From CKNW:
A hunting outfitter is headed safely back to the south after an Arctic trip in which he saved his life by punching a polar bear in the nose.
Wes Werbowy says he was in his tent outside of Whale Cove, Nunavut, in the early morning of July 16 when the large male polar bear stuck his head inside.
Werbowy says the bear was standing on his rifle and he didn’t know what to do until he recalled the words of an Inuit elder who once told him a polar bear’s nose is very sensitive.
Werbowy wound up, yelled “Get Out!” and swung his fist into the bear’s nose, with the sound of smacking a slab of wet meat.
The bear scampered off, leaving Werbowy and his fellow hunters safely alone.
I have worked with First Nations before, and the ladies I was working with said exactly the same thing – if you are attacked by a bear, running away is going to be useless. They will stomp you and then rip your skin off with their teeth, resulting in a painful death. Your only chance (assuming you don’t have a gun with you and even then you have to be pretty damn accurate in your shooting in an adrenaline-soaked situation) is to be able to punch the bear in the nose.
Good advice for hikers – never mind the bear bells.
Throughout my hiking travels I have only directly encountered a black bear once in my life. And this wasn’t out in the backdoor-boonies of BC, rather it was between Mission, and Agassiz, near Echo Lake. My companion and I were scouting out a location for a future camping trip, and we parked outside a locked and gated forest service road. We took a 15 second walk past the metal barrier, and turned the corner and saw this black bear sitting there! My companion yelped and ran in the other direction, and I quickly followed and got back in the car and boogied out of there.
Fortunately the black bear was just as startled as we were and ran away as well.
It was kind of funny in retrospect, but I guess the theme is that you’ll never know when you’ll be running into a bear.
Just hope that you don’t have to punch it in the nose.