Backstory: Bearology in grizzly detail

Shannon Podruzny and I wheel around - nervously - to see what is thumping toward us. I find myself thinking about golf: Will I still be able to hit the ball with only one limb?

It turns out to be a hunter on a horse, who takes considerable delight in our startled response. "I left the bear back in the woods," he says. I consider releasing some pepper spray in his direction, but remember he's the one with the gun.

Ms. Podruzny seems anxious, too, which makes me feel only modestly better. After six years of shadowing grizzlies in the woods, the ecologist is savvy around bears and maintains a healthy appreciation for their ferocity.

By most accounts, grizzlies are only defensively aggressive. They will attack if you startle them, roust a mother with cubs, or interrupt one eating a carcass. Often they bluff charge: run at you and veer off. If they do attack, you're supposed to stand your ground and be passive, something I told Podruzny I didn't have the fortitude to do. My instinct would be to run, the one response that usually ends up with someone sending your family flowers. A grizzly, after all, can outrun a horse, and I'm no Seabiscuit.

Surprisingly, Podruzny and her current team of five researchers rarely see a grizzly. Despite their many forays into the lodgepole pine and huckleberry over a summer to study the bruin's habitat, the field-study team encounters a grizzly only about once every 25 trips into the woods. That's by design. They don't want to endanger themselves or disturb the bears.

Yet anyone who studies grizzlies usually has tales of goose-bump encounters. Podruzny recalls hers as easily as a family phone number. She and another scientist were surveying a trout stream in Yellowstone National Park in early 2000. They were going upstream. A mother and two cubs were sauntering downstream. The protective female, 20 yards away, reared up and huffed, suggesting the human intruders try a different route. "We complied," says Podruzny, matter-of-factly.

On another occasion, she confronted a grizzly that had just killed an elk calf. This one was only a menacing 10 yards away. It bolted up a riverbank and started to devour the carcass, acting as if Podruzny was going to steal it.

"The guy I was working with grabbed my collar and started to pull me back," she says. "I had a little adrenaline after that."

Despite the occasional Stephen King moments, Podruzny's work may not be any more dangerous than bagging groceries at a Piggly Wiggly. Researchers say only one person in the 32-year history of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, a collection of federal and state scientists of which she is a part, has had to use pepper spray against a bear.

One reason for Podruzny & Co.'s good fortune in the woods is their caution. They check a radio telemeter to see if the bear they're shadowing is in the area. If so, they bypass the site. They also follow a cardinal rule of hiking etiquette: They make noise to alert the bears to their presence. At least they usually do.

Today, Podruzny is talking quietly. It's the first weekend of elk season, and she doesn't want to alienate the hunters by scaring off game. I tell her that I don't want to risk being a beach ball for a bear so some hunter can fill his freezer with venison. I tell her this loudly.

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