The Essential Grizzly: The Mingled Fates of Men and Bears

by Doug Peacock, Andrea Peacock

In May 2003, naturalist Charlie Russell, known for his close-up work with black and grizzly bears in British Columbia, returned to the site of his research with brown bears in Kamchatka to find his subjects missing and the gall bladder of a bear cub nailed to his cabin door. Upon further investigation, Russell and his partner concluded that between twenty and forty of the bears they'd been working with had been killed by organized poachers. Five months later, Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard were spotted from the air by the pilot who'd come to pick them up from their campsite in remote coastal Alaska. They had been killed and eaten by the grizzlies Timothy had observed and lived with for thirteen years.

Neither the bear community nor the international press knew what to make of these tragedies. Why the seemingly needless deaths of both men and bears? Especially disturbing were the deaths of Treadwell and Huguenard. Though death by wild beast today strikes us as utterly unexpected, humans have experienced this extreme form of animal interaction throughout the millennia of their evolution.

Men and Bears explores these kinds of encounters, beginning with interviews--of biologists, mauling victims, hunters, native people, photographers--all kinds of people who have had close contact with grizzly bears. Doug and Andrea Peacock then wrap these human narratives in the universe of the bear, with the benefit of modern and traditional knowledge of bear behavior. To these they add unique portraits, sketches of real grizzlies from the viewpoint of the bear, along with the parallel human story of an actual encounter. Last, they provide the context of Doug's extensive experience in grizzly country, considered by many people to be the most authoritative in the world.

The urban dweller's craving for these timeless, sometimes horrific, stories reveals an aching desire to understand our own place in the world and in the landscapes of human evolution--a wildness now vanishing before our eyes. Filling a gap in the literature, Men and Bears eclipses existing books on bear behavior, attacks, and how-to pamphlets, providing readers with a twenty-first-century context for revisiting the original shudder of Homo sapiens --the bear or the lion in the cave of our genesis--and finding a measure of familiarity and value there.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Biology, Animals

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Author, Vietnam veteran, filmmaker and naturalist Doug Peacock has published widely on wilderness issues: from grizzly bears to buffalo, from the Sierra Madres of the Sonoran desert to the fjords of British Columbia, from the tigers of Siberia to the blue sheep of Nepal. Doug Peacock was a Green Beret medic and the real-life model for Edward Abbey’s George Washington Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Reviews

[MaryAlice Herring · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book!! I learned so much and have about a thousand new questions :).

[Griggette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very current look at an animal that was recently taken off the endangered species list. Peacock describes the day-to-day lives of grizzly bears as only person who has spent years in the backcountry of our nation's wildest places could. An intimate and controversial look at wildlife management in the US, that will make you question whether the griz should come off the endangered species list. Good tips on avoiding aggressive bear encounters. The Peacocks take turns writing husband-wife chapters, and sometimes Andrea really toots her own horn about how brilliant and famous her husband is among bear fetishists, and this gets somewhat annoying at times. There is definitely an unappealing heavy ego tone in her writing that makes you want to stop reading at times, but persevere!

[Biba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Fascinating tales from the mind of a grizzly and grizzly advocates. Grizzlies are one of the few living creatures that arouse fear and awe in humans. On a walk through grizzly territory the senses are sharp and a person feels alive. The energy stirred by the mere presence of grizzlies on this continent is precisely why they should be protected.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers all aspects of man/grizzly interactions.
Discusses hunting, keeping bears in captivity, meeting up with bears in the wild, training bears for "faked" nature photos/movie use, and the fates of bears that become habituated to humans and human food. Even-handed and thorough. Shows both sides of every conflict.

[David Kessler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peacock know his grizzlies having studied them for years. He is Vietnam vet and after the war went into wildlife management and then became a consultant on bear: ursa horribulous