Tourists fend off terrifying bear by screaming in its face

There's a catchy phrase used to remind people about what to do when a bear charges you.

It goes: "If it's black, attack. If it's brown, lay down."

Well, it seems these tourists clearly didn't get the memo.

During a recent guided tour in Alaska, a group of people were charged by a brown bear.

But instead of hitting the deck, or even hitting the legs, they yelled in its face and successfully scared it off.

Footage from the scary ordeal is absolutely wild and has gone viral online – many people struggling to work out whether the group was extremely brave or incredibly stupid.

Either way, they're alive.

Earlier this month, Scenic Bear Viewing was leading a guided bear tour in Chinitna Bay on Lake Clark’s Cook Inlet.

But the tour took a wild turn when tourists noticed a brown bear start charging towards them in the distance.

Getting closer and closer, the creature was travelling at huge speeds in order to make up so much ground that quickly.

As it approached, you could hear the slight panic in some peoples' voices, before one guy emerged from the group to stop it in its tracks.

The bloke, donning a bucket hat and holding a camera - now known to be Martin Boland - walked straight towards the animal and screamed in its face.

The bear was clearly scared by the noises and veered off course, thankfully missing the group by just a few metres.

Incredibly, the lad leading the yelling just casually strolled back to the group following the petrifying ordeal.

Boss.

Scenic Bear Viewing posted the close call onto social media where it instantly exploded, racking up millions of views.

"Never run from a charging bear, even though your instinct is to run. This is a bluff charge. They are just trying to get you to run. They have a natural chase instinct," the caption read.

"Don't get close to bears in the wild. Make sure you have an experienced guide with you! We do not get closer than 50 yards. These bears came to us.

"We have been Bear guiding for over 10 years. This happened a few days ago, and it's not the first time. We are trained exactly for this situation. We are a professional bear guide operation. Although we will try to avoid this at all costs."

When the footage started doing the rounds online, the hero himself emerged to tell the story in his own words.

"Bluff charges are rare and this is the first time by an adult male for me," Martin Boland told FTW Outdoors.

"It’s usually just the smaller sub-adult bears. It’s mating season so he was not from this area.

"This was a bear I had never seen before. He was just in the area to mate with the females and move on up the coast. He may have not seen humans before this encounter. The female bears in this area we see every year and they know we are not a threat. You can see in the video the female brown bear doesn’t care about us and is digging up clams."