It’s never going to go well when a mama bear spots someone near her cubs.
Caleb Invidiata was on a hunt with Shannon long when they thought they were in a great spot to enjoy watching a bear family go after some bait they had set out during a bear hunt.
When the momma bear did notice the hunters, let’s just say she wasn’t happy they were there and decided to do something about it — charge them!
WARNING: NSFW Language
Here’s what Caleb had to say about the encounter:
On Sunday June 27, 2018 Shannon Long and myself (Caleb Invidiata) head out for our first hunt of a 5 day hunt. We decided to go together to a spot we didn’t have a trail camera on to see what was coming into that stand and maybe we would get lucky. About 3/4 through our sit I spotted a sow with two cubs coming our way. We watched the bears do their thing for almost a hour, until the sow all of sudden looked straight up started to communicating with her cubs that it was time to go. When she left we thought a male bear might of been coming in and she was startled by him, but we saw nothing. We talked about how amazing the experience was to just get to sit there watch these bears. About 5 minutes later I look over my shoulder and said to Shannon, “dude she is right there” Shannon not able to see the wall of dead fall blocking her path thought she was just going back to the bait, but she was being funnelled right down to us. She left the barrel, flanked around, left her cubs in a safe place, and came to attack us.
In the video you see a shot from a GoPro at 0:24 that was behind us, I wish it was recording to capture this moment from a great angle. However you can see in that shot the dead fall that I fall back into and she is jumping up on trying to get to me. She didn’t see Shannon at first standing right there cause her focus was on me.
We believe the reason one of us did not get mauled or killed, is because at first she only saw one of us and her focus was on me. It wasn’t until Shannon started kicking her in the face to get her focus off of me so I could try and get out of the dead fall she had me stuck in that she realized she was out numbered.
Once she realized she was out number she went from an attack mode to a defence mode and did not know which one of us she should focus on without the other one attacking her. You see Shannon walk towards her when she leaves the first time but turns around and comes charging back in at him, he trips and I’m just getting out of the deadfall looking to grab an arrow to jump off the log with to try and stab her, because when Shannon walked past the camera before she came back at him he grabbed my knife from me. However, her being out numbered, us yelling and me getting up onto the log making myself as big as possible she turned and ran for a second and final time.
You see her looking left and right, she is looking at me and then looking at Shannon and backing up till she feels safe to turn her back to us and run. If we were not together that night we do believe she wouldn’t of stop trying to maul one of us.
Thank you to Calibre Creative Inc. For an awesome job with the editing!
