Regardless, you’d be dead. Bears have taken many direct hits from fairly large caliber guns and still managed to kill the shooters. Pain isn’t much a deterent to an enraged grizzly.
And yet the entire concept of bear spray is predicated on it.
Not really, the bear is blinded by the spray. That allows you to gtfo from the situation. It is no doubt in pain also, but that is not the point of bear spray.
The charging grizzly is within, what?, 24” from you? Maybe 36” if it’s a long chainsaw? And it is charging you?
Sure your chainsaw will do some damage but the charging grizzly will close that distance in one tenth of a second. The pain caused by the chainsaw won’t register with the grizzly’s brain until it’s already on you.
It’s too late. And now it is really pissed at you. You’re totally eff’d. All you can do is bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.
And you won’t even have time to do that.
And I’m here to tell you that a chain saw will blind a bear and shred it’s muzzle. It’s a tricky shot, to be sure, but if you pull it off you’ve got a fair chance. Only a proper cite will convince me otherwise.
Such a shot isn’t tricky; it’s impossible. The grizzly’s reach is longer than yours with a chainsaw, and it will knock the saw away before you get it anywhere near its face.
Only a proper cite will convince me otherwise.
What are you looking for? A record of a fight between a grizzly and a man with a chainsaw? That’s probably difficult to find.
I could provide the arm length of a grizzly, but somehow I think you will say it’s not “proper”. And I think everyone else understands the likely outcome, so I’m not too worried about convincing you.
But wouldn’t a charging grizzly be ‘galloping’ on all fours towards you, and leading with its snout, much like a mean dog would attack you? I think it would lunge at you and try to bite you before swiping with its claws.
So if the jaws/teeth are the first thing coming at you, you MIGHT have one small opportunity to slice into it with the chain saw. You would probably still get knocked over, but if its jaw was laid open, the bear would probably be inclined to call off the attack.
Brown bears are grapplers. He may charge you on all fours (at ~30mph), but then he’s going to rear up on his back legs, reaching a height of nearly 10’ tall before giving you a not-so-friendly bear hug. So, not only do you have to contend with his quite powerful, long front limbs, you’ve got to reach up to nearly 10’ to reach his eyes. I doubt he’s going to remain motionless while you attempt this with your chainsaw.
You’ll be closer to his belly button. Perhaps you could offer him a manscape with your chainsaw.
Maybe you and the bear can simultaneously remove each other from the gene pool.
They also jump and land on top of their victim.
This guy who survived a grizzly attack says the bear first hit him in the head with its paw and then bit him.
Me? I’m not going anywhere near a grizzly without a can of bear spray and my will already made out.
Exactly. This is IMHO, where people post opinions and other people post skepticism about those opinions. But if someone gets a little too certain about their opinions, they might get reminded that there probably isn’t a factual answer to this question.
F/U my chain saw accident came in for a 48 hour wound check today. Looking great. Well, looking like hamburger, but as well as could be hoped for. And if he’d told me a bear had done that to him, I’d have believed him.
I posted a bear attack video upthread, and it’s more like what @Railer13 describes.
Brown bears can and do rise up on their hind legs when they attack humans, but not always.
“In the majority of attacks resulting in injury, brown bears precede the attack with a growl or huffing sound, and seem to confront humans as they would when fighting other bears: they rise up on their hind legs, and attempt to “disarm” their victims by biting and holding on to the lower jaw to avoid being bitten in turn. Such a bite can be more severe than that of a tiger, and has been known to crush the heads of some human victims.”
My guess is they are more likely to stand and grapple if you take an offensive posture (like standing with a chainsaw in your hands). If you take a defensive stance (like laying down in a fetal position), then I doubt they would stand before attacking (if you’re lucky, they won’t attack at all if they don’t see you as a threat).
My main point is that most experts seem to agree that your chance of survival is better in a brown (or polar) bear encounter by using bear spray, instead of using a gun (or, I suppose a chainsaw), unless you have big-game ammo, and have experience using it.
But, I’m not going to test this theory. Avoiding brown bear territory is my defensive stance.
Well, ok. But the OP states a “regular person”. I would say a regular person, from my neck of the woods, has never even operated any sort of chainsaw. Could an experienced chainsaw user with a very powerful chainsaw blind a charging grizzly bear quickly enough to avoid a mauling, yes it is possible. My money is still on the bear.
Oh, mine too, the only winning move is not to play.
Don’t be hasty. Not a single bear has even posted in this thread yet, we only know one side.
Mild bump here, because this short clip on Instagram shows a bear disabling himself momentarily by hitting himself in the nuts. And he’s in pain for awhile.
Hitting a charging grizzly’s nuts would be near impossible, but if you can get to them, you’d get to live for a few more minutes. You might even have a laugh at the bear. For a little while anyway.
But if the grizzly is a female then you are effed.
