Photo Courtesy of Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith
What would you do if confronted by a charging bear? There are all kinds of thoughts and theories about how to behave in this situation, and if you’re lucky, they will remain thoughts and theories and never actually materialize in real life. In the unfortunate and unlikely event that you do encounter a charging bear, however, you might be well served to react in the manner of Ralph Perrson.
Ralph appears to have taken his strategy straight from the trusty old textbook, Stand Your Ground and Scream Like a Banshee. Ok, it’s not really a book, but it did work for Ralph, and it is a method advocated by wilderness-savvy people everywhere. Luckily, this encounter—a fleeting ordeal in which a charging Eurasion bear takes one look at a screaming and flailing Perrson and decides to scurry back into the dark forest from which it came—was all captured on film.
Take a lesson from this bear-screaming Swede by watching the videos below. One was captured by Perrson himself with a body camera, while the other was shot by his wife who was standing nearby. It is unclear whether Perrson provoked the bear by trying to capture it on film before the actual charging took place. This, of is course, would be an unwise and ill-advised move on his part. Either way, he is lucky to have escaped with his life.
