Strange coincidence. I was going to post a similar observation about the grizzly in this movie. No one could seem to kill it, with all the available 20th century firearms available. There's a lot of big-caliber rifle cartridges available that could have done the job.
The grizzly is described as 15-feet tall when standing up. This is absurd. The biggest North American grizzly topped out just above 11 feet tall a century ago.
If the park rangers and hunters couldn't bring down this grizzly with hunting firearms, how would they have done confronting a primeval, 'Arctodus Ursus Horribilis', the massive short-face bear from the Pleistocene Era that towered over today's grizzlies. The arctodus could easily b__ch-slap a grizzly today. Imagine one of your worst furry hansel-and-gretal nightmares and you've got it.
The rogue killer grizzly (Jaws on land) continues to haunt modern man's imagination because it's embedded in our primeval memories. The grizzly bear is so large and vastly powerful that it's virtually unstoppable. Even the stupendous brute strength of a male gorilla can't withstand the overwhelming brute force of a grizzly bear. Early modern humans just entering America from Siberia were virtually defenseless against ursus arctodus. They could only band together and use atlatl 6 to 7 feet long throwing darts at the giant bear from a distance and try to ward it off with fire torches. And they didn't have the safety of firearms. The bear is so powerful it was long regarded by primitive man as a force of nature. Modern paleontologists are so awestruck by the size and presumed unbelievable brute strength of extinct ursus arctodus that they nicknamed it the god bear. Primitive man would have looked upon the 15-foot tall ursus arctodus as an earthly incarnation of some angry, bloodthirsty pagan god.
We have good reason to be afraid of grizzly bears today. If you're out in the woods and being stalked by one, without a large bore, repeating rifle, all you can do is die. You'll never outrun or outclimb it. There's no where to hide that the grizzly can't smell you out and dig you out. Your only recourse is to try to outrun someone who is slower than you. Okay, it was a bad joke. Even if the grizzly showed up in your urban neighborhood and wanted to get at you inside your house, do you realize that there's nothing stopping that bear from breaking into your house? Unless you live in a stone castle-like house with very tiny windows, to a grizzly the walls of a modern house are little stronger than cardboard.
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actionfilm-2
16 years ago
Really great info! Always thought they shoud make a film about a prehistoric bear today. Admittedly, the diffficulty Christoper George and Co. had with "Grizzly" was pretty silly, but consider the following. Some Grizzly have been killed only to find other caliber bullets lodged in their skull or elsewhere. They also are not big dumb brutes but rather fairly intelligent animals. One wildlfe biologist made the insightful comment about the number of human deaths attributed to brown bear, (I'm paraphrasing) "its minimal considering its a wonder they don't kill so many more of us, God knows we are such easy targets for the animal".
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jawsfan
15 years ago
In the book, Kelly kills the bear with a flame thrower.
However, before that, it says that the bear had actually died before that point, something like "The bear was actually already dead, it had already absorbed enough to lead to kill three bears of his size. But his instincts still ruled, and they commanded him to destroy his enemies" or something like that.
I highly recommend the book, it's a really fun read!
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BrainGremlin
13 years ago
"In the book, Kelly kills the bear with a flame thrower."
That made me chuckle. Thanks.
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Morning sun, vanquish me!
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Dream_Demon
13 years ago
That's also more realistic than what Kelly had at the end.
Personally, I think the bear was a mutant, was suffering from gigantism (supported by its extreme size), and/or had something supernatural going on (being able to get shot with bullets, but without harm). What do you think?
Welcome to my Nightmare- Freddy Krueger
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jawsfan
12 years ago
The novelization goes into its past a bit more than the movie, lots of passages written from the bear's point of view - apparently it was born to normal grizzly parents, but it was a bit of a genetic throwback - by the time it was a year old, it was already the same size as its mother. The other bears feared it, and they left him in isolation.
I'd highly recommend that all fans of the movie read the novelization, it's actually a very well written horror story. Also comes off as a lot less of a Jaws knock-off that way.
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camerica1978
10 years ago
Actually, you can traverse bear country, and feel reasonably safe without having to carry a large bore, repeating rifle. Just carry around two or more cans of bear spray (one or more extra just in case the first one fails). Bear spray deploys a dense fog of extremely irritating particles at a range of 25 to 35 feet. It'll disable the bear's senses of sight and smell (especially smell, considering how acute that sense is in bears), and trigger breathing difficulties. (It's sort of like getting sprayed by a skunk.) Then you can run away. I've read where, given a choice of carrying a gun or bear spray, many wilderness experts would rather carry the bear spray, because it's easier to aim, and has a much better chance of successfully stopping the attack.
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