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Over the years I've had a handful of what I would call like memorable
grizzly bear moments. But this one I just had in British Columbia's the closest call I've had
yet and in a way the most unnerving.
We were actually hunting grizzly bears, working our way up into this
Alpine basin, this small isolated mountain range. And I'm with a guy Ryan Callahan,
who I'm friends with because he works at the apparel company, First Lite.
Ryan's done a lot of guiding, BC, Montana,
kinda been around the block a lot. And we get up just kinda where it starts to look kinda like really good.
Meaning like good visibility, we can really see what's going on. And all of a sudden, like out of our sideview,
comes like - not just one bear, but four of them.
It's a sow packing three little spring born cubs with her.
And she looks almost mad, like - she would like eat all the blueberries on this blueberry bush,
and when she'd eat it, she'd look like she was pissed at the blueberry bush and she'd be like
argh! And like start eating on another blueberry bush. And we're watching her carry on, and she's
started coming back our way. "Is that her right there?" "Yeah."
"Let's just make a little bit of noise and - let her go."
"Somebody's here." We've been saying things like
"Git git git!" Callahan's going "hey mom!"
"Hey mom!" I mean we're just like - you don't really know what to say, like you could speak in tongues. You're just trying to make noise
so the bear could get calm.
The bear don't care about any of this. At all. And I could hear this thing.
Woofing. And barking. Woof, woof, woof.
"Hear her barking at us?" "Yep." "Hey mom!"
"Take your kids and go."
"See her? Hey mom!"
"She just came through this gap, she's coming this way." She comes around the tree.
We chamber a round. "Hey mom! Hey mom!"
"Hey!" Callahan is shooting out in front of her. And she doesn't care, at
all. And meanwhile these three cubs are behind her like, "What's going on? What's up mom?"
"What's going on?" I will shoot. I'm gonna kill this sow.
And she spun. Peels off, spins away,
and Callahan says - I'll never forget, I want to get him a t-shirt with him in his mustache
in this, uh he says
"Smell us now lady!" Smell us now lady.
That's the sentence that comes to Callahan's mind, the minute a grizzly bear changes
his mind and decides not to maul us.
What he's referring to is, as she cuts, she gets like -
she gets like a down wind direction. You know. And so Ryan's saying like, now the
wind will carry my
odor, to realize that we're people and we shouldn't be messed with, and so what he yells is smell us
now, lady! Which came to be kind of our - it's like the Meat Eater rallying cry now.
"Smell us now, lady."