Walking with Bears: One Man's Relationship with Three Generations of Wild Bears [Hardcover]

Terry DeBruyn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1999

Some people prefer to walk in the woods alone. Terry DeBruyn walks with bears. Set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, this is the account of an extraordinary human-ursine story. Biologist DeBruyn believes that the only way to protect wild species is to determine precisely what they do all day.

To find out, DeBruyn pioneered a G.P.S. monitoring stystem for radio-collared bears, but he soon realized the only way to truly understand the animal is to enter her world. Not so easy when the subject is a 250-pound North American black bear with cubs. Black bears are enormously powerful animals, though very shy of humans. So, first, DeBruyn must convince an individual bear to stick around long enough to learn she has nothing to fear. When he finally accomplishes this, the rewards are immense. Carmen and her daughter Netti, and later, Netti's daughter June are ambassadors who grant us a glimpse into bear life. DeBruyn is their interpreter. He is a priviledged guest, watching intimate family scenes: nursing, grooming, and wrestling amond den mates. He learns as much about he moods and emotional life of bears as about their dietary requirements. Walking wtih Bears is an endearing tale of interspecies friendship. It will forever change the way we view one of the most fascinating and feared of all wild animals.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hardworking biologist DeBruyn set out in 1990 to learn the habits of Michigan's black bears: what they do, where they go, what they eat, when and how. To do so, he had to "habituate" some bears: that is, to get them so used to his presence that they neither fled nor attacked him as he followed them around. DeBruyn succeeded, making friends first with a wary female he dubs "Carmen" (for her distinctive "dance") and then with other females and their cubs; his study of their group continued for six years. DeBruyn's book adapts the journals he kept for part of his bear-tracking study, recording its emotional and scientific highlights. He describes, for example, his first experiences of bears' distinctive gaits, and of their charming array of sounds: cubs seem to imitate helicopters, mothers hum and no black bear actually growls. We also learn much about ursine feeding habits. Young bears prefer nitrogen-rich ironwood and learn to flip over rocks and look for ants. Moreover, "in late-Summer and Fall, bears eat wasps, their larvae, and a gray gelatinous substance" from wasps' nests. Weighty with detail yet insistently casual, DeBruyn's sentences throw up an odd mix of the academic and the offhand. Footnotes to scientific reference works, and the occasional unglossed term ("hypoxylon canker"), sit uneasily alongside declarations like these (on young bears' close call with a porcupine): "June was flirting with trouble. Cubs at this stage of life are full of character, yet are heedless of certain dangers." Few readers will seek out DeBruyn's book for his prose style. But nobody who cares about bears should miss it. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

For six seasons in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, biologist DeBruyn spent up to 15 hours a day observing black bears. Habituated to his presence, the bears allowed him to be close enough to identify the species of ant they broke logs open to find, or the type of plants they ate from vernal ponds. Despite being within feet of them, DeBruyn never attempted to actually touch or otherwise interact with the bears. For that side of bear interaction, see Jack Becklund's Summers with the Bears: Six Seasons in the Minnesota Woods (LJ 2/15/99). Readers who enjoyed Becklund will welcome the natural history here. DeBruyn organizes his observations into one year, season by season, weaving together the notes from his five study litters. The detail of events, including feeding, denning, nursing, eating, climbing, playing, and so much more are superbly presented. While the author's pleas for habitat conservation are understated, no one reading this could be unmoved. For all natural history collections. (Photos not seen.)ANancy J. Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558216421
• ISBN-13: 978-1558216426
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,575,812 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One on one with black bears, February 27, 2000

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Bear rEvolution "BearrEvolution" (Soldotna, AK United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Walking with Bears: One Man's Relationship with Three Generations of Wild Bears (Hardcover)

The vast majority of popular books on bears emphasize how dangerous they can be. This is true even of most books which overview bear natural history and ecology. There are three reasons. First, "Scare" is what sells. Second, no writer wants to "lead" a reader to attempt something dangerous. Third, scientists who study bears typically spend a lot more time dealing with bears in traps, where the animals are frightened and defensive, than with free-ranging bears. The bear's fear and the biologist's fear combine to give biologists the perception that the bears are highly aggressive and dangerous. In fact, whoofing, huffing, jaw popping, ground slapping and other threat displays are more manifestations of fear than aggression. So one's safety lies more in calming the bear than in trying to intimidate it -- contrary to common "wisdom." These insights grew out of getting to know bears personally, one on one; by winning their trust so that one could spend hours or days with them in the wild. This was first done on a hit-and-miss basis with Alaska Peninsula brown/grizzly bears by Fish & Game biologist Jim Faro, and then by a series of grad students from Utah State University, working at McNeil Falls: Derek Stonorov, Al Egbert, Mike Luque and Tom Bledsoe. Alaska Fish & Game biologist Larry Aumiller was hired by Faro to guide visitors to safely watch bears at McNeil, a responsibility at which Aumiller has excelled for roughly 20 years. (Tim Treadwell's "observations" from the same general region -- Among Grizzlies -- are entertaining though not entirely accurate) My own research on free ranging Alaska grizzly and black bears date back to 1972. Yet, it was Lynn Rogers and his assistant Greg Wilker who really refined "walking with bears" to gather highly detailed data on behavior and life history. Now, Rogers' protege, Terry Debryun has carried the research in several new directions, particuarly in the study of scent marking.

Debryun's experiences constitute the most detailed and engaging scientific portrait of the secret life of individual bears ever published. Readers can follow Debryun's experiences with sows Nettie and Carmen and their cubs over the course of a year, supplemented with flashbacks to earlier years. For those interested in knowing black bears as they really are, as individual personalities, this book is without peer.

What countless people have dreamed of doing, Debryun has actually done. This is a fine read which I recommend highly.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating!, June 21, 2001

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tin2x "tin2x" (Staten Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking with Bears: One Man's Relationship with Three Generations of Wild Bears (Hardcover)

If you're at all interested in the natural world around us, and concerned about how much we take for granted in this day and age, this is a sobering and fascinating look at black bears. The author tracks the lives of a family of bears (mainly 3 generations worth) over the course of a year to discuss their behaviors and their seasonal variation. Almost as a by product of this you learn a lot about bears, and the actions and motivations of potentially dangerous wild animals as a whole. I feel a lot safer being outdoors having read some of the explanations for the motivations of aggressive behavior, especially towards humans. I would say more about the book itself but I think it is best left as a surprise. Suffice it to say if you've wondered about bears or the upbringing of offspring in animals, this is a superb book. It's my first book on bears so there may be some others out there which others would suggest first, but I don't see how one could go wrong with this one.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Right Spot On, May 11, 2000

By 

Carole Kraehenbuehl - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking with Bears: One Man's Relationship with Three Generations of Wild Bears (Hardcover)

I have scoured high and low to enjoy the information that only biologists from the field can share about the intimate lives of animals. It is very hard to find information of the type in Walking with Bears, and it should be seriously digested and openly applauded. I've heard what the game commissions have had to say, and deep down inside I already knew what this book has now confirmed. The black bear should be a cherished national emblem in the wild for all generations to appreciate . After all, it is ursus americanus.