Yukon man touts value of bear spray after close call with aggressive grizzly

If you've ever wondered whether it's worth carrying bear spray with you out in the bush, just talk to Paul Burbidge.

The Whitehorse man recently had a close and terrifying encounter with a grizzly bear, and says it was a can of bear spray — and not the rifle he was carrying — that saved him from a more serious outcome. Burbidge survived the encounter unscathed, but definitely shaken.

It happened on Monday when Burbidge took his dog out for a walk on a small trail, bringing his gun along to maybe do a bit of grouse hunting along the way. As they were walking along, Burbidge said he heard "a kind of huff."

"I looked over and I saw a grizzly bear kind of stand up in thick bush, about 10 meters away from me," he recalled.

"And I thought, well, you know, it sees me, it's going to take off. But it didn't."

Instead, he says, the bear came "straight at me."

Burbidge says the animal stopped a few feet away, pounding the ground and making clear that it wasn't happy to see Burbidge.

"It actually came closer to me, and I pushed it away with my gun. And then it seemed like it was escalating further and I actually shot it," Burbidge said. 

Burbidge said his .22 rifle was "not an effective bear gun." However, the rifle shot did seem to give the animal pause, and that bought Burbidge enough time to look away and unholster his bear spray. Up to then, he'd been afraid to take his eyes off the aggressive bear. 

"I turned and it was coming at me again, not like a full charge, but like closing the distance. And then it hung up again and I was able to spray it — and it took off, like that," he said.

"Once I had the bear spray out, I was like, pretty confident this is going to end it. So yeah, that's what happened, thank God."

Burbidge says he's experienced in the bush and has had plenty of "good" bear encounters over the years. But he figures it was only a matter of time before he had a more frightening experience like the one earlier this week.

That's why he's grateful for the time he's spent ensuring he was prepared. He's done bear-safety training, and practiced using bear spray. 

"So I felt very confident when it was time to use it [bear spray] — both that I would use it well, and that it would be effective. And that made a big difference," he said.