Posted on 08/27/2023 6:29:24 AM PDT by marktwain
One of the most quoted and controversial figures used in the debate about how effective bear spray is “98%”. The figure is sprayed about (pun intended) promiscuously and irresponsibly. From thetrek.com, quoting Tom Smith:
Ninety-eight percent of people who used bear spray escaped injury (with 2% being knocked over but not killed) as opposed to only about 50% of people using guns.
The number traces back to a paper authored by Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero, published in 2008. The paper is “Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska“. It is the seminal paper that launched bear spray as a supposedly credible deterrent to stop aggressive bears. In the 72 incidents used in the paper, only one involved a hunter. He was stalking a wounded bear. 30% were people involved in bear management activities. Aggressive bears accounted for 25 incidents or 35%. There were ten incidents where bears charged people or 14%. All three injuries occurred in the ten incidents where bears charged people. If we consider the bear spray success rate only for aggressive bears and count injuries as failures,
….the success rate for aggressive bears is 88%.
There were 175 people involved in the 71 incidents. The incident which was subtracted from the 72 is not explained. The 98% figure is arrived at by dividing the number of people injured by the number of people involved. The paper does not mention how many of the 175 people had bear spray or sprayed bear spray. We know bear spray was sprayed in all 72 instances. In ten of the seventy one incidents, bear spray had negative effects on the person using the spray. Six of the 71 instances were deemed a failure to stop the undesired behavior of the bears.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
79% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
If you’re close enough to use spray.....God Help You.
Another question is where did the 50% success rate for guns number come from? I think Dean has calculated a much higher number for the success rate for gun uses against bears, more like 98 or 99%.
Brown bear scat .... whistles and peppery smell
Bear scat was examined for wedding rings and fillings?
I’ll stick with my Ruger Super Blackhawk used to “spray” bears...
My favorite bear-related quote is, “If you think you can predict what that bear will do, he doesn’t even know.”
Took my brain a while...but lol...
We had two women the forest here in Alaska. One had bear spray, one was eaten. I think it was crazy for them to be out there without a gun, both spray and gun are needed. Also, I noticed a lot of stories where a person didn’t fire because they might hit the person being attacked….shoot!
Just curious but I wonder what percentage of professional guides in Alaska carry a firearm.
They limited their survey sample population to people who could run really fast!
Those who were dead did not respond to the survey.
I thought it was calculated by the bears.
They only interviewed survivors.
It excludes people who were dragged off into the woods and eaten.
It is explained in the article. It is another case of misleading by using statistics.
Here is how it was arrived at. The authors of the study searched records for cases of bear attacks where there were firearms. They subjectively chose 269 cases. Fifteen percent of the cases they chose were incidents where firearms were not fired, for several different reasons. They rejected hundreds of cases where firearms were fired.
In the supplemental information for the Efficacy of firearms paper, they say injuries occurred in 151 of the 269 events. They also say of the 444 people involved, 122 were injured. The numbers and math in the paper are difficult to interpret. The 50% figure comes from claiming injuries occurred in 151 incidents of 269. The authors also say if they had included all the data they could, the success rate for firearms would be higher.
If you subtract the 15% of events where a firearm was not fired, the percent successful becomes 89% for long guns and 99% for handguns.
A big problem with the paper is the authors will not release their data. A simple table showing the dates of the incidents, the number of people involved, the species of bear involved, the firearms involved, and whether the firearms were shot or not, would clear up much of the confusion.
If you deliberately pick incidents by looking for incidents which have been recorded as bear attacks, you are going to have a much higher rate of injuries.
It is called selection bias, and the authors of the paper acknowledge it in the paper.
In my and colleagues study of how effective handguns are when fired against bears, we deliberately chose to include every case we could document, with a description of what happened. This was done to prevent selection bias. So far, 170 cases, 98% success rate of stopping the attack. We have not done a percent of injuries.
There were probably quite a few of those before literacy became common and bear attacks a newsworthy event.
For the past 150 years, I am confident very few people were killed and eaten without anyone recording it.
It is possible, of course. As we have entered the digital age, information is transmitted and recorded much more rapidly. Investigations are quicker. So, it may be some such cases happen, but they are extremely unusual, in my opinion. We cannot know what cannot be known.
I was hiking around Groom Creek yesterday with Bow season hunting in full swing.
Beautiful and Rugged area just South of Prescott. Bear Spray would Not have given me the Statistical security of the 180 grain Hardcast pellets that I had in my Ruger wheel gun. The recent Bear attack has Woke this community to the reality of Self Preservation.
The other 2% was from those who used the sprayer with the nozzle backwards.
Yeah, I’m just trying to be funny.
It’s like nobody hears about the dolphins that drag people out to sea. Except it’s more Grizzly.
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