Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Firearms Defense Against Bear Attacks in National Parks is Legal

https://www.ammoland.com/2023/12/firearms-defense-against-bear-attacks-in-national-parks-is-legal/

Ammoland Inc. Posted on December 21, 2023 by Dean Weingarten

In 2010, President Obama signed a credit card bill he desperately wanted. Inside the bill was an amendment removing the provision against exercising Second Amendment rights in national parks. A few people were offended. How dare the Constitution be allowed to be in effect in national parks!

Some writers have claimed while it is legal to carry guns in most national parks, it is illegal to fire guns in the park (such as Yellowstone), even in self-defense. From yellowstonepark.com:

Yes, you can carry a gun in Yellowstone. But it’s illegal to fire it – even in self defense. And once you exit Yellowstone, you could be in one of three states, so it’s important to know the law.

This claim was recently repeated at Cowboy State Daily, embellished somewhat:

Sorry, but if you’re attacked by a grizzly in Yellowstone, it is against the law for you to shoot it. Reaching for bear spray could be your best legal option as you can’t even point a firearm at wildlife there.

Both of these claims are incorrect. There is no prohibition on shooting guns in self-defense in national parks. The key, of course, is the firearm has to have been shot in self-defense. Because grizzly bears are a protected species both inside and outside national parks in the lower 48 states, the requirements for claiming self-defense against a grizzly bear are the same inside of Yellowstone National Park and outside the park in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).

During extensive research into the use of firearms for defense against bears, this correspondent has found five cases where firearms were fired in national parks, and self-defense was claimed.

Two of the cases were in the Grand Teton National Park, which shares a common boundary with Yellowstone National Park and is inside the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Two brothers were forced to kill a large grizzly bear when bear spray was not enough to stop the animal. The attack occurred on Thanksgiving day of 2012. Park officials and U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers investigated. The federal prosecutor declined to prosecute after investigators concluded the two acted in self-defense.

On August 15, 2015, a fisherman fired a warning shot to scare away a grizzly sow and cubs. He was issued a notice to appear in federal magistrate court. He had bear spray but said he could not have used it in the incident. This correspondent searched a year of public records and was unable to find any record of a conviction or fine being paid.

The only known attempted prosecution for an incident inside a park involved Brian D. Murphy, who shot a grizzly bear with a .357 revolver after bear spray did not stop the attack.

Murphy was charged with discharging a firearm in Glacier Park two months after the incident. When Murphy mounted a legal defense, the charges were dismissed. Two weeks after the self-defense grizzly bear shooting with Murphy, a hiker was issued a warning when he used a gunshot to summon aid.

On May 28, 2010, a hiker killed a grizzly bear in self-defense in Denali National Park in Alaska. He was not charged with any offense.

On September 20, 2020, a hunter in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park & Preserve, a man used a pistol to drive off a bear that had killed his hunting partner. He was not charged.

Because grizzly bears can be legally hunted in Alaska, the laws are different. This correspondent searched the database he maintains of when pistols are fired in defense against bears. 44 cases were found to have occurred in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem from 2003 to the present. Five of the most recent cases are still being investigated to determine if a handgun or long gun was used. None of the 44 cases appear to have been prosecuted.

One person who killed a grizzly with a rifle in September of 2009 in the GYE was found guilty by a six-person jury of taking a grizzly bear without a license. The jury rejected his plea of self-defense. Judge Tim Day fined Stephen Westmoreland $500.

It is not illegal to fire a gun in Yellowstone in self-defense. If you kill a grizzly bear while in fear for your life, and a jury convicts you of illegal taking of a grizzly bear without a license, the precedent is a $500 fine.
There are a few states that restrict the carrying of firearms in parks. None of them appear to have grizzly bears.


About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

There's a lot of bullsh*t propagated on the interwebs on this topic. Most of the bullsh*t propagators have little or no experience with bears, bear behavior, backcountry camping, or other relevant topics, but I guess people just gotta proclaim their ignorance about subjects like bear attacks... Oh, well.

Stephen Herrero and Tom Smith are the two pre-eminent bear researchers who have looked into the whole bear attack thing most scientifically. (I studied under Herrero in undergrad many years ago, and I respect his work highly.) Weingarten has his own quasi-scientific database that is somewhat consistent with Herrero's and Smith's research, but it contradicts some of it, too. There are biases in both sets of data, in my opinion. Weingarten's article as quoted above is pretty much correct on the legal stuff as far as I am aware, so I'll take it. Good to know that a $500 fine is all you'll face, but he doesn't say whether that will affect your hunting licensure in WY or MT, so that's a question I'd like an answer to.

BTW, as far as bear attacks go, there's a lotta good research showing that bear spray is highly effective at terminating bear attacks (greater than 95%), and probably somewhat more effective than firearms. When I read the data, however, I find that there are confounding variables that make firearms defense look like it's less effective than it can be. Part of the problem is that attacks on hunters are different in character than attacks on hikers and berry-pickers; hunters are more likely to be moving very quietly and either alone or in small parties, whereas general recreation folks are noisier and in larger groups more often, so that tends to push bears away. But spray seems to be very effective in both types of encounters. HOWEVER, some very determined bears may attack again after being driven off by spray, and in these cases a firearm is the victim's only recourse. Which is why I carry both spray and firearms when I'm in bear country, and have done for decades.

A big part of the "ineffectiveness" of firearms has to do with being unable to bring a long gun into action in the event of a sudden attack. Handguns do better in those circumstances. Bear spray is a lot easier to deploy than firearms, and that's a big part of why it is so effective. Just my dos centavos.

Sorry, but have to strongly reject most of your advice on Herrero and bears. It is obvious he led you down a ridiculous logic path.

First, Herrera wrote a book full of bullshit on bear defense. It was not well-received due to extreme bias. He rewrote the book and made no obvious statement on the huge differences between outwardly identical copies. Unless you know the topic you may end up "learning" some dangerous facts. He walked back much without admitting it openly. It speaks to a complete lack of academic integrity.

Second, his biases on spray as a deterrent give people a lot of misguided faith in spray. Young curious bears leave quickly when sprayed. Not so much on serious bears. He is applying politics disguised as science. Where have we seen that before? 95%? And you actually believe that? You are like the idiot this past summer holding court after saving his family from a "bear attack." The bear was 40 yards upwind and took off running when he pointed the bear spray at the bear. I have used or been there when two bears were sprayed at very close range. It did not save either bears life...

I lost a friend to a bear 3 years ago. A fully discharged large spray canister was found at the site. The despicable investigators failed to disclose that fact in public. Though they did mention his holstered revolver hanging from a limb as it seems the bear attacked while he was otherwise indisposed. ADF&G did not want people to lose faith in bear spray.

Sorry, but I actually have more than a little experience with bears and condiments.

Well, I have more than a little experience as well. With bears, at least. Condiments, meh... personal tastes are personal tastes.

I don't see a lot of publications on bear behavior, or any other subject in the wildlife biology field, under your byline, so I guess I'll take your opinion on bear spray with that in mind.

I've lived in bear country (both kinds) for over 33 years, carry both spray and firearms and have dealt with bears (both kinds) on my property on multiple occasions and have read Herero's book. I've also got close 1500+ trail miles in GNP. I'll take your bear advice with the same amount of salt I did with your covid advice.

The professional wildlife biologists that investigated the Wyoming hunting guide attack in 2018 came to the conclusion that bear spray successfully repelled the two attacking Grizzlies.

LINK

But the guide died due to his injuries before he could be rescued..

So, I guess that means it worked for him?

At first, I was puzzled about your assertion that I offered any bear defense advice, so I reread my post.

Hmm. No advice offered. Well, okay. Then I thought, hmmm.... so you and I both carry spray and firearms in the bear woods, and we have both dealt with bears... so apparently you and I agree on the basics of bear defense, despite me not offering you any advice? So you just want to say you don't like me, or anything I have to say? Well, as long you stay safe in the woods that's okay by me.

I would like to think we can all agree that retaining our Constitutional right to carry and protect ourselves in NPs is a good thing?

Examining more closely some of the players mentioned in this thread can be interesting.
Stephen Herrero was born in San Francisco and received his PhD in Animal Ecology from Berkeley. According to his Wiki page he left the USA for Canada, where he has resided since, in protest of the Vietnam War.
The research DocRocket sites was Herrero's reexamining of 83 bear incidences that took place from the mid 80's to mid/late 90s. As Doc points out, he does admit in his research that a significant percentage of bears sprayed went ahead and mauled the person wielding the spray anyway. Also interesting, some of the 'research' on grizzly bears and spray was compiled using captive bears. He appears to have first published his often quoted book in 1998. He has sold this same research quite a number of times to a variety of groups, among them the Journal of Wildlife Management (https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2193/2006-452 ) , which is owned and published by the somewhat left-leaning Wildlife Society, of Maryland. https://wildlife.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/

In the mid 80's Charles Jonkel, a renown bear bio and activist, offered some courses in Missoula. I attended one of these. It was a group outing, comprised mainly of his grad students, into a drainage in Montana where high populations of grizzlies were known to be grouping up for mating. In retrospect this seems a more ego than science driven outing. It was one of Charles Jonkel's female grad students who first came up with the idea of propelled capsaicin, i.e. bear spray.
Later that same summer I was visiting a gal who was sheep herding on the Absaroka Plateau. At night grizzlies were charging the sheep around the basin, killing a couple each night. One afternoon we sat not too far off a recent kill. The bears arrived up the only blind spot there was between us and the dead sheep.. a very large sow and two sub adults. The sow was standing on her back feet snapping at the air. About 25 yards away from me. I can tell you the very last thing I wanted at that moment was a can of spray..

So you punt instead of addressing a single statement. Argument to Authority is weak and your hero Herrero is a prime example for it.

Jeff, you DID read the article you linked, right? So you KNOW, FROM READING THE ARTICLE, that the two men didn't use bear spray the first time the bear attacked and mauled the guide. So the spray was apparently of no value against the bear when it was not used. But when the bear attacked the second time, the hunter DID use spray, and it DID repel the bear effectively. So yeah, I guess that means it worked for him... when he actually used it.

Let's stop being disingenuous here, fellas. It seems there's an attitude of either/or when it comes to bear spray and guns. That's a false dichotomy. Carrying bear spray in bear country is NOT a violation of your Second Amendment rights. You are allowed to carry both firearms and bear spray. And a lot of experienced people DO carry both, including me, as well as SBTCO, who has over 1500 trail miles on the GNP (so you KNOW he's a Uber-expert). But as they say, you do you.

Some folks are pretty damn good at maintaining just enough plausible deniability in everything they say and write to be able to piss backwards at the drop of a hat.

If he had never been introduced to bear spray as a effective deterrent he very well may have had his handgun in its place.

Have you listened to the survivor’s interviews?

Unless you're well practiced bear spray and the holsters they often come with can be a total fumble fu_ck to access and deploy.

Most are much more efficient with a handgun.

I've hazed away enough black, brown and grizzly bears with non-lethal, non chemical methods that I'm not so sure the documented bears deterred by chemical spray couldn't have been easily repelled by other means.

Punt? I didn't punt, chum. I chose to ignore your non-points because they are ridiculous. But here I go anyway. You goaded me into it.

You repeated some half-baked assertions about a published author and respected scientist, and then you expected me to, what... fold? Bow to your much greater wildlife wisdom because you live in Alaska (where all the TRUE experts are?

Don't give me that sh*t. I have decades of backcountry experience in Alberta, Montana, and Wyoming, and scores of bear encounters behind me. I have personally used bear spray on an aggressive grizzly (once) and a firearm on an aggressive black bear (once), and both times the result was positive. But I do not pretend that my personal experience is more valid than the research published by bear biologists. Your dismissal of Herrero (who is not "my hero", but what a clever little punster you are!) is nothing more than a list of criticisms that have come from internet forums.

The fact that Steve Herrero is widely respected in academic wildlife biology as well as among working field biologists is a lot more important than your regurgitation of internet gossip. The brief post by longarm, above, should be instructive to you: he outlines in a few sentences a lot more truth about Herrero than you did in your entire post. Another thing to consider: Dr. Tom Smith, who has worked collaboratively with Herrero and others, and has published bear research for several decades and is currently considered North America's foremost bear biology expert, is pretty much on the same page on the matter of bear attacks and bear attack defense as Steve Herrero. Here's a link to Smith's research credentials, if you care to use it: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tom-Smith-12

Similarly, Gary Shelton (Canadian bear guide and author) has also published work that agrees with Herrero and Smith, and has reached the same conclusions about bear spray and firearms (i.e., there's a place for both).

Buuuut... to finish responding to your goad: you cited a single case where bear spray MAY have failed to stop an attack. You offer no details, because you don't know any. But you knew the guy, so what... you think that makes the case against bear spray definitive? Jeez.

Glad to see you back here posting Doc!

I think this is important. Digging further into the incidences that Herrero re-examined to form the basis of his opinion re the efficacy of spray, some of the 'bear encounters' happened as far as 200 meters from the person holding the spray. Others were closer. So can anyone who wasn't there say with certainty that it was solely the spray that caused the bear to high-tail it?
I think personal politics and activism can color much of ones research.
In any case, I'm happy that I perhaps won't be prosecuted for applying MY chosen repellent - which happens to be hard cast and hot-loaded and come in groups of six.

You stated "Handguns do better in those circumstances. Bear spray is a lot easier to deploy than firearms, and that's a big part of why it is so effective. Just my dos centavos." So maybe I should have said your "analysis", but your statement could be misconstrued as "advice" as well. The effectiveness of spray is much more dependent on environmental conditions than firearms not mention it being based on hairspray technology, not exactly rugged reliability. You get one shot and that's it. As to deployment, with a little practice, most competent people can get a pistol out of a proper holster at least as quick if not faster than the shiity BS "holsters" provided with the can of B spray.

You also stated "BTW, as far as bear attacks go, there's a lotta good research showing that bear spray is highly effective at terminating bear attacks (greater than 95%), and probably somewhat more effective than firearms." Again, your analysis, insinuating bear spray is a better alternative. Does your "lotta good research" take into account people using spray at a bear that was bluff charging vs an actual attack? Most likely not. And what about all the people that used spray, multiple times and still got shredded like the Knife maker down By Ennis, MT. I've noticed the bear spray companies have quit using pics of customers who look like they went through quisinart after using their spray in an attack and claim it worked great.

The problem Doc is you come across as an arrogant prick, like you did during the covid [bleep]. And you're showing it here in this thread so pardon my skeptical tone

Hey, I said let's stop being disingenuous, and I meant it. You did NOT cite the survivor's interviews. If you want me, or anyone else, to respond to you, then post what you want a response to. Don't cite a published article then expect me to respond to a recording of an interview. That is quite literally an example of ineffective argument and being disingenuous.


First point back at you, here Jeff: have YOU used bear spray? Have YOU bought a can of inert training spray to find out how easy or difficult it is to use? If you have, you know it's no more difficult to use than a can of Windex. If not, you're talking through your hat.

But you're right, it's not much use to carry something you don't train with. The current advice I'm reading from bear defense experts says you need to have the spray in a holster that you can access like your belt and pack strap. This implies you should practice taking it out of the holster. And most of the wildlife biologists will also say that if you are in the vicinity of a bear, you should take it out of the holster and in your hand even before the bear makes any aggressive moves. Trying to draw it after you've got a bear on top of you is not best practice.

Once the spray is in your hand, it's far from difficult to deploy. Pull the safety block out, point it at the bear, and press the thumb lever. It ain't rocket science. And all the major bear spray manufacturers sell inert spray cans that you can practice with. Some spray colored water, others clear water. But they're cheap and easy to access online or in outdoors stores. Many of the outdoor stores in bear country advertise training with bear spray, I've noticed. So even if you have trouble with that pesky can of Windex, you don't have an excuse not to train with your bear spray.

To rephrase your statement, I would venture to say that it's not that the spray cans/holsters are a fumblef*ck, it's the USERS who are fumblef*cks for not training.

Now, as to handguns. I'm afraid you have a vastly inflated opinion of the skill of the average pistolero.

Having spent much of the last 30 years as a handgun instructor in both LE and civilian fields, and having more than a little experience as a competitive shooter, I would say your assertion that most people are more efficient with a handgun is laughable.

The average cop can't draw his service sidearm and hit a target at 7 yards in much less than 3 seconds, and the average armed citizen is MUCH worse than that. But while the average cop is aware of his limitations because he has to meet a specified standard for time and accuracy, he is more likely to be aware of his limitations than the average civilian. Then there's the whole problem of actually hitting an attacking bear with your bullets. This isn't a matter of shooting a paper target at the range at a leisurely speed... this is high-stress, high-speed shooting, and the data we have on this aren't encouraging. In police shootings, the national average hit ratio is something like 20%, and as I said earlier, civilian performance is well below that. Even in highly trained and highly skilled departments, hit ratios tend to run in the 60-70% range, and by highly trained, I'm talking about people who train with SIMUNITION in highly realistic force-on-force scenarios. So the average Joe who shoots his handgun 5 times a year on a square range without a timer, faced with an aggressive bear, is going to do better than 20% for hits? I highly doubt it.

There are plenty of anecdotes out there about people using their handguns to fight off a bear attack who have instead shot themselves, or have shot the person being mauled. It's not

Now, the articles on the Ammoland website published by Dean Weingarten (quoted in the OP) suggest that handguns are quite effective at deterring bear attacks, maybe even better than long guns. I like Dean's writing, and I would like to believe his articles are true, but I have no idea how thorough his research actually has been. It hasn't been peer-reviewed, so all we have is his say-so. I don't really have a problem with that, as I also like the informal database on self-defense shootings maintained by my friend Greg Ellifritz. There's a place for such things. But I think it's highly unlikely that Weingarten's database is anywhere near comprehensive. So where are we with that? Well, it seems we really don't know.

So where does all this leave us? Well, it appears that handguns are more effective as bear deterrents than most people thought they were before Weingarten, Smith, Herrero and others published their findings. And we also know that handgun skills are perishable, and require diligence to maintain. That suggests that someone who wants to be prepared to deter a bear attack needs to actually put in the time and work to be prepared, doesn't it?



Well, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, you're a braver man than me, Gunga Din.

I hazed away a bear once or twice when I was young and stupid. Since then I've tended to be a lot more circumspect. But as I said in an earlier post, you do you.

Thanks. Don't get used to it.

Almost every grizzly shooting I've know of, park or otherwise where the bear never drew blood, an arrest was involved. The exception has been agricultural related.

Even back in the early 80s it'd result in going before a judge.
The $500 fine stood back then too, it was like a symbolistic gesture of like 'yeah, you gotta story but....'

You need a great story or a scar to avoid the fine.