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Mark of the Grizzly: True Stories of Recent Bear Attacks and the Hard Lessons Learned

Mark of the Grizzly: True Stories of Recent Bear Attacks and the Hard Lessons Learned

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $10.17
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Anyone who hikes should read this book
Review: The writer of this books is able to write all the facts and still captures the fear that one feels when put in a terrifing situation. It is not a book that one reads in bed.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Bad news for bears
Review: This bloody collection of sensationalistic bear attack tales is riddled with factual errors, faulty logic, inappropriate anthropomorphism, and biased remarks about bears. There's no question that author Scott McMillion, a reporter for the Bozeman Daily Chornicle, likes bears and wants to help bears and people co-exist. Unfortunately, Mark of the Grizzly is a case of good intentions gone awry. Instead of teaching respect for grizzlies, McMillion accidentally demonizes bears. Instead of giving you a sound biological explanation for bear attacks, Mark of the Grizzly gives you a bear with a "vendetta," a bear "on the prod," a bear with an "attitude problem," and other off-the-wall theories.

Several reviewers here mention that McMillion allows a wide variety of people to comment on bear encounters gone bad. True. There's just one problem--most of those people don't have the education or experience required to provide an expert analysis of what went wrong. Mark of the Grizzly give you a jumble of opinions about bears from photographers, hikers, hunters, musicians, McMillion, a cook, a cafeteria manager, park rangers, and the occasional wildlife biologist. In McMillion's book, everybody's opinion counts, and they all carry equal weight. In practical terms, this means barroom biologists provide 95 percent of the information about bears found in Mark of the Grizzly. It's up to you to separate fact from fallacy--which is a job for an expert.

In one story, a grizzly injures Dan Boccia, an engineer who designs sewer and water systems for small villages in Alaska. McMillion doesn't bother to ask a biologist about the incident. Instead, McMillion offers his thoughts on the encounter ("The bear made up its mind: Boccia needed a lesson.") Boccia puts in his two cents worth. Both men are entitled to their opinions, but if the sewer system for a small village in Alaska stopped working, would you ask a bear biologist to diagnose the problem? Would you ask a newspaper reporter for an analysis of what went wrong?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A well researched, well written, page turner.
Review: This book is a real page turner and I found myself staying up late into the night several nights in a row. Scott McMillion's research is thourough and for that reason I can highly recommend this book to anyone curious about Grissly Bears and human/bear interaction. I have read other Bear books but Scotts is by far the best one I have read so far. It is adrenaline pumping stories with a mission to teach common sense and compassion. I love to hike and camp all over the west and I feel much better prepared to do all that with more awareness and enjoyment and much less fear. This can only work for the good of the bears and the humans who wish to enjoy the same territories.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great, horrifying read and educational view of grizzlies.
Review: This book is a real page turner, facinating the reader with each horrifying story. If you travel on foot in grizzly country, this book will keep you alert and on your toes the next time that you venture out. Not a stupid "When Animals Attack" piece of sensationalized garbage, this book educates on the possible causes of bear attacks. Written from a conservationist, but by no means tree-hugging or bleeding heart, point of view, the book inspires a deep respect and admiration - and a health dose of fear - for these powerful animals.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Please don't hurt the bears.
Review: This book is the least interesting of the three of this theme I recently read. The author seems more interested in pushing his bear rights agenda than simply telling a story. He blames humans for most of the attacks. We are also told repeatedly that bear spray is the most effective method of stopping a bear attack. (Never mind that in a few of the tales the spray proved absolutely worthless.). In all but two or three of the stories we are reminded how guns would have been absolutely useless in preventing the attack. In the few stories where a gun saved the attack victims' life, the author simply ends the story with no commentary. The first tale, I thought was completely rediculous. I got the feeling that the two female victims wanted to go out into the woods to give the attacking bear a big hug, after all, they were trespassing in the bears' back yard. Overall, I guess I enjoyed this book, but I was expecting to read about real-life adventures, not a bunch of reasons humans should tolerate bear attacks. If you are of the type that blame man for all that is wrong with the world, you may enjoy this book. If you want exciting tales of animal attacks without the editorializing, try one of Larry Kaniut"s books, such as "Danger Stalks the Land".

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: *OUTSTANDING*
Review: This book opened my mind. I live in Black bear country, never gave it a thought to those magnificent animals until I read this book. "Wanna be terrified? get this book and read it at MIDNIGHT."

The Canadian.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: UNBELIEVABLE!
Review: THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST REALISTIC AND MIND TINGLING BOOKS I HAVE EVER READ!FROM BEGINNING TO END,THIS STORY KEEPS YOU ON THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTS!IT CAPTIVATES YOU AND PULLS YOU IN TO THE TERROR THEY EXPERIENCED!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Riveting and full of respect for grizzlies
Review: This may not be the best book to take with you to read in bear country. Better: Read it at home before you leave and give it time to sink in. The real value of this book comes not in the gripping narrative of bear attacks all over the West and Alaska, although the graphic stories hold your attention like a vise, but in the respect it generates for perhaps the most respectable wild animal of our time. McMillion presents a point of view without clobbering the reader with it, so the considered reader can come away from the book not with a fear of grizzlies but with a healthy respect for them.


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