Pro Tip: Bear Spray Goes on the Bear, Not on You
The customer who showed up at the sporting goods store was furious, and demanded to speak with a manager. When one arrived, he handed her a canister of bear spray and told her that she had sold him a “defective” product, and that it had sent his wife to the hospital when they tried to use it. The bear spray, he said, should never have been allowed on store shelves.
“I asked, well, how did it cause your wife to go to the hospital?” said the manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because her employer had not authorized her to talk to the media. “And he said ‘I was 15 feet away, and I sprayed my wife with this bear repellent, and it burned her.’” The man, it turned out, mistakenly believed that bear spray worked like bug spray and applied the high-test pepper solution to his wife’s skin, hair, and eyes.
It’s a mistake that’s so absurd, it would almost be funny—if it didn’t keep happening. Each year, Backpacker hears anecdotes about hikers who aren’t used to traveling in grizzly country spraying their tents and backpacks with bear spray, believing that it will repel hungry or curious bruins. A smaller number use it on themselves, with disastrous results. ...
