Grizzly Gal I'm Not

So some of you know that I've been reading a book by Stephen Herrero called "Bear attacks: Causes and Avoidance". It is a scholarly look at the reasons why grizzlies and black bears have attacked, and in some cases, killed humans. There are a lot of graphic descriptions of the maulings some of these folks have been through, and yes, it is my bedtime reading. Needless to say, I have had lots of bear dreams and have had them on the mind a lot while I'm out in the field surveying. Add to the mix the 12-year old boy who was pulled from his tent last weekend and mauled to death by a black bear (highly unusual, but can happen), and the fact that today was the first day my coworker and I split up to survey different sites, my bear thoughts were at a peak. So maybe it's coincidence (or not) that today, my first day in the field alone, I saw my first black bear. I think it was a young male (~100 lbs probably), walking down a road by himself, and he was a good 1/4 mile away from me. But I saw the ambling figure, and knew it wasn't human, so I looked through my binocs and confirmed it was a black bear. The road he was walking on led to me. I radioed my coworker, who calmly congratulated me on my sighting and told me to make some noise if he got too close. Soon after, the bear ducked into some vegetation, so I couldn't tell if he was headed up the hill toward me or not. I radioed back that I was concerned and was going to start making noise. Meanwhile, my radio conversation was being intercepted by the loggers in the area, who started breaking in that they'd heard me report the bear and would put a bullet in its head if they had the chance. I certainly don't advocate needless killing; I just wanted to make sure the bear knew I was in the vicinity so that I wouldn't surprise him, hence a "sudden encounter" as the book describes it. I started yelling "Go bear!" and then started hooting, and the bear all of a sudden popped out of the vegetation a little less than a quarter mile away and ran into the woods. My coworker radioed back that I had made so much noise that SHE had heard me on the other side of the canyon! While I definitely am not welcoming bear encounters, I will say that I feel a little less 'scared' and a little more 'cautious' about the thought of them. While a wild animal can unexpectedly do anything, at the end of the day, it'll be how I handle myself that will dictate how the story ends. "Go, bears!"