I would exercise caution around any bear, even one you have become quite familiar with. They are simply not predictable.
There was a man in the town I now live in who raised a black bear from a cub. He had a large fenced in back yard area and the bear was his pet. He fed it daily.
One day for no reason known to anyone, the bear closed its jaws on his head. He was brought into the ER DOA one night when a partner of mine was on trauma call.
Sort of like owning a Pitt bull terrier. Usually nice but unpredictable.
From news sources several years ago it seems the tourist hopped off a motorboat to take a picture of the bear; some suggestions of chasing it. A lack of thought for sure. I don’t believe the attack was unprovoked.
Like all things hammock there is always something you have to consider. I was glad to take a tent. I tried a hammock but in some areas it simply wouldn’t work. Cascade Falls is such a spot the years I was there ( it does change year to year)
Check with David Wells of NSA and also Bryan Hansel of Paddling Light for recommendations on direction of travel. Bryan is in Minnesota ( I know nothing of his area). I did notice that there seemed to be a current like a gyre going clockwise around the Lake. I noticed a northward flow in the Apostles and a definite southward flow while I chatted with Mike Ranta ( who was paddling across Canada) on Lake Superior just south of Gargantua Bay. I was traveling north and 30 minutes of yakking cost me 2 km that I had to repaddle( was worth it in any case!). Both folks can say from a lot more experience than I have whether or not there is a preferred direction of paddle. There is a paper here that seems to say there are not predictable “gyres” https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/fulltext/1999/19990004.pdf
What you will appreciate is that while some 200 miles north of Whitefish Bay the only weather you will be able to get is the conditions in Whitefish Bay. Just read the clouds well and direction of wind shift and paddle early before the lady gets in a snit around noon.
Regarding resupply on the north shore, its been decades since I was there but if memory serves the grocery store at Terrace Bay is a one or two mile trudge up from the beach. Blueberry season is pretty amazing up there, and bear watching at the town dump was a thing.
Its a bit of a walk IIRC( about 2 mi uphill from the beach to Costas Market. Last time we stopped there was about five years ago when we kayaked in the Slate Islands. I think they have changed their dump procedures for the better.
The stink is better too from the paper mill.
Bee,
Glad to hear from a biologist. I have paddled some coastal rivers in California like the Klamath and the Trinity with high concentrations of black bears. When I select a camp site, I look around for tracks. If there are bear tracks we find a different spot. I have had my dogs chase bears out of camp several times in that country.
In residential areas many people are very lackadaisical about their garbage disposal, bird feeders, pet food and unfenced food crops. At Lake Tahoe near my house, the bears know the trash schedule. Some of them are huge, 400 ponds and bigger. Some no longer hibernate because they have a year around food supply. Steel trash containers can solve the problem much like steel storage lockers at camp sites.
@kayamedic - It’s funny you should mention Bryan Hansel. I just read his latest email about changes to Paddling Light and thought “I should contact him with some questions.”.
I definitely sleep better in a hammock than on the ground, but knew that suitable trees might be an issue. I figured the hammock might come in handy if the only surface was boulders. Tent is going to feel real nice though on those weathered in days.
I’ve been taking weather classes with Mark Thornton of Lake Erie WX the last couple of years to better understand Great Lakes weather. I hear that the VHF broadcast is not too specific. I’ll also be taking a Kestrel unit with me to monitor barometric pressure and such (what can I say, I’m a geek). Nothing beats being able to look up and figure out the weather, though! Mark says he always plans to be at his destination by 3 pm at the latest.
Thanks for all the info, feel free to keep it coming!
Cheers’
B
@ppine - amazing what ‘dumb’ animals can figure out, huh? Animals always amaze me. I have a healthy respect for all of them and love encountering them. Once you learn not to anthropomorphize them, there’s a lot you can learn from their behavior.
Cheers,
B
The only weather we could get south of Hattie Cove was out of the Soo… That Marathon station dropped off quick. So we always knew what was going on in Whitefish Bay. If you can be online now and then Windfinder has been a useful app. David Wells also has a program in his office at NSA.
Do not try to bring a sidearm into Canada. It will cause you no end of trouble and is not a very effective bear deterrent. Get a nice big can of an appropriate type of bear spray. As I recall the maximum capiscasum percent in Canada is 1.5 and in the US it’s 2 - but it’s easy to research. Maybe our bears are just more wimpy but it still seems to work. I’d also back that up with a canned air horn. These are also quite effective deterrents.
I deal with a lot of bears. @dcowell65 has given you a good real life view of the way bears usually interact with humans. It’s just the habituated bear or extreme outlier that you may need a chemical or noise deterrent for.
With a name of KootenayKanoe I’m guessing I’m dealing with the same bears for the most part up here in Northeast Idaho and Northwest Montana since those bears don’t tend to mind crossing the international border!
Actually a lot of the water I play in starts up on your side of the border.
Sounds like we’re neighbours! I think I’m a bit west of you. We probably deal with some of the same bears.
Some of the same bears? Not likely. In their favored habitats, they can attain densities of one per square mile. That is a lot of bears.
The one exception is a black bear that has ideas about being predatory. Those individuals are pesky and show up repeatedly
And those are the bears that I am most curious about. The conversations always turn to Grizzly/Brown bears but the two are very different in behavior.
I have always hung my hat on the ‘fact’ that the habituated Black bears were the ones to worry about - persistent because they know there is a food source, accustomed to humans trying to scare them away. I’m reading more and more encounters about ‘wild’ Black bears stalking hikers or charging a camper and quickly returning after being bear sprayed. Most of the reports are from the AT.
Yet, most of the hikers I know directly here in the Appalachians have never had a bad encounter. They’ve seen foolish tourists get grabbed while feeding cute 'ol Smokey but that’s it. Certainly the Black bears around here are easily run off with a firm voice.
Maybe the increase in reports about predatory behavior is more about social media spreading the word than an actual increase in encounters. On the other hand, Black bear populations are increasing.
Ah, life is an adventure!
There have been a number of very credible reports of predatory black bear attacks in both the US and Canada and some have come from very experienced outdoors people who had abundant prior contacts and experiences with black bears in the wild. Given the relatively huge number of contacts between humans and black bears, these attacks constitute only a tiny fraction of encounters and worrying about getting struck by lightening is probably more worthy of angst than being the target of such an attack.
The common denominator in these attacks seems to be a solitary male bear, often visibly malnourished. These bears do not make bluff charges but simply and relentlessly stalk the person as intended prey and often return multiple times after being hit by bear spray. It is quite possible that these attacks have occurred with equal frequency in the past, but we never heard about them prior to the internet.
That’s what I’ve been reading as well. Well we humans have this funny idea we aren’t food when in fact we’ve simply made ourselves harder to get at by nature, right?
Yes, bears that are accustom to people are the ones to worry about the most. Not that you couldn’t find a bear that for any number of other reasons decided to take a run at you. Hunger, startle them and cubs are the main reasons. I agree that it’s the internet reporting that is the probable reason you are hearing about more bear problems, and being along a well hiked trail I’m going to guess that the ones you are reading about are overly accustomed to people and associating them with food, either from being fed or from sloppy camp sites.
ppine
As for one bear per square mile, I’ve never heard or seen anything remotely like that. If there’s a good food source you will see multiple bears in an area. Typically in places like the US / Canadian border they are going to be moving around. Not a lot of abundant year round food sources so they roam. Pretty much everything around moves based on weather and food sources. With the re introduction and flourishing of the wolf, the food sources are more on the move than before.
I worked for quite a few years on Kodiak Island in the Karluk Lake drainage. This drainage is 236 square miles, and has a bear population that is generally between 180 and 200 individuals, which according to the Alaska Dept of Fish & Game makes it one of the densest bear populations in the world. There was a study that came out in the journal Ursus in 1995 on bear populations on Kodiak and they had population from 292-342 bears for 1000 km sq (386 sq miles).
Needless to say we were constantly looking over our shoulder!
Black bears at one per square mile are found on Vancouver Island and SE Alaska were there are 4 runs of Pacific salmon. They are wet forests with a long growing season and large amounts of food available.
Ptickner makes reference to brown bear densities which are a little lower on Kodiak Is. It is further north and not as wet. 320 bears/386 square miles.
The black bears that followed us around In Alaska were in very remote country accessible only by helicopter. They probably had never seen humans before.
re: Currents. The Great Lakes Cruising Club sponsored a talk by Niels Jensen on currents in the Great Lakes. I tried uploading the handout but it’s a .pdf and not allowed. Best I could do is a screen shot.
Pretty fascinating though. In 1890s US Dept. of Ag mapped out the currents by releasing sealed bottles containing addressed postcards to be returned by whomever found them. GERL research seems to be in line with those old maps. What I found useful is that these are surface currents, not info from sensors underwater.
