I would like to hear some first hand accounts of pepper spray use. There have been several threads lately that have recommended carrying pepper spray for bear protection and I am curious as to anyone's actual experience.

I am a runner who has reached the limits of my patience with unruly dogs. I carry Halt, an "irritant" spray. On the one occasion that I used it, it came out in a pretty concentrated stream and I missed the dog, so I cannot vouch for the effectiveness of its "irritation". I noticed after spraying that there was quite a bit that had dripped on my fingers (I wiped them off in the dewy grass) and was unsure if that would transfer if I had used that hand to wipe the sweat from my eyes.

So, some questions:
1-Have you discharged spray at a threat (bear, dog, human)?
2-What was the threat's response?
3-Were you, the user, affected in any way by the spray (wind blowback, drips on fingers to later transfer to eyes, nose, etc.)?
4-What brand did you use?

The stuff that is advertised as bear spray has an effective range of about 6 ft, assuming there is not a strong cross wind. Of the dozen or so accounts that I have read on bear attacks some of the individuals had bear spray on them but they were not able to use it. I have never heard of an account in which bear spray was used to deter a bear attack.

Never had to discharge my bear spray but the brand I use is UDAP.

You can go to their website or YouTube and see the results on bears. This stuff will stop a grizzly in it's tracks.

I'd hate to think what it would do to a person or dog.

According to the websites of UDAP and Counter Assault, the effective range is up to 30-35 feet. A few years ago, Backpacker magazine did a test of bear sprays and found them to have the same range. You may or may not have time to use it, but the same would apply to a gun. Bear spray has been shown to deter bears without wounding them and making them more dangerous.

I have never personally used it nor have I witnessed its use first-hand, but I have seen filmed episodes.

Even if I weren't able to use my own bear spray, and I was attacked, I would hope my companion(s) would be able to use their spray to interrupt the attack - on me.

the only thing i've ever really wanted to pepper spray was a couple of very tenacious chipmunks a few years back that were even able to gnaw through a hanging pack.

I have used Halt dog spray 2 times on large, very pissed farm dogs while bike touring through Wisconsin with my daughter about 8 or 9 years ago. I sprayed it while peddling while daughter and I unsuccessfully tried to out-peddle the beasts. In each instance I waited until "Cujo" was about 8 feet away (behind me and to the right.) after the narrow stream of orange halt spray connected with each dog, the dog would quickly duck down and roll into the grass, then stop chasing us as it tried to remove the stuff by rubbing its face in the grass/weeds.

I don't recall Halt ever leaking on my hands. I haven't brought a Halt type pepper spay to the BWCA. I have had bears, but they run after banging pots and pans and yelling. The bwca bears don't seem to be to angry, just looking for a free meal. (Edit - just looking for a "NON-Human" meal ;>))

I will bring halt on future bike tours though. Dogs can get some serios attitude around bikers and seem quite territorial on rural highways/roads.

quote J-Stroke: "I have used Halt dog spray 2 times on large, very pissed farm dogs while bike touring through Wisconsin with my daughter about 8 or 9 years ago. I sprayed it while peddling while daughter and I unsuccessfully tried to out-peddle the beasts. In each instance I waited until "Cujo" was about 8 feet away (behind me and to the right.) after the narrow stream of orange halt spray connected with each dog, the dog would quickly duck down and roll into the grass, then stop chasing us as it tried to remove the stuff by rubbing its face in the grass/weeds.


I don't recall Halt ever leaking on my hands. I haven't brought a Halt type pepper spay to the BWCA. I have had bears, but they run after banging pots and pans and yelling. The bwca bears don't seem to be to angry, just looking for a free meal.


I will bring halt on future bike tours though. Dogs can get some serios attitude around bikers and seem quite territorial on rural highways/roads. "

Thank you. I guess I'll just have to improve my aim.

Just an FYI-

It seems that most of the bear sprays are designed to come out in an expanding cone not just a stream, and create a cloud of pepper spray that they run into so you don't have to be able to hit the bullseye at thirty paces. Apparently the sprays for dogs (and humans) don't work like that...?

I would think blowback could be a serious issue in the BW.

Also I did notice on UDAP's website that the shelf life is 4 years.

I was watching a TV show over the weekend where the issue of "blowback" was inadvertently illustrated. Here is a link to the video, the short segment with bear spray begins at the 4:30 time mark:

Motion: Glacier National Park

The aerosol stream of the bear spray does seem to be a narrow cone, so some degree of accuracy in aiming is required.

A side story that once again, shows my lack of common sense, but might bring a neeeded smile.

My dad was a mail carrier for our local post office for many years. He had multiple cans of halt. It was considered a tool of the trade.

When I was about 10 or 12 or so, for some reason I took one outside. I wanted to see how the spray was coming out. I sprayed it a few times. Thought it was pretty cool, but this thought stopped when I sprayed it a little high and into the breeze. Got some blow back into my face. I can tell you from personal experience that any thoughts I had going on at the time stopped and switched to "How do I get this stuff off of me?!!!" I am sure, had I been chasing a bike tire at the time, I would have immediately stopped. I ended up with my head under a faucet and I don't think I ever touched the Halt Spray again.

So, I would say that blow back could be a concern.

I used it once at home to get rid of a pesky squirrel. I can tell you blowback and transfer to your hand and from there to the face/eyes is a real issue. Range appeared to be as advertised, and came out in a fog cloud. Wind will blow it everywhere, your eyes included if in the path and open.

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that a bear is most likely to approach you from the down-wind side so that it can smell you.

That said, if a bear is thirty feet from me, my first thought will NOT be ... "Now, what direction is the wind coming from?"

On some of the bear spray sites they show the spray coming out orange, which ought to help in spraying accurately. I read somewhere that the police had developed a spray that came out as a foam and clung to the target. That would help with the wind-back-in-your-face problem. The reason also was so they could squirt someone in their squad car and not get gassed themselves.
Near as I can tell, you couldn't use regular bear spray if you were attacked in your tent.
To discourage bears I use rubber slugs (same thing the fish and game guys use) loaded in a 12 ga. If sweet reason can't prevail then there's always plan B.
Good Luck, Rob

I've had it used on me (Belfast, 1981) and it's no party. My eyes still hurt.

I saw it at Fleet Farm today - very inexpensive - don't know what the quality is.

I've never had to use pepper spray on anything other than roommates in college. All three were law enforcement majors and someone decided one night after a few drinks it would be a fun idea to bust out some pepper spray and have some fun... Needless to say I'd rather be tased several times.

I would never bother bringing it up to the bwca since the chances are minimal that I would actually need it with black bears and it would just be extra weight to carry around.

Now here's my issue with bear spray for grizzlies;
-You have a 700lb bear charging you at a speed of close to 30mph.
-Your spray only has a range of about 30 feet.

How long does it take a 700lb bear moving at 30 mph to come to a stop?

Assuming you manage to hit the bear right at the 30 foot mark (we're talking a window of about .02 seconds per foot) the bear would be on you in just over half a second at 30mph.

Personally I'd rather have something to prevent them from getting within 100ft. Generally you fire a warning shot from a large caliber handgun or rifle and they go away. No harm done, and you avoid the charging bear problem altogether. I know several people who live in Alaska and like to fly fish I don't think any of them even own bear spray. Usually they carry a large handgun not in the hope that you can kill the bear before it gets you, but to scare it away before it gets close enough to be of any real danger.

Can't remember if I have said this here before, but what the heck.

On my son and my first trip to the BW, one of my unfounded concerns were bears. I had made the mistake of listening to some of my "friends" who, of course, had never been, but were full of advice. One of them said we should have fire crackers to scare off any bears.

As we approached the Missouri-Iowa state line, there were a group of firework stands. To my son's delight, we stopped and bought some of the biggest firecrackers we could find.

As we headed up through Southern Iowa, my son slept and I had time to play out scenarios in my head. One that kept going over and over would be he and I asleep in the night in the tent. We wake up to some noise of an unknown source. We get all wide eyed and stare at each other until we hear it again. We scramble for the ziplock with the firecrackers, we fumble with a lighter and flick it to life, we light the firecracker and chuck it out the door. Since we are in a panic, the firecracker bounces off the door screen and inside the tent to send us scrambling as it blows up and takes some flesh with it.

To my son's dismay, we stopped at a rest stop near Des Moines and I chucked the firecrackers into a trash can.

The best thing I did was once we got up to Ely, we went to the Bear Research Center. We got a feel for what to expect from bears and best of all was the recordings of the different bear sounds and what they mean.

Of course, I have never actually encountered a bear in the BW. Of course I am still a newbie compared to 95% of the people on this board.

I'm taking my 13th trip to the BW on sept 3rd-9th with my now 14 yr old son...

We are gona single portage...

The last thing I am thinking about is bear spray....

My uncle has lived in Duluth for the last 25 yrs, and makes at least 3 trips a year to the BW....

Now...he has taught me everything I know about the BW. If there was an issue with Black bears, I think he would warn me to bring bear spray...

His thoughts on bear spray are the same as 95% of most BW trippers...

DON'T BOTHER WITH IT.....

If you see a bear, get your camera out and get a picture, cause it don't happen very often...

99% of the time that your gona be worried about bears will be when you lay down in the quiet night to sleep.....

Get a set of ear plugs, lay down, and say to yourself, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, and before you know it.....you will be cooking breakfast in the morning....

The worst case senerial is a bear will attact you and eat you....

At least you died in the woods...

DON'T WORRY ABOUT BEARS...........

Well Mr. Jaynsee, That's dandy for you, each of us has the right to decide his own path. Before anyone gets too caught up in the "bears, ho hum" mind set you might want to Google 'fatal bear attacks' or a search along those lines.
The natural world isn't static; the weather is changing, forage that the bears depend on can or has been disrupted. With more people out in the woods and waters the chance that your campsite has been used by someone who dumped the leftover food or fish guts in those bushes just twenty feet away, is excellent. More hungry bears who have become accustomed to associating people with food, bumping into each other more often. Hmm...what do we think is going to happen??
Ask any group of campers which are they most afraid of: Lightning or Bears? Is going to be BEARS! And do you know why? It's in our genes; those who didn't much worry about bears just somehow got removed from the gene pool. Long ago a biology professor of mine said "if you want to know how an animal makes his living, look at his teeth." Look at a bear's jaws; that's real, not anyone's windy opinion, those teeth are there for a reason.
Now, I still go to the woods, but I leave the Disney sunglasses at home.
Best Wishes, Rob

As an aside to this thread.....I don't think you are permitted to take bear spray across the Canadian border (Quetico/WCPP)...I'd like to hear from others if they have different information.

Having bear spray with us has not prevented us from enjoying seeing bears and taking pictures of them the two times we've had the good fortune to spot one in the BWCA.

In the incredibly rare circumstance of a bear attacking someone, I doubt they will think "gee at least I'm enjoying the wilderness and having some bear spray right now would take all the fun out of that."

So, I'll take your uncles vast wilderness experience on one side and the person I know who lost their arms to a black bear in Alaska on the other side (an extraordinarily rare event) and go with a small can of Halt spray in my pocket as a reasonable balance. There is a lot of stuff in my first aid kit that I don't expect to need either. But I still take it.

Bear spray is available in Canada and can be taken across the border. Here's a an FAQ about bear spray that addresses that. And info from Parks Canada that recommends carrying it. I think that it has to be registered as being for animals to be taken into Canada and you can't take in pepper spray meant for people. Also, just because it is legal doesn't mean that it won't be confiscated by a particular officer. I think we had a story of that happening recently.

Oldie- I did a quick google search and came up with 10 fatal attacks by black bears in the United States since 1990. Three of those were on people who kept exotic pets or fed wild bears. Those are the specific cases listed on wikipedia. Personally, I think people should be more worried about drowning than bear attacks. The number of people I see paddling or in boats without PFDs alarms me. To say nothing of the number of traffic fatalities driving to and from recreational areas.

From sciencedaily.com-
In an article published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, University of Calgary professor emeritus Dr. Stephen Herrero, University of Calgary graduate Andrew Higgins, and colleagues from the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and Brigham Young University analyzed the circumstances of all recorded deaths inflicted by non-captive black bears in North America between 1900 and 2009. The study found that 63 people were killed in 59 incidents in Canada, Alaska and the lower 48 states. The researchers determined that the majority (88%) of fatal attacks involved a bear exhibiting predatory behaviour, and 92% of the predatory bears were males. The authors suggest male black bears have evolved some different behaviours than females.

"Each year there are millions of interactions between people and black bears with no injuries to people. So while the risk is low, it does exist," said Herrero, an expert in bear behaviour and ecology in the U of C's Faculty of Environmental Design. "Our findings raise some important new insights that can be used to better understand the cause of attacks and how they can be avoided in both the front and backcountry."

In particular, the common belief that surprising a mother bear with cubs is the most dangerous kind of black bear encounter is inaccurate. Instead, lone male black bears hunting people as a potential source of food are a greater cause of deadly maulings and related predatory attempts. The study also found that fatal attacks do not typically involve bears that are familiar with humans, although some fatal attacks did.

"Most fatal black bear attacks were predatory and all fatal attacks were carried out by a single bear," Herrero said. "With training, people can learn to recognize the behaviour of a bear that is considering them as prey and deter an attack by taking aggressive action such as fighting back."

The paper confirms other current perceptions and bear management practices. It found that bears that have previously killed people are more likely to attack again; parties of more than two people are much less likely to be attacked; and human food and garbage tends to attract bears and may increase the likelihood of serious bear attacks.

Examining 110 years of data also allowed the researchers to identify historical and geographic trends of black bear attacks. They found that 86% of fatal attacks occurred since 1960; that fatalities are more common in Canada and Alaska despite lower human populations and less contact between humans and bears than in the lower 48 states; and that human population growth is accompanied by rising fatal bear attacks.

"We didn't demonstrate why population growth is correlated with more bear attacks but we suspect it is because there are more people pursuing recreational and commercial activities in black bear habitat," Herrero said. "Similarly, we don't know exactly why there have been more attacks in Canada and Alaska, but we speculate that it could be because bears in those areas are living in less productive habitat with periodic food stress, which may predispose some bears to consider people as prey."

Hi Ingvald, I absolutely agree, the chances are low. Although fatal attacks won't tell us how many were mauled. I would guess more, but I don't know. There was that report this spring about the poor guy who was snatched off the outhouse throne at some park,it was kind of funny until you saw the photos of his wounds.
Your point about PFDs is smack on the money. I just hate to see people, young folks especially die before their time.
I hope we all stay safe! Rob

Agreed Oldie- the stats I found were for FATAL attacks only. I'm sure there are way more maulings or even just aggressive bear behavior that didn't result in injury. I guess my point was that we tend to fear the unknown and gloss over the most common forms of danger. It seems like there's a new thread every couple days about bear attacks, pepper spray, and guns. But no one asks about wearing PFDs.

Just my two cents.

"I guess my point was that we tend to fear the unknown and gloss over the most common forms of danger. It seems like there's a new thread every couple days about bear attacks, pepper spray, and guns. But no one asks about wearing PFDs.


Just my two cents."

plus one (thousand).

I searched for BW black bear attacks, couldn't find any, not saying it never happened, but couldn't find anything on it. Lots of sightings and food packs destroyed, but no attacks.

I would never say it couldn't happen, I just have not found anything yet.

There is something about lightning that I just don't like...
I fear lightning alot more than bears...

I would like to ask the same question as the original post from Unas10. Has anyone had to use there spray on an aggressive bear?

Keep looking. There have been a few. But they are very rare. I agree that lightening is scarier. Portaging a lightening rod seems tough, though.

I have never had to use my spray. Haven't had to use my PFD either. But I still wear it.

The original question is an interesting one and I did find the stories of people who have set them off worth reading.

quote andym: "Keep looking. There have been a few. But they are very rare. I agree that lightening is scarier. Portaging a lightening rod seems tough, though.

I have never had to use my spray. Haven't had to use my PFD either. But I still wear it.

The original question is an interesting one and I did find the stories of people who have set them off worth reading."

Ok, I did find a couple stories, theres a big funny post about the bears in the BW on this site from 2007... had me cracking up...

quote OBX2Kayak: "I'm no expert, but it seems to me that a bear is most likely to approach you from the down-wind side so that it can smell you.


That said, if a bear is thirty feet from me, my first thought will NOT be ... "Now, what direction is the wind coming from?""

Maybe with a predator bear. My closest encounters with blackies were after surprising sows with cub(s).

We have had trouble with raccoons and used the bear spray (Counter Assault) successfully in calm conditions.

We have never had a bear problem. We have had three walk through camp in the last three weeks and one swim by the canoe but none paid us any attention. They were all cinnamon black bears. It seems we pale as appetizers in comparison to berries and salmon.

(we are in north BC and were in Alaska and the Yukon)

quote Longpaddler: "As an aside to this thread.....I don't think you are permitted to take bear spray across the Canadian border (Quetico/WCPP)...I'd like to hear from others if they have different information."

You can take bear spray into Canada. It must be labeled as such. I just did it two weeks ago.

I think that if you are going to carry pepper spray for dogs, bears. people...it would be reasonable to practice. Set up a target. Try to make your practice as close to "real life" situation as possible (wear the same clothes, gear, etc.)