Sister lives up at Pigeon Forge, works for a lodge, idiots despite all kinds of warning signs feed them, try to pet them (kids) take photos, leave trash on their cabin porches, and Bears are dumpster divers.
Not allowed to hunt them. So if one bites a stupid kid or visitor it gets put down, not just relocated. You provide a convenient food source you will keep finding them, and with man growing his space, they have less places to go to hunt the natural foods they’d eat.
Ditto goes for deer coming across a hwy from a small wooded area.
We live on the opposite end of TN, Atoka, just outside Memphis, rural, so we see armadillos, possums, skunks, snakes, tics, moles in our yards or as road kill. Once in while a deer.
Yep...Tourists in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg don’t pay any attention to the warning signs...I was raised in Townsend...Just down the park border about 15 miles...