Jack Hanna, the guy who used to hangout with Johnny Carson and Dave Letterman, recently filmed a PSA urging hikers to carry pepper spray instead of guns into national parks to deal with charging grizzlies. Yesterday he was able to offer some firsthand notes along with his PSA. The guy was hiking with his family when they encountered a grizzly and her two cubs. They backed down the narrow trail yelling loudly for five minutes.

Then Hanna saw a small rocky clearing they could back into just off the trail.

“I said, ‘Crawl up the hill and put your backs against the wall.’”

Two bears walked past, but one of the 150lb cubs followed them and began to charge from 30 feet out. Hannah shot pepper spray from 30, 20 and finally 10 feet - the bear charged until the last shot right in its face, when it turned and ran off.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 12:34 pm and is filed under National Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.