Closest you've been to a Brown Bear?

[BRWNBR]

had my head sniffed a couple times....

 

[Big_Sky_Guy]

Too damned close too many times!

 

[Akhunter1776]

Katmai National Park I've been 5 feet or so from bears many different times. While hunting on kodiak had one bluff charge from 8 yards to maybe 5 yards. Huffing and swaying back and forth. Hands were definitely shaking after

 

[Sourdough]

Had a large one on top of me for about 18 minutes. Neither one of us receiver so much as a scratch. I prayed hard for 19 minutes.

Had 7 seven in camp at the same time. They wandered around all night, did a lot of damage, took a chunk out of a ZODIAK-MK II you could push a football through "sideways".

 

[jonny5]

100 yards...then I shot him!

 

[AKDoc]

Sharing with gratitude, and not including the times being hands-on skinning-out the grizzlies that I or friends/family have taken hunting together over the years.

I've enjoyed seeing countless grizzlies on non hunting outdoor adventures...


That said, they've been mostly well behaved, but I was bluff-charged a couple times...both when I was on different very remote 10-day, lite-wt, single-person raft floats. Those bluff charges were within 10yds, and they all ended well for the bear and myself...thank you guardian angel.

One was when camping along the river...I woke to the sound of a grizzly huffing directly outside our tipi at first light. I immediately stood up inside the tipi with my pistol drawn and pointing in the direction of the huffing as I slowly pulled down the tipi zipper from the top. It was an adolescent grizzly (3-4yo) looking directly at me about a dozen yards away, and he immediately charged forward. I was honestly starting to pull the trigger when he abruptly stopped at about 8 yards and turned to run away into the timber behind him.

Another was when I was in strong current, coming around an extremely tight bend in the creek that I was floating, and immediately I was within 10 yards of a sow with a second year cub in the middle of the narrow creek looking for salmon coming out of a deep hole. She immediately stood up on her hind legs when she saw me and charged towards me...and at the same time I tried to do a quick tight turn to the shore, but instead my sudden effort tipped my raft upside down. I managed to keep a hand on my raft and the other holding the paddle as my feet struggled to find the bottom of the creek to help me stand chest-high in the water...and when I did she and the cub were gone. I honestly think that she was scared-off when seeing my visual image suddenly triple in size as my raft flipped over.

Edit: BTW...I'm not talking brown bear examples...I'm talking grizzlies. I've seen a number of brown bears hunting on Kodiak, but they were fortunately at good distance.

 

[Pony Soldier]

Working in SE Alaska, I crawled out of salmonberry tunnel to find a salmon flopping on the ground 40 yds from the riverbank.

Another time I walked out of the brush to the helicopter only to find the pilot on top of the rotar with no memory of how he got there. At that time a Hughs 500 had nothing to stand on to get there. It certainly didn't have any footholds to get him down. The bears had just left as I stepped out 30 ft away.

 

[yfarm]

Last year side creek of the south fork of the Shoshone, dense vegetation on horseback come around the bend in the trail and a big sow stood up about 30 ft away feeding on a carcass from the bow season. Yelled at her repeatedly and she moved off with her cub. Rest of the week had fresh grizzly tracks over our hoofprints from the previous day on most of the trails.

 

[chasewild]

This year on a mainland bowhunt I had the privilege to be up close and personal many many times. The closest was about 15 yards face-to-face. They turned and ran every time.

 

[wind gypsy]

About 10'?

Brody the bear used to come to the Minnesota sportsman's show every year when i was a kid..

 

[chucko]

18 inches from gun barrel

 

[Beendare]

4' right outside the door of our tent on Kodiak ....... I zipped the door open with my buddy to my left holding a shotgun....and he was right there almost arms length.....luckily he took off as it was so close...and frankly I was more worried about the shotgun.

 

[jtevanMT]

SW Montana, 35 yards from a Griz that came into a cow call. Fortunately he turned and left when I yelled (hey bear) to let him know we were there.

 

[camelcluch]

AK I guess I was less than 1/2 mile. I was cleaning a moose and never knew it but some other guys saw it from a hill top.
I was about 50 yards in Yellowstone but don’t really count it. It’s like elk in Estes Park.

 

[bpurtz]

My hunting buddies were 15 yards away when they shot this bear last May.

 

[PokeTheBear_]

Came face to face with a cub, coming around a switchback on a super steep trail. It scampered away and I never saw mama. Scared the crap out of me though. Had no bear spray or gun because this was 3 miles from town on a well trafficked trail, last time I’ll make that mistake.

 

[Grisha]

5-10 yards brown bear a bunch of times in Alaska- on water, on stand: well fed on salmon so wasn't much to worry about. Grizlzy - 50 yds outside camp in Canada. Got some great pics out of those encounters.

 

[buffybr]

About this close to a Brown Bear...

For Grizzly Bears, one year 2 friends and I had our hunting camp at the end of a Forest Service road near West Yellowstone, MT. We had the quarters of 2 bull elk and a bull moose hanging in the stock rack in the back of my pick up.

One night just before turning in, I went out of the tent to check my horses, at the top of the road cutbank, less than 10 yds from our tent, a grizzly woofed and clicked his teeth at me. I had a flash light in my left hand and drew my .44 Ruger with my right hand and fired a shot over the bear's head. No reaction from the bear, so I shot again, hitting the trunk of the pine tree next to him. Again no reaction from the bear.

So I holstered my .44, bent down and picked up a golf ball size rock that I threw and hit him and he ran off into the darkness.

There was another camp about 1/4 mile from ours, and they also had an elk hanging. 5-10 minutes after the bear ran away from our camp we heard six or so quick pistol (?) shots from that other camp, and about a half hour later we saw their headlights as they had broke camp and left.

The next morning I rode one of my horses, followed the bear's track to the other camp where there was then an occasional drop of blood in the snow. I followed the tracks to the top of the forest clear cut that he walked though, then he walked back in the direction of my camp. We also left the next day or day after.

The grizzly had a radio collar and an ear tag, and when we reported the incident, I found out that he had been a problem bear near Cooke City and trapped there then released in the area where we were camped. I later heard that the Grizzly Study Team radio tracked him to his denning site a few miles from where I saw him, and the next spring they found his collar, but not him.

 

[Dave Sims]

6 feet away on a boulder on the side of the Russian river on Kenia peninsula.

 

[solarshooter]

I was alone walking side hill along some breaks glassing for mule deer, got to the top of a little finger ridge, glassed down hill a bit, then turned and looked up hill and saw a big black bear head sticking out of the hillside 40 yds above me. He had stuck his head out of his den, looking around sniffing, probably heard or smelled me walk up, but didn't come out to look until I was standing still, and didn't notice me. I wasn't expecting bear in this terrain at all, but I had a tag and it wasn't going well for deer, so I figured why not, slowly unshouldered my rifle, braced on my trekking pole, and shot him in the head. He slid down into his den, totally out of sight, and you couldn't see down into this den until you were right on top of it. Pretty unnerving getting that close not knowing if a pissed off bear was about to lunge out at me. But he was toast, and the rest of the den was empty. Ended up being a pretty large cinnamon black bear, took 3 of us just to pull him out of the den, hide is 6'2" tip to tail, and estimate he weighed at least 350lbs. Meat was excellent, and I still have tons of great bear grease, and a beautiful hide. My profile pic is his den.

Edit: Just realized this was about brown bears specifically (do brown black bears count?), my bad! I'll leave it up for your enjoyment anyway.