This is my childhood fear lived out.
I remember being in elementary school, and telling my parents I didn’t want to go on a hike because I was terrified of a bear running up on us (I was six-years-old, chill).
Of course, my parents would convince me that it would never happen, so I finally got the nerve to go with them, and sure enough, the only thing we saw was a ton of mosquitos.
However, this nightmare turned into a reality for this family of hikers, as a black bear began to follow them down a trail in British Columbia, Canada, according to KUTV.
Brighton Peachy, the mom who captured the wild instance on video, was hiking with her husband and three young children between the ages of one to six. You can see pops with the youngest in the backpack meanwhile the two other little ones were on foot.
The bear appeared to just be curious of what the strangers were doing, and had no intentions of attacking, but I wouldn’t be able to get the thought of that bear being able to rip me to shreds out of my mind.
They tried to scare the bear off by yelling at it, and oddly the enough, all of the kids remained calm throughout the whole chase.
The six-year-old even hilariously says:
“Can we play dead, yet?”
Clearly, he knows a thing or two about bear encounters.
As they constantly warn their kids not to run, she eventually picks up their middle child as they continue walking backwards. The black bear followed the family for a terrifying half a mile, before they were finally able to separate themselves.
Brighton explained the scary encounter to the outlet:
“It just wasn’t fazed by us and kept following us.”
She added that all they could do, was just keep walking:
“Which was, like, a little nerve-racking when there’s a bear following you, but it was kind of our only option.
I knew we just had to stay calm, and I had to keep reminding my kids like stay calm, don’t run that will just like spook the bear and make it worse.”
She continued:
“You’re in their territory and even if you do all the things you’re supposed to do they might not care they still might just want to keep coming the direction they’re going or come after you so just a really good reminder to be cautious when you’re out there.”
Bears are generally kind of curious by nature, but stalked by a bear with my wife and three little kids is about that last place on Earth I want to be:
Brighton provided on context on Instagram:
“We later learned they’ve had to close this area multiple times because of this bears increasing aggressive behavior.
This was scarier than the time I was mock charged by a bear because I had my kids with me & felt helpless. The bear was not intimidated by us at all, he just kept following us. At first we thought we were just in the way of the direction he was headed but then we started to wonder if he was stalking us.
My 6 yr old is a little too comfortable outdoors & wasn’t taking the situation seriously. We finally came upon other hikers and when we alerted them they didn’t know what to do, so I thought I’d share what you should and shouldn’t do if you encounter a bear.”
She added tips for hiking in bear country such as carrying bear spray, make yourself big and noisy, storing food properly, and also some things not to do, like run, feed the bear, get aggressive with the bear, turn your back, and more.
And finally, if you get attacked by a grizzly, play dead. If you get attacked by a black bear… fight that mf’er as hard as you can.
Part 1:
Part 2:
