A Canadian couple fatally attacked by a grizzly bear while camping were well-versed in backcountry hiking and “took every precaution” against predatory wildlife during their backcountry trips, their friends told The Post.
Jenny Gusse and Doug Inglis, both 62, and their dog Skip, were mauled to death by a bear on Sept. 29 inside Banff National Park after their bear spray failed to thwart the beast.
“I knew Doug and Jenny were planning a trip at that time of year,” longtime pal Ron Teather, 77, said in a Friday interview.
“I think it was a very desperate bear that regarded them as food. It wasn’t interested in their food cache, it was interested in them,” Teather speculated.
The friend, of Ottawa, Canada, said he went on several backcountry canoe trips with Gusse and Inglis over the last 20 years.
“Their skill level was extremely high, they were conservative. They took every precaution they possibly could,” he said.
Teather, also a scientist, said their food had been stored away from the campsite and would have been hung from a tree. In his last conversation with Inglis, his friend informed him that he had purchased “animal-proof food storage.”
“This food cache was bear-proof,” Teather said.
Another friend, 69-year-old Matt Goettel — who met Inglis at the University of Alberta where the latter was his research technician — reiterated to The Post that the couple were highly skilled and “knew exactly what they were doing.”
“He was so careful, every time he was so careful,” Goettel, of Lethbridge, said in a phone interview Friday. “I remember him telling me about camping and how you got to go so far even to pee from your tent. He would tell me all the safety precautions.”
The experienced hikers had shared their full seven-day itinerary with Inglis’ Uncle Colin Inglis and had remained in contact with him through a satellite communication device.
Just a few hours after informing him that they were delayed on that fateful night, Colin would receive a troubling message: “Bear attack, bad,” he told the Calgary Herald.
When rescuers reached the couple’s campsite, they found the scientists’ mauled bodies, an empty can of bear spray, and their e-readers still open in their crushed tent.
Rescuers encountered the female, underweight bear they believe carried out the attack and shot it, as it was still showing signs of aggression.
“In their words, the bear was intent on killing them,” Colin told the Herald.
Inglis’ friends remembered him as an “extremely successful scientist” and a “go-getter,” who often biked to work, wore shorts during the colder months, and was “very concerned about the environment.”
“[He] was very intelligent,” Goettel said. “He was one of those people that ran. He was that type of guy.”
“Doug was an extremely, hard-working scientist,” Teather said. “He was extremely successful. And Jenny was a very, very good technician that you could rely on. They worked together for almost their entire adult lives.
Goettel said Inglis was “always” with Jenny and Teather remembers his friends as “very devoted to one another.”
Teather said he’ll also forever remember the “lots of very pleasant evenings” he spent with the couple after a long day canoeing, talking about work and future plans.
“Just a lot of comfortable evenings,” he said.