Jack Hanna Fends Off Grizzly Attack

Jack Hanna repels charging grizzly in national park: July 27_A close encounter with three grizzly bears on a narrow hiking trail in Montana has made a pepper-spray believer out of Jack Hanna. The nation's favorite zookeeper still sounded shook up yesterday as he told the tale by phone in dramatic, Hanna-like detail. It started Saturday when he and his wife, Suzi, were returning from a 5-mile, late-afternoon hike to Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park on a narrow trail with sheer cliff on one side and a steep drop-off on the other. Three hikers from Minnesota were close by. They all rounded a corner of the trail and, 30 feet ahead, saw a mother grizzly bear and two large cubs heading their direction on the trail. "We thought of letting them go by, but the trail was cut into the rock and was too narrow," Hanna said. "So I said: 'Everybody talk loud and we'll back up until we can get off the trail.'" So for about five minutes _ Hanna said it seemed like 30 _ the five hikers slowly backed up as the three grizzlies continued walking up the trail toward them. Two other hikers, a man and his 10-year-old son, were coming down the trail and began backing up, too. Then Hanna saw a small rocky clearing they could back into just off the trail. "I said, 'Crawl up the hill and put your backs against the wall.'" The seven of them did, and the mother bear and one cub went by. About 15 yards farther, the trail widened and those two bears wandered away into the clearing. The second cub, however, just looked at the hikers and didn't budge from the trail. Then the cub _ Hanna estimates it weighed 125 pounds _ started to run toward the hikers. "We don't know where to go," said Hanna, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium's director emeritus.

But Hanna had a canister of pepper spray, and he held it up as the bear rushed toward them:

1st "At about 30 feet I unload my pepper spray, and the wind takes it," he said.

2nd The bear kept coming.

3rd "Then I unload the second spray."

4th The bear kept coming.

5th "Then the third time I unload that pepper spray right in his face."

6th The bear turned around and fled.

Hanna said he's been carrying pepper spray on hikes for 15 years, but it's the first time he's used it. The incident proved to be timely. Hanna recently filmed a public-service announcement for the national parks that encourages people to carry pepper spray when they hike rather than firearms, which now are permitted in national parks. "You can't do anything with a grizzly; they can run a football field in seconds," he said. A California man and his daughter were severely mauled by a mother and two cubs in 2005 on the same trail. Hanna said park personnel fear that hikers with guns might accidentally kill someone. And he's sure he never could have averted a bear attack with a firearm. "There's no way I could hit that bear with a gun," Hanna said.