Couple Film Close Encounter With ‘Huge’ Grizzly Bear

“It’s huge,” an Australian couple exclaimed after they encountered a large grizzly bear while hiking in the Canadian Rockies. The couple were on a hiking trail with a friend when the bear appeared on the trail they were walking on.

Jessica Boshoff and husband Dale Boshoff were just a few minutes into the hike on the popular route near Canmore, Alberta with their friend Jordan Illsley when they came upon the big bruin on the trailhead.

“Jordan’s shoelace came undone so we stopped and Dale looked up and saw the bear,” Jessica told CBC. “He sort of looked at it and he was like, ‘What is that? It’s a bear,’ then he said, ‘No, surely it can’t be a bear,’ and it took a couple of seconds for him to process. Then he just said ‘Guys,’ and I could tell in his voice that he was serious, so we looked up and saw the bear right in front of us, and then got behind [Dale] because he had the bear spray.”

The group began backing slowly away from the bruin and at that point Daile pulled out his phone and began recording.

Watch their scary encounter in the video below.

“Stay there, bear-ie, don’t follow us, don’t come toward us. I don’t want to use my bear spray,” Dale can be heard saying. “That’s a good boy. That’s a good boy…he’s huge.”

Fortunately for the trio, the bear strolled around them and back onto the trail before moving out of view. It seems the bear simply wanted to get by them!

A wildlife expert later commented that the group did the right thing when it comes to encountering a grizzly bear.

Nick de Ruyter with Wild Smart told CBC, “Some of the main things I noticed in the video were, they did have bear spray with them and they were ready to use it. The gentleman was talking very calmly to the bear. They, as a group, seemed to be very calm, they did not panic, they did not run, which is a great thing, they stayed together … which is also awesome, and it turned out the bear just wanted to use the trail.”

Disclosure: This post may include affiliate links.