Last September I did a 7-day pack-raft float and fly-fished a very remote river in Western Alaska. Didn't see another person for that entire time, but the river was loaded with grizzlies...saw 11 in the first ten miles. We camped on gravel bars and extended shorelines to be out in the open.
My friend who was with me snored like a freight train, and we were sharing a 4-man SO. I reluctantly had to use ear plugs to get any sleep at all. On the third night I had put my earplugs in and was settling back to fall asleep, thinking of the excellent fishing we were having, when I faintly heard an animal dramatically screeching in distress. I took out my earplugs, and the screeching was super loud and close. It eventually stopped, but it drove home the point that I was an idiot for using those earplugs because I would never hear a bear until he crunched my skull. I shit-canned the earplugs and eventually fell asleep.
At first light the very next morning my friend was cranking the snoring, but the pattern had varied, which woke me up. In between every snore there was a very loud huffing sound coming from right outside the tent, and it was CLOSE. As a long-time Alaskan hunter and outdoor guy, I recognized that huffing was a grizzly. I grabbed my pistol, got out of my bag, stood up, and unzipped the tipi door from the top. As I looked out the door there was a grizzly who was squared off directly at the tent, huffing away at me....just 15 steps away (I stepped it off later that morning). As I pointed the pistol at him for maybe three seconds and repeatedly said to get out of here, he just kept huffing and then he charged me. Fortunately it was a bluff charge, and he stopped at 8 steps. I was in the motor sequence to begin to shoot him, but he stopped, so instead I shot a round at the ground in front of him, which didn't immediately seem to phase him at all as he kept huffing at me. I was sighting the pistol on center mass and starting to pull back the trigger when he turned and ran into the brush, where he ran back and forth huffing for a bit and then vanished.
It looked like a three or four year old grizzly...essentially an adolescent, who are the worse ones to come into camp second only to a sow and cubs. I've shot enough bears hunting for them, so it ended well for the bear and me. I thanked my guardian angel for the screeching animal the night before because I would have been wearing earplugs, and that bear, I think, was coming to the snoring of my friend and super jacked-up that we were in his fishing area...who knows how that would have ended.
