Bear Spray Controversy...

I'd probably guess that almost anyone who ever has to actually use their bear spray for a grizzly attack is going to want the absolute longest duration spray possible. I mean think about it ... you just became aware that a grizzly is in the area because of some noise, but you have no idea where and how far away he is yet. It takes a second for you to hone in on where the noise is coming from, and another second to figure out what is going on. After these two seconds have passed, you become aware that the grizzly is actually charging at you (I imagine this will be a huge shock for most people!). You happen to be really fast on the draw, and have your bear spray out & ready to shoot after another second has passed. BTW, 3 seconds reaction time would be overly optimistic for most people I'm guessing. Now say the grizzly happens to be 50 feet away at this point ... I can pretty much guarantee that you will start spraying right away, and not wait for the bear to get within 25 feet (the sweet zone for the spray to start working). Having 6 seconds of spray in the tank is the only way that the bear will move within the spray circle, and hopefully stop his charge. A charging bear isn't coming at you in slow motion after all, so you'd have to one very cool customer to actually wait until the fast charging bear moved into the 25 foot zone before spraying.

That all said, I had two instances this year where we surprised a grizzly while in the woods ... the 3 seconds I'm accounting for above would have been way too long for me to have my bear spray out & ready to use, so if I was dealing with an attacking grizzly (instead of a 'running away' grizzly for these two cases) it would be literally a split second decision to forget about bear spray and go for plan D ... play dead.