Bear Spray Failed, a .357 Magnum Worked: The Irony of a National Park Service Video
An official National Park Video shows double meaning, irony, and tragedy in screenshots.
On July 25, 2014, Brian D. Murphy used both bear spray and a .357 magnum revolver to stop a charging grizzly bear. He probably shot the bear in the face. The shot stunned the bear, stopped the charge, but did not kill the bear. Murphy shot the bear after it had charged through the bear spray. Murphy helped keep other hikers safe. He immediately told park rangers about the incident.
All the physical evidence was consistent with Murphy’s account. The bear had left by the time the rangers arrived, but blood and hair and DNA confirmed it was a grizzly bear. Murphy was not charged by the investigating officers. His firearm was not taken.
Two months later, he was charged by officers of the National Park Service. Murphy hired an attorney who took the case before the local federal judge and the local Assistant United States Attorney. The case was dismissed with predjudice on October 9, 2014, meaning Murphy could not be charged again.
Murphy’s case made the local media and was widely known as a case where bear spray failed and a .357 magnum shot to the face worked.
On November 19, 2017, Glacier National Park created an official video titled: Using Bear Spray. The video is 2 minutes and 39 seconds long. According to the description, it is in the public domain.
The same two actors are seen in at least one other video where the uniformed actor is identified as “Ranger Simpson” and the non-uniformed actor identified as “Buddy”. They star in a series of videos created in 2017. Sam Simpson identifies himself as a ranger with seven years experience. The video was written and produced by Scott Holmes. Scott Holmes is an independent music composer who also contracts nature films. A year after these videos were created, Scott Holmes Music was created in Scotland, UK.
It would be difficult to believe the park rangers were not intimately familiar with the Brian Murphy case. It seems likely why they were laughing at the obvious double meaning at the end of the video. Maybe this comes from a lack of knowledge by Scott Holmes or it may be intentional. It could easily have been avoided by using the word “spray” to substitute for “shoot”. The text at the end of the video could have been “if you spray a bear in the face.”
In the Brian Murphy experience, bear spray failed to stop the bear. A shot from a .357 magnum to the face at 7-10 feet worked extremely well. With this context, it is easy to see why the statements are funny in a video on how to use bear spray.
The irony is palpable. A video showing how to use bear spray, saying it only is effective with a (gun)shot to the face of the bear.
The screen shots are from Glacier National Park Video. The text in screenshots is in the original video. In the outtake, the crew laughed at the above statements, as shown in the screenshot from the outtake below:
The phrases, funny in 2017, when considering the Brian Murphy case, reflect tragedy in 2026.
In 2026, Anthoni Pollio appears to have been killed by a grizzly bear on May 3, 2026, close to the same spot where Brian Murphy stopped a grizzly bear charge with his .357 magnum in July of 2014. Both were on the Mount Brown trail. The trail is only 4 miles long.
Would Pollio have acted differently if the National Park Service were not so intent on promoting the use of bear spray? Would Anthoni Pollio still be alive today? We can never know.
In North America, as of May, 2026, there have been nine people who were killed by bears after bear spray was used as a defense against the bears. There do not appear to be any people killed by bears when a handgun was present and fired against bears in North America. One person who fired a .22 caliber handgun in defense against a polar bear in the Svalbard archipelago was killed in 1996.
In November 2017, the statistical evidence supporting the use of handguns in defense against bears had only been building for a year. In 2026, the statistical evidence is well developed.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
