't take it anymore. He makes a lot of noise. Makes a lot of noise. Okay. And uh there we go. Um if the bear approaches, do not run away. Just use bear spray. Just spray them. Be careful.

[00:18:59]Hazing's done at your own risk. Okay.

[00:19:01]That's why I say get groups of you together because they're more likely to respond to multiple people than they are when uh when um there's just one of you.

[00:19:09]You can also use bear deterrence like electric fencing. It's one of the most effective ways to secure bear attractants that can't be removed like your compost heat. Get a little bit of electric fencing. Oh, welcome mats.

[00:19:18]They're uh they're like their doormats that deter bears so they can be placed in front of doors and stuff like that.

[00:19:23]And um they're electrified unwelcome mats. Okay. So then you have scare devices. Um you have critter guard alarms, things you can put up at the house that make noise when the the bear comes by at night. It will learn the device uh poses no actual threat after a while though and it will ignore it. So you need to have randomizations built into it. You want to have something new every time that will uh upset it.

[00:19:43]Whatever method you make sure you're in a safe spot, like a doorway near a car.

[00:19:47]So you have somewhere safe to go. Make sure the bear has a safe escape route as well. That's one of the main things is you want to if you want it to do what you want it to do, you want it to go where you want it to go. So you got to make sure that you're engaging it on your terms. So you've seen sometimes here in wells where it goes behind a house and then rather than following it because I don't want it to just double back around and and circle the house, I'll stop, run back to the other side and I'll catch them actually coming around this side and keep moving in the direction I want to move. So, um, okay.

[00:20:14]They have, uh, they do have hazing techniques for grizzly bears. If you're not really comfortable doing this, I think you should just call the conservation officers, but you can you can you can haze grizzly bears, too. It is possible. They will respond. Uh, my experience in town is that the grizzly bears usually don't hang around very long. They're here for a week and gone, whereas the black bears kind of get lazy and hang around. The black the grizzlies don't like hanging around people that much, you know? They just they don't, you know, so they they kind of get enough of it and they're gone. And anyways, that's just a little bit more about scaring bears. Everybody take care out there. Be safe. Hit like, share, subscribe. I'm going to go out to the wilderness now and uh we'll see what happens out there. Maybe I'll bump into some bears. Uh if they're in our camp, we are going to make them leave. That's what we'll do. Okay, everybody. Take care out there. Stay safe in the wilderness. Bye now.