Don’t Trust Bear Stats or Advice – 27 US Bear Attacks So Far This Year
I'm not a wildlife expert. I don't work for some government research center. I'm just a guy. I have no training in statistics either. Please don't mistake this as any sort of attempt to publish some sort of research or report.
I pay some attention to news reports of bear attacks especially when a firearm is involved.
That said, I think there is some misinformation out there and I'd like to share some things I've learned.
Table of Contents
Bear Attacks Are Rare – Only 11 Per Year In The US – MYTH
This was a statistic I found on every site I checked when I searched for bear attack statistics. It is either outdated or just outright wrong. I did some of my own Googleing this morning and as of today (Oct 25th, 2022) there have been 27 bear attacks in the US so far in 2022 that I could find with my Google Skills and about an hour of my time.
Of course, 27 attacks are still relatively rare. With a population of 329.5 million people in the USA, that means your odds of being attacked by a bear are about 1 in 12 million so far in 2022. That is however more than double the reported stats you would find and cite as a source if you were trying.
50% of Bear Attacks Involve Dogs – MYTH
This is another common statistic I found. Once again, it is either outdated or just wrong. Of the 31 bear attacks I found so far in 2022 (between Canada and the US), dogs were only reported as being present or involved in 7 of the 31.
That is 22.6% of bear attacks. Don't let that dissuade you from taking your dogs into the high country. In several of those incidents, the dogs were not the bear's attraction but actually the human's rescuer.
Handguns Are Ineffective Against Bears – MYTH
From the National Park Service website:
Firearms are not recommended for stopping an attack. Using a firearm during a bear attack may only worsen the attack. An injured bear will be more aggressive, especially during a fight. It’s also harder to hit a charging bear with a firearm rather than bear spray, and a firearm can be dangerous to any hiking partners. While firearms have been effective at stopping an attack, they aren’t recommended.
Well, National Park Service, that is some super bad advice.
In 2018, Dean Weingarten published a comprehensive study about the effectiveness of handguns against bear attacks.
In that original article in 2018, he pulled on a data pool of 37 bear attacks in which a firearm was deployed. In 2021, and again in April 2022, he published an update to his research, having now expanded his data pool to 123 total incidents.
His report flies in the face of conventional wisdom and the popularly held belief that handguns are “ineffective” against bears.
Turns out that isn't the case. Dean found that 98% of the time the handgun is effective as defined by situations in which “after the pistol or handgun was fired, did the bear stop the attack, leave, or was killed?”
Of the 123 incidents, the caliber of handguns is known in most of those. Long story short, regardless of caliber (ranging from .22 rimfire to .500 S&W Magnum) all handguns are just as statistically effective.
I met Dean for the first time in January of 2022 and applauded his approach to writing and research. You can read his bear vs handgun research here.
A Few Other Stats From My Research
In case you are curious, so far in 2022, here is a breakdown by state of the number of bear attacks I identified.
- Alaska: 5
- Colorado: 3
- Connecticut: 1
- Florida: 1
- Idaho: 1
- Montana: 2
- New Jersey: 1
- New York: 1
- North Carolina: 1
- Oregon: 1
- Tennessee: 2
- Vermont: 1
- Washington: 2
- Wisconsin: 1
- Wyoming: 3
And of the 27 bear attacks on humans so far this year in the US, firearms were deployed against the bear 7 times. In all 7 incidents, they were effective.
Breakdown by type of bear:
- 17: Black Bear
- 12: Grizzly Bear
- 3: Unreported or unknown
Again, just want to emphasize that I'm not a researcher. I simply used Google to search for bear attacks and found that they are more frequent or often so far in 2022 than all the of the stats I've been able to find from other published studies or averages.
While the 1 in 12 million statistic is reassuring, It obviously doesnt take into consideration where people live. A person living in Manhattan, for example, would have odds of billions to one of being attacked by a bear, or even seeing one! For a person hiking in the Alaskan wilderness, it would be significantly less. I just think that statistic is a little mis-leading, although after hiking the Sierra Mountains recently, I would have been more than happy to show the 12 million to 1 stat to reassure my mother i’d be safe 😉
A better statistic would be to break it down as there is only 300,000 bears in the United States. Chance of a bear attacking is then close to 1 in 10,000. Even more accurate, break it down by number of sightings vs attacks.
How effective is bear spray?
My research suggests about 50% effective.
Bear spray is great on those non-premeditated attacks that would have ended up with the Bear leaving the person badly mauled with only their face ripped off. Bear spray is very bad for those attacks where the bear had full intentions of eating and or caching them, that’s where gun is better cause that is a fight to the death.
According to google (for example bearvault.com) there are on average 11.7 non-fatal black bear AND 11.4 non-fatal brown attacks per year in the US. That gives about 23 black + brown bear attacks total. Thats a lot closer to the 27 you counted for 2022
Enjoyed your info. I do not trust ANY government information or statistics. Nor information/statistics from any naturalist group or anti-gun group/individual. I want facts, incidents and truth.
I live in Florida, where the Black Bear population is increasing. (I hope the population increases 10 fold. It’s their territory to begin with) When I go hunting, I carry a .357 magnum revolver minimum.
Thanks again.
Re: the accuracy of North Carolina’s statistics on adverse bear encounters. They are not accurate. They do not appear to even be trying to make them accurate. Unknown to me (and many of my neighbors) NC Wildlife Resources Commission personnel started collecting data on calls about bear encounters in 2016. I can find no public notice that the policy changed from merely having staff recite “Bear Wise” talking points to callers. No one knows that it makes any difference whether they call or not. I have been charged by aggressive bears several times in my small yard and did not call since I didn’t need any more bear wisdom. My elderly deaf neighbors had a bear invasion while they were home. It didn’t occur to them to call anyone since they weren’t actually attacked and the bear left.