The small, brown patch some 40 yards off the trail caught Don Witulski's eye as he headed toward Ptarmigan Tunnel.

It was a bright, beautiful sunny Friday morning in Glacier National Park, and the Coeur d'Alene man was doing what he loves: An easy run from the Many Glacier campground on the park's east side to Ptarmigan Falls, then Ptarmigan Lake, and finally, the tunnel, about six miles in all.

He had slowed to walk for a stretch and was singing loudly to alert any bears to his presence before spotting that brown patch, which looked out of place for some reason.

"I didn't know what it was," Witulski said.

Until it started wiggling ever so slightly.

As he focused, it clicked what this brown patch was: A small grizzly bear, a cub, digging in the ground.

It was about then the cub stood up and looked at this intruder.

It was about then another cub stood, no longer hidden by the brush, and started sniffing the air.

It was about then Don Witulski realized he could be in trouble.

And when the cubs began bawling for momma, he knew she wasn't far.

"At that point, I got the pepper spray out," he said. "I figured the sow was close."

He figured right.

The mother bear suddenly appeared between the man and her cubs, about 35 yards from this unwanted visitor, and began making the "woofing" sound such bears make when not happy.

"You could tell she was irritated," Witulski said.

He began backing up, and made it around a bend on the path so he was out of the bear's sight. Still, after 20 years or so of trail running at Glacier, and having read extensively about grizzlies, he knew he wasn't safe yet, not if the bear charged.

It did.

He heard it, still woofing, and heard the paws of the estimated 250-pound bear pound the dirt as it thundered his direction.

He saw it come around the corner, moving with such speed and power he knew he had no chance to outrun her or even get to a tree. And playing dead, as some recommend, just seemed a lousy idea.

"It was unbelievable to see how fast she was," he said. "She was coming right at me."

The sow was howling, the cubs were bawling as he readied his spray and started to squeeze the trigger as she was 40 feet away. But before he was done, the sow skidded to a stop and as quickly as she charged, retreated to her cubs.

Together, they headed downhill, crashed through the brush, and disappeared.

She had made her point.

It was a bluff charge, as some bears like to do, to scare off any threats.

"I just stood there for awhile and kept my spray out," Witulski said.

A few minutes later, convinced the bear and her cubs were gone, he finished his hike, then reported what happened to rangers, who temporarily closed the popular trail.

"Which to me was the right thing to do," he said.

Witulski hasn't been the only one to have a bear encounter at Glacier recently.

Jack Hanna, a TV host and zookeeper, was with his wife and other hikers on their way back from Grinnell Glacier on July 24 when they came around a corner and spotted a sow and two cubs coming toward them on a narrow trail, a cliff to their left, a drop-off to their right.

Like Witulski, they slowly backed up to a clearing and went off the trail as far as they could. The sow and one cub passed. The second cub, estimated at 125 pounds, turned toward them.

Hanna pulled out his pepper spray and pulled the trigger. The first time, the wind stopped the spray. The second, the bear kept coming. With the can nearly empty, he shot the rest of the spray into the bear's face. It turned back.

That weekend, there were three other reports of people using their pepper spray to deter bears, said Amy Vanderbilt, spokeswoman for Glacier National Park.

"We did have an unusual week," she said in a phone interview Tuesday.

It is normal for people to see grizzlies from a distance at Glacier, but not normal for such close encounters on trails.

Vanderbilt said it was a late spring at Glacier and the huckleberries are not yet ripe, so the bears could be coming down and looking for food.

She said hikers need to be alert and remember they are in bear country. It's a good idea to carry bear spray, have it easily accessible, and know how to use it. Key, too, is traveling in groups and making noise such as talking loudly.

Trail running is discouraged because it can lead to surprising a sow and cubs, she said.

"If bears know people are in close proximity, 99.99 percent of the time they will avoid the encounter," she said.

Bear encounters

There have been numerous incidents of bears going after, even killing people in Montana this year, and most have resulted in the bear then being euthanized.

• Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks officials euthanized the female grizzly responsible for injuring two people and killing a Grand Rapids, Mich., man at a campground near Cooke City last week, while the three yearling cubs were sent to a zoo.

The attacks were at Soda Butte Campground in the Gallatin National Forest, on the northeastern border of Yellowstone National Park.

Under Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee Guidelines, an agreement among eight state and federal agencies, it is advised that grizzly bears that display unprovoked aggressive behavior toward humans, or that cause substantial human injury, including loss of human life, be removed from the population.

• A grizzly bear killed a Wyoming man on June 17 outside Yellowstone National Park, apparently just hours after researchers trapped and tranquilized the animal, and later released it.

The attack happened in the same place where two researchers with the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team had examined a large adult male grizzly earlier that day.

It's believed the hiker was attacked by the bear not long after it woke from tranquilizers. He was neither armed nor carrying bear spray.

Two days after the attack, trackers followed a signal from a radio collar on the grizzly and shot the bear from a helicopter. DNA tests confirmed that the bear killed was the grizzly that attacked the man.

• A bear that injured a Washington man was trapped and euthanized in June. Its cub was also killed.

The female black bear bit through the side of a tent Monday, June 14, at a campsite just southwest of St. Regis.

"We caught her, and her cub was also up a tree nearby," said Jeffrey Darrah, Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Captain for region two.

Darrah said that they also euthanized the cub as it would no longer have its mother to provide care and wouldn't have survived.

"Sadly, we had to put them both down," Darrah said.

• Yellowstone National Park staff members captured and euthanized a black bear that had been frequenting campgrounds and picnic areas.

Park employees captured the bear Wednesday morning. The adult female weighed 100 pounds and was estimated to be 4 or 5 years old.

A park news release says the bear had gotten into human food and on one occasion ripped open an occupied tent at Bridge Bay Campground. She had also been to the Gull Point Picnic Area and Lake Village.

Park staff attempted to scare the bear away from the developed areas by shooting bean bag rounds and cracker shells. The park captured the bear after that didn't work.

Bears and mankind

Idaho Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist Wayne Wakkinnen said the incidents between bear and man were "a series of unfortunate circumstances that brought that all together."

The bears in some cases were malnourished, and it's a late huckleberry crop, so they're hungry and trying to find something to eat.

"Everything is late this year," Wakkinnen said.

There have been an increase in the number of complaints about black bears in yards in North Idaho, getting into trash and roaming into areas normally off-limits.

The huckleberry crop looks decent, he said, but the berries aren't ripe yet.

"I think right now, it's really a factor of the late berry crop," Wakkinnen said. "I'm hoping this hot weather we've been getting will kick things into gear."

He said that 1997 was a bad huckleberry year in North Idaho, and there were complaints throughout the summer about nuisance black bears.

"I think that's what we're seeing locally right now," he said.

Wakkinnen said he didn't know enough about the bears in the Montana attacks to venture a guess about why it happened, but did say in and near national parks like Glacier and Yellowstone, it's a numbers game.

"The more people out there, the more encounters you're going to have with bears," he said.

Witulski said that without a good huckleberry crop at Glacier, the bears might be more aggressive and searching for food, so visitors must be on alert and be prepared.

"If the berries are late, think about what the bears are doing," he said.

He wasn't surprised to have a bear charge him, not when he's been going to the million acre park for two decades and some 350 grizzlies live there.

"I knew sooner or later it was going to happen," he said.

Witulski usually carries an eight-ounce can of pepper spray, but bought a 10-ounce can before his most recent trip to Glacier.

"I'm glad I got the big can of pepper spray," he said. "I might even start taking two cans."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.