A Canadian man had a hair-raising encounter with a sow grizzly in his yard and lived to tell the tale.
Lawrence Michalchuk, 54, knew he had a problem when the female bear and her cubs moved into his yard in Bella Coola, B.C., about 200 miles North of Vancouver, while he was out of town. He told CBC News, and the situation eventually came to a head one morning earlier this month.
After unsuccessfully trying to move the bears along by yelling and making noise, Michalchuk was concerned over the possibility of the bear’s interaction with his eight-year-old child and decided to scare it off with a 12 gauge shotgun — loaded with three No. 6 trap load shells.
He expended two of the shells as warning shots to try to spook the animal away and then wound up having just one left.
In the above video, filmed by his wife, you can see Michalchuk go outside in the early morning and run a few steps towards the bear, then, once the sow decides to counter charge, he fires at the animal as it gets close and hits her in the leg, bowling her over momentarily. The item that the bear takes a bite out of briefly is one of the homeowner’s Crocs that he lost in the backpedal.
Undeterred by the birdshot, the bear gets back to her feet and shrugs it off as Michalchuk makes good his retreat back into the home. “The last thing I remember is that she was coming at me with her mouth open,” he told CBC.
Michalchuk said the bear eventually left the property and she seemed no worse for wear. “I later tracked her and her cubs a ways off our acreage; there was no blood, no hair and I know she’ll be sore but she’ll now think twice about approaching people,” the homeowner says in the video description on YouTube. “I talked it over with the local conservation officers, showed them the video, and they said I was totally justified in defending myself and family.”
Since posting the video, the Canadian has gotten some negative feedback about his actions, but he is sticking by what he did. “What are your choices? You leave a bear in the yard who thinks it owns your yard … and then your kids go out there?” he told CBC.
The post Man grabs shotgun for front yard face-off with grizzly (VIDEO) appeared first on Guns.com.