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The story
On September 5, a 61-year-old man out picking mushrooms in the mountains of Takato, Ina City, Nagano Prefecture, was attacked by a bear. According to local TV reports, the man grappled with the bear for about five minutes, suffered cuts to his face and body, but made it down the mountain under his own power and is not in life-threatening condition. The bear is said to have been about the size of a large dog. On 5ch, the thread quickly filled with trivia about bear ecology and strength — the difference between Asian black bears and brown bears, whether bear bells actually work, cases of people fending bears off bare-handed — often veering into lighthearted riffs referencing video games and anime.
9/5 (Sat) 20:39
NBS Nagano Broadcasting News
On September 5, in the mountains of Takato, Ina City, Nagano Prefecture, a man out picking mushrooms was attacked and injured by a bear. He is reported to be in stable condition, not life-threatening.
Source: topics.smt.docomo.ne.jp / original article here
What people said
I don't think I could beat my own cat if it went all-out.
When my toy poodle was a puppy, I had to fight it to establish the pecking order — that was pretty scary.
I fought a hamster once too, and lost by a narrow margin.
You're the ref next round
and there's no playing dead this time (a pun on 死んだふり 'play dead' vs. レフリー 'referee')
Guess age catches up with everyone… (Takamura: the near-invincible boxer from the manga Hajime no Ippo)
Nah, that's wrong — Takamura would've let it go out of mercy.
(´・ω・｀) So which team are you on — mushrooms or bamboo shoots?
Did he lie about his age to get the job?
Never heard of post-retirement rehire? Sounds like you're out of touch with how society works.
Isn't he embellishing a bit? lol
In an emergency, the body is wired to ramp up brain activity to boost your odds of survival.
If your brain's firing at twice its normal speed, time would naturally feel like it's passing at less than half speed — that's probably what happened here.
The reporting is way overblown.
Talk tough all you want, you'd still be pissing yourself the second it showed up.
Are you underestimating a male boar? Its tusks will slice open the artery in your leg and you'll bleed out.
Most people actually killed in these incidents are elderly grandmothers out gathering wild vegetables.
Bears are strong.
Google 'bear strength' and you'll see — apparently their punch force hits several tons.
When I wasn't feeling well, I stumbled across a cheap direct-from-forager listing on Yahoo Auctions and bought it half as a joke, just for the story. It turned out incredibly delicious, and my health improved like crazy.
The seller seemed to be a master forager — I was so grateful — but they must have retired, because I haven't seen the listing since.
I tried to recreate it by buying something similar at the supermarket, but it was awful, overpriced, and did nothing for my health.
I figure that was a miracle I happened to stumble into, but seriously, real deep-mountain bounty is on another level. It felt like it could add years to your life. Probably only obtainable in true backcountry spots nobody else goes to — you won't find that flavor even at a fancy restaurant.
That's a huge, wild swing of a bear hook —
unless you're literally sticking your face out saying 'go on, hit me,'
there's something wrong with you if that actually connects.
Once you add 'fought a bear' to his resume
he starts looking like the protagonist of The Fable lol (a manga about a hitman)
Like I said above, bears vary a lot individually — especially in temperament. They sell bear bells, right? Those work because the sound scares bears off. That tells you how timid some of them are. Turns out there are even ones that don't flinch at gunfire, let alone a bell.
But whether it's a timid one or a bold one, a bear going all-out hits with several tons of force — so forget legendary delinquents, forget world-record holders, even a car body couldn't take that, let alone a person. Though humans are way ahead in brainpower, so with weapons a human wins hands down.
By the way, nobody really knows why some bears are so skittish, or why the skittish ones seem to be vanishing around the Akita area, but one theory is that as hunters retire and dwindle in number, so does the population of timid bears — the idea being that bears used to sense hunters shooting other bears from kilometers away (a bear's nose beats even a dog's and can pick up activity kilometers off) and that's what kept them jumpy.
Only if the large dog was actually trying to kill you.
For wild animals, even a moderate injury can be a death sentence,
so unless their life is genuinely on the line, they won't take that kind of risk.
The '5-minute fight' probably includes staring each other down, not five straight minutes of punching and grappling.
Even boxers spend plenty of time not throwing punches, and that time still counts as part of the match.
Do bears even eat mushrooms?
The old man takes 15 damage!
The old man attacks!
Dealt 3 damage to the Brawny Bear! (classic RPG battle-screen text, à la Dragon Quest)
It's frustrating, bear (・(ｪ)・）
There's a hungry child waiting, bear (・(ｪ)・）
Don't you want to feed them something good, bear? (・(ｪ)・） (a bear-emoticon copypasta where every line ends in 'bear' as a verbal tic)
Mushrooms aren't even that great though.
But put a human in a chain-link ring against a fully grown adult bear, and there's no way the human comes out alive first.
There are also several documented cases of brown bears being fought off bare-handed.
Here's one from a few years back:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yEhc4sn4fPE
Well, fending them off does happen.
Cases where a bear relentlessly tries to kill are rare — it's almost always just a warning display.
They're not that aggressive an animal, and once something distracts them they'll usually just leave.
Sounds like he's gonna tell that story every single time the old guys get together lol
http://blog-imgs-46.fc2.com/n/l/i/nlife364/koda.jpg
Just getting playfully pinned under one of these would suffocate you.
Standing up on its hind legs, it's about 3 meters tall.
It's an Alaskan Kodiak brown bear.
The largest in the wild reach around 730 kg.
In captivity, an old overseas zoo once had a massive, obese brown bear that reached about 1,100 kg.
Even tigers in captivity have had a giant, obese specimen get close to 600 kg.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The bears Japan watches out for are mainly two species: the Asian black bear, found mainly on Honshu and further south, and Hokkaido’s brown bear — and the two differ greatly in size and temperament. Even in an encounter like this one, involving an Asian black bear, autumn is peak season for mushroom and wild-vegetable picking, and also the time of year when mountain accidents are most common. In the thread, opinions split over ‘how strong are bears, really’ — some compared them to little more than wild boars, while others floated claims of punch force reaching several tons, a figure with no solid backing that’s more urban legend than fact. The mix of information grounded in real bear ecology (bear bells, documented bare-handed fend-offs) with pure speculation is what defines this thread.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread ‘【（・(ｪ)・）】’Fought the bear for about 5 minutes’ — 61-year-old mushroom forager climbs down the mountain himself with cuts on his face and body, bear was about the size of a large dog, Ina City, Nagano Prefecture‘.
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