Waskesiu photographer has close encounter of the bear kind

By Susan McNeil

As a wildland firefighter and wildlife photographer, Curtis Matwishyn has met about 100 bears in the forest but none were as close an encounter as he had recently.

Matwishyn was out for a drive near Waskesiu looking for wildlife to photograph when he spotted a young bear.

“I spotted a bear in a meadow. I’m very familiar with that area so I knew that there was a trail that would go around so I would be able to get a safe location and photograph this bear and hopefully not even disturb it,” he said.

He went down the trail a ways and set up his camera, thinking the bear would smell him and realize he was there and keep a safe distance.

“I got set up about 100 metres away and started snapping some photos and like I had predicted, the bear started to sniff and looked in my direction,” says Matwishyn.

The bear started moving away from the meadow towards the trail so, thinking the bear was on its way, Matwishyn changed his camera position.

“Then it caught sight of me and started to walk down the trail. It wasn’t like a run or anything, it just started to move towards the trail, closer to me so I continued to snap photos,” he explains.

When the bear was about 40 to 50 metres away, Matwishyn changed tactics.

“I’m now thinking, ‘OK, this bear’s getting quite close,’ so I put down the camera and started giving out some ‘Hey, bear,’ ” he said.

Normally hearing a human voice will make a bear move away, but not this time.

“It knew I was there, and it was still coming towards the trail. That’s when I got my bear spray out,” he said.

It’s always good to give a bear a way to get out of a situation, and so he did that, stepping into the woods and leaving the trail for the bear.

However, the bear also left the trail and kept following him.

“Now I know I’m in an encounter with a bear so this is when I kind of stop and I yell a little bit, ‘Hey, bear. Hey bear,’ and wave my arms. The bear wasn’t fazed at all so now I know I’m not dealing with a bear that’s acting normally,” Matwishyn said.

Given that he was near a community, he assumed the bear had somehow become used to humans or been fed by people and now associated people and food together.

The bear acted curious but also a bit timid, so he didn’t feel immediately threatened, Matwishyn said.

As a precaution, he moved until he was upwind of the bear so his bear spray would blow towards the animal if he needed to use it.

The bear was not charging but kept on following for several minutes. Knowing he was still fairly close to his car, Matwishyn decided it was safe enough to film the bear so he used his phone in one hand and kept the bear spray in the other.

“It didn’t affect my safety or what I perceived to be my readiness to spray the bear, so that’s when I started filming what everybody has seen now,” he said.

After minutes of filming the bear following him, the wind was coming from the right direction, so he gave a little spray towards the animal.

“It seemed like maybe it was going to approach me or charge me so that’s when I decided to do a little spray of the bear spray. It caught a little bit in its face, and it immediately turned it around,” said Matwishyn.

“I don’t know if scared is the right word for it but it was definitely an intense situation, a high-pressure situation where time almost dilates and you’re really focused on the moment and you have to make some good decisions because you know if you make the wrong decision or a wrong move, there could be some pretty negative consequences.”

His job as a firefighter and some related training prepared him for the encounter, which he is grateful for.

The video was uploaded to Facebook and Reddit, where it has been viewed thousands of times, and Matwishyn has been contacted by multiple media outlets, including the Weather Channel.

Matwishyn has some advice for people who live in bear territory and that is don’t feed the bears, keep your garbage closed and contained and be cautious.

He’s hopeful that in the case of the bear he encountered, it was young enough to learn a new lesson and that is to stay away from humans.