Man Vs Bear is a New Competition Show on Discovery & It’s Like Nothing You’ve Seen Before

For the first time ever, humans will enter the grizzly bear’s domain to test their strength, speed, and stamina against nature’s top predator.

For thousands of years, Grizzly Bears have stood at the top of the evolutionary food chain with unchallenged dominance. Now for the first time ever, humans will be entering the bears’ territory and take them on in a competition like never attempted. Man Vs Bear, an all-new competition series pitting humans against powerful Grizzlies, premieres Wednesday, December 4 at 9 PM ET/PT on Discovery and Discovery GO.

Each week, three Grizzlies – Bart, Honey Bump and Tank – will take on three new human competitors at their Utah sanctuary to test the limits of strength, speed and stamina. All challenges will be based on the bears’ natural instincts as well as predatory skills and actions – whether it’s engaging in a monumental game of “tug of war” or using brute force to roll giant logs.

Bart is the largest, most powerful grizzly on the mountain with no other bears matching his strength and versatility. Topping the pack as the fastest is Honey Bump, who is the only female on Bear Mountain. She brings a level of ferocity and predatory instinct that her male counterparts cannot beat. Bart and Honey Bump were orphaned as cubs and discovered by an Alaska State Trooper. After a nationwide search for a loving home for the rescued cubs, they were adopted by caretakers Doug and Lynne Seus. Along with Tank – known for his voracious appetite – the Seus’ have raised and cared for all three bears for two decades on a sprawling section of protected land.

Each episode will include five distinct challenges inspired by what bears do naturally in the wild, pushing these brave men and women to their absolute limits. In the final round, the top two competitors will come face-to-face with Bart, who stands 8 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 1,400 pounds. The human competitor who earns the most points of the day will be named champion.

A Bear’s World: Behind-The-Scenes Of Man Vs Bear

The competitions for Man Vs Bear were designed around the exercise routines they regularly follow – a combination of encouraging natural Grizzly instincts and actions.

But the competition isn’t over yet. At the end of the season, the top three competitors with the most points will return one more time for the super-human showdown against the bears.

“Competing against bears is both scary and exciting,” said Ira, an MMA fighter and competitor from Dallas, Texas. “It’s competing against the unknown. This is a completely new challenge for me.”

Quiz: Which Man Vs Bear Grizzly Are You?

Grizzly Mountain is home to three of the strongest, fastest, and smartest bears: Bart, Honey Bump and Tank. Each bear has their own unique strength against each human challenger. Find out which bear you’d stack up against in the Man Vs Bear challenge.

The series will also include blow-by-blow commentary from on-the-ground experts Brandon Tierney and Casey Anderson.

Brandon is an Emmy Award-winning sports commentator. He’s no stranger to live sporting events – hosting game coverage for the New York Knicks and serving as a commentator for college basketball for the last 20 years.


Casey is a wildlife expert with 25 years of experience and has lived with bears nearly his entire life. After graduating college, he became a wildlife filmmaker and expert on animal biology and behavior. He’s also the founder of the Montana Grizzly Encounter and has rescued seven bears from inhumane captivity situations.

Grizzlies are extremely clever and lightning fast animals. Do these humans stand a chance? And will the humans be able to prove that they’re the ultimate predators…or simply prey?

Viewers can join the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ManVsBear and follow Discovery on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest updates.

Next Up

Caves to Condors: Uncovering Pinnacles National Park

Photographer and conservationist Ian Shive explores one of the lesser known National Parks, Pinnacles National Park, finding rare wildlife and extraordinary landscapes along the way.

Shark Week: The Podcast - What is the Status of Sharks in our Oceans?

In this season’s final episode, Luke welcomes Emmy-winning filmmaker and conservationist Shawn Heinrichs to discuss the state of sharks in the ocean. They go over how both legal and illegal fishing operations are decimating the ocean’s wildlife, what it’s like to have a hit put out on you for exposing criminal enterprises to the world, and whether or not NOAA’s data on “sustainable” fishing can really be trusted.

Shark Week: The Podcast - Do Scientists Need to Kill Sharks?

Host Luke Tipple welcomes two guests to discuss how researchers can kill sharks in the name of science – and whether they need to at all. The first is Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, shark researcher and founder of Atlantic Shark Expeditions, and an expert on data-gathering in the field. He’s followed by explorer Fred Buyle, a world-record-breaking freediver whose innovative methods of shark tagging are explored. Plus, our researcher Sierra tells us about how a 50-year study changed our understanding of tiger sharks – and much of the work wasn’t even done by scientists.

Shark Week: The Podcast - Shipwrecked & Surrounded by Sharks

This week, we do things a little differently, as Shark Week’s Luke Tipple invites Adventure Aaron into the podcast studio to talk about his incredible near-death experience on the open water. Adventure Aaron gets into what it takes to circumnavigate the world in an ocean rowboat, what it’s like to stare eye-to-eye with an oceanic white tip that probably wants you for lunch, and everything else that happened to him when his boat was capsized, and he was lost by himself at sea.

Shark Week: The Podcast - Do You Have the Guts to Be a Shark Handler?

Host Luke Tipple welcomes a pair of divers – Leigh Cobb and Josh Eccles – who have taken their passion for sharks and turned it into a dangerous career. They explore what it takes to swim with sharks for a living, then go into common myths and facts on what to do in the open water – if you ever come face to face with a shark. Plus, our researcher Sierra drops by with a new species of shark discovered in the freezing depths of the ocean.

There’s a Lot You Don’t Know About Sharks

But in the meantime, here are some fin-tastic facts you probably didn’t know about sharks.

Shark Week: The Podcast - Undiscovered Sharks and the State of the Ocean

Luke Tipple invites “The Lost Shark Guy,” Dr. Dave Ebert, who is personally responsible for finding dozens of shark species that were either previously unknown to science or thought to be extinct. He and Luke discuss why shark populations are a direct indicator of how healthy the ocean is, how to find undiscovered sharks, and why diversity in sharks is essential for marine life.

Shark Week: The Podcast - How Did a Shark Encounter Survivor Become an Advocate for Their Protection?

Shark Week’s Luke Tipple welcomes professional photographer Mike Coots, who lost his leg to a tiger shark attack when he was only 18. But after his horrific injury, he came to love sharks, and became a lifelong advocate for their safety. Luke and Mike discuss his career, his love for photographing sharks, and how to positively approach the big life-changing moments that can happen to any of us.

Shark Week: The Podcast - Lights! Camera! TEETH! Making Shark Docs

Shark Week’s Luke Tipple is joined by longtime filmmaker and Emmy-award-winner Andy Casagrande. He’s filmed and appeared in dozens of shark documentaries, and might just be the most prolific shark cinematographer in history. He talks with Luke about his career, the contentious term “shark porn,” and the future of the industry. And at the end, our researcher Sierra talks about the unprecedented ways that sharks are currently endangered.

Shark Week: The Podcast - Did Alien Tech Crash-Land into the Ocean?

Host Luke Tipple is joined this week by renowned Harvard professor, Dr. Avi Loeb, who recently led a deep-sea expedition to discover if evidence for advanced alien life crash-landed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014. They discuss the recent Congressional UFO hearings, how the last seventy years of research into extraterrestrial life has been potentially misguided, and the challenges of searching for tiny objects on the bottom of the ocean.