For my two cents... I see a couple (2-10?) of grizzlies every year. I feel good when I see them from a far and nervous when they are too close (especially when the buggers are under your nose while bow hunting or strolling around camp!). However, regardless of how I see them it gives me a sense that where I am in the bush still has a wild element and gives me some solace that we are doing somethings right while we march ahead miss managing many of our wild places and wild life.
I believe that largely people who have a reasonable perspective on the status of bears in AB spend enough time outdoors and on the land engaging with wild things. Sadly, the emotional aspect often is injected by persons not healthy engaged with wildlife on a regular basis and as such have a romantic idea of what is or should be taking place. More often these folks reside in metropolitan areas and are able to influence the messaging going out to the broader uninformed public who then latch on to emotional attitudes and drive public policy towards a situation such as the one in BC (not well thought out by any standards and was sustainable and reasonably balanced). With everybody sitting around home surfing the internet, tweeting, and finding something to talk about bears and hunting are easy fodder for the media junkies (which now reach everybody in a blink of an eye). The good news in AB is our bear population is proving robust and it would appear the folks interviewed have a reasonably unbiased perspective at this juncture? That female bear has made the "hunting" community a target on public media once again. Hopefully this video gets out to the masses to digest and eases the hyper over reaction that most things seem to get in the media these days. Hopefully we as hunters are lucky enough to have some sounded minded people continue to be engaged in managing some of the policy around grizzlies as the population continues to grow so it can be managed effectively instead of emotionally.
As for the video... I thought it was pretty well rounded and well done by the journalist without adding a bunch of emotional malarkey. I like that they took the time to investigate how many "hunter" type encounters can/do occur once you step off the Banff hiking trails and I appreciated that there was a balance of perspectives tabled.
Now for some fun... anyone have any grizz pics from this season or from your trail cams this year!
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