15
votes
Accepted
How effective is wasp spray on bears?
The suggestion to use wasp spray for defense seems to be common enough that there’s a Snopes page on the topic. This particular urban legend is more often brought up in the context of defense against ...
- 8,428
7
votes
How do you get bear spray off skin and or gear?
The key ingredients in bear sprays are capsaicins (reference), which are also the key ingredients of classic pepper spray. Cleaning bear spray off of you or your gear is similar to cleaning pepper ...
- 3,939
5
votes
Accepted
How do you get bear spray off skin and or gear?
Going straight to the source, here's a Materials Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for Mace brand pepper spray (note that bear spray is high concentration, high volume pepper spray). Here's a snip of the ...
- 4,179
5
votes
Under what conditions can a guide be highly confident of protecting clients against brown bears without using firearms?
This is only a partial answer, and I don't feel comfortable citing the following source without permission.
I e-mailed a highly condensed version of my question to a reputable guiding company ...
- 23.4k
4
votes
Warning shot in bear encounter?
Before bear spray was even a thing, people always carried shotguns. Most people in the wilder parts of the world still do carry shotguns, because an angry bear will charge right through bear spray, as ...
- 53.5k
3
votes
Is it ok to take the safety catch off my bear spray and point it at unleashed guard dogs immediately outside the owners house?
You describe a scary situation that was handled well by all involved, including the dogs. I think this is a good question because dog owners sometimes seem oblivious to the threat their dogs may pose ...
- 823
3
votes
Under what conditions can a guide be highly confident of protecting clients against brown bears without using firearms?
There are a number of circumstances where bear spray is at a disadvantage to firearms including environmental factors like wind, rain and cold temperatures.
Know the product! Winds, rain, snow, ...
- 69.2k
3
votes
Bear spray vs. rifles against polar bears?
A difference on the side of the rifle would be that polar bears live in more open environments, so they're easier to see coming. A difference on the pepper spray side could be that these open plains ...
- 1,923
2
votes
How effective are pen launcher bear bangers compared to bearspray?
The previous answer fits with the Alberta Parks advice regarding bears — they suggest carrying both noise makers and bear spray, with noise makers being used for bears still at distance. They include ...
- 21
2
votes
Bear spray vs. rifles against polar bears?
We carry both, a handgun (.45) and bear spray in black bear/grizzly country. A warning shot recently stopped a black bear from (bluff) charging LONG before it was within range of the bear spray. I ...
- 79
2
votes
Under what conditions can a guide be highly confident of protecting clients against brown bears without using firearms?
They might be confident to carry bear spray because it is the better and safer option than carrying a gun.
This was discussed a bunch of times on TGO already, one example of it can be found in this ...
- 12.7k
1
vote
Is it ok to take the safety catch off my bear spray and point it at unleashed guard dogs immediately outside the owners house?
First, nothing you did seems, to me, like you were too aggressive. You protected yourself. In future incidents, you can apologize profusely to the owner, while still having protected yourself first. ...
1
vote
How do you get bear spray off skin and or gear?
I stumbled across this post after the plastic bin situation just occurred in my one of my camping bins. Apparently one of my daughters took the safety clip off and it deployed all on its own onto ...
- 19
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible