Samuel Ives
Posted on 06/19/2007 10:15:47 PM PDT by george76
The grandfather of a boy killed by a black bear while camping blamed the U.S. Forest Service Tuesday for not getting the word out about an earlier attack.
Before 11-year-old Sam Ives was attacked and killed Sunday night, the same bear had attacked campers in the same spot hours earlier.
Eldon Ives is the boy's grandfather. He told reporters Tuesday that he hoped the Forest Service will do a better job of protecting campers after Sam's death.
He said the violent way his grandson was killed is a sorrow that will never heal.
Sam Ives would have been a 6th grader this fall.
He was camping with his family in American Fork Canyon on Father's Day when a black bear dragged him from their tent and killed him.
Okay my turn to be stupid. I know my Remington 870 12 guage with a slug will do the trick, but if you had to depend on a pistol what would it be?
6” .357 S&W with +Ps will do the job if you hit the beast in the head or through the lungs.
This was apparently a repeat offender. A problem bear.
Problem bears, and other such critters, tend to actually be problem campers. Not that it's necessarily true in this case, but those who get munched, crunched, or otherwise disturbed by the fiercer woodland beasties are usually doing something to make said encounter inevitable.
Bear Mauls and Kills Infant in New York State
A bear killed an infant Monday afternoon as it tried to drag the girl into the woods, officials said. The baby, Ester Schwimmer of Brooklyn, was snatched out of her stroller by the bear at the bungalow colony, police said. Fallsburg is about 70 miles northwest of New York City.
Isaac Abraham, a community leader from Williamsburg in Brooklyn, said witnesses told him the 5-month-old girl was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital upon arrival.
The baby was in a stroller in front of the porch with members of her family, said Mike Fraser, a state Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman. The bear grabbed the stroller and the child, Fraser said. The child was knocked out of the stroller and the bear tried to drag her into the woods, Fraser said
Associated Press
August 19, 2002
I think the Forest Service may have been at fault here. In the exact spot the bear had been after other campers. They should have warned campers in the area. And, even if this guy had had a gun, it happened so quickly he wouldn’t have been able to react in time to save his step-son. He thought from the cut in the tent that a human had done it with a knife. I feel awful for this family. Everytime I think about this, I just want to cry.
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-bear19jun19
Excerpt...
Forest Service officials said it was the same 300-pound black bear that harassed another group of campers in the same spot earlier Sunday.
Kurt Francom said his son, Jake, was kicked in the head through a tent wall by a bear that clamped his jaws on a pillow and carried it off.
“It could have been my boy,” said Francom, a school custodian.
Samuel Ives
“Does anyone know if there was food in the tent?”
Apparently.
The bear had attacked another tent in the same spot earlier in the day—did they have food in their tent too?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/19/AR2007061901446.html
Excerpt:
Sam Ives was snatched from inside a tent that was a Father’s Day gift to his stepfather, Tim Mulvey. The grandfather said there was no food in the tent to attract a bear.
“Something’s dragging me!” the boy screamed as he was pulled by his sleeping bag late Sunday in the Uinta National Forest, about 30 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
The boy was found mauled to death about 400 yards away. The bear was fatally shot about 12 hours after the attack.
Stephen Herrerro who wrote the authoritative “Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance” recommends 12 guage shotgun or .44 mag for pistol. I suppose in grizzly country .454 Casul would be better.
You might want to read the book as well. He’s pretty much the expert on the subject.
When I go fishing up here in Alaska and I know there are smaller black bears around I carry a 10mm Glock with some hot hollow point reloads.
When I actually go Brown or Grizzly bear hunting I carry a 375 H&H and a .44 Redhawk with max hard solid loads, tracking bears is easy in Alaska, we just look for bear scat with shiny little bells in it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1846613/posts
Excerpt:
Girl Scout Escapes From Bear Trying to Pull Her Out of Tent in New Jersey
June 7, 2007
WHITE HAVEN, Pa. — A bear tried to pull a Girl Scout out of her tent during a camping trip, the girl and scout officials said.
Celeste Tietz, 11, said Wednesday that she managed to grab a tent pole and slide out of her sleeping bag as the bear was tugging at it early Sunday morning at Camp Mosey Wood.
People always say thing in anger. When heads cool down he will see that to blame others for an accident will not solve anything.
Not sure I agree with that, though I wouldn't "blame" bears either.
Bear populations are up in many regiions of the U.S., as is the human population. Simple math makes encounters more likely.
Add a dry spring and a hot summer and you'll have a reduced natural food supply for the bears, which tends to drive them into human territories to get food.
I spent a summer touring and camping out west several years ago and it was a very active bear season. No coincidence that things got worse (in terms of encounters) as the summer went on, or that it also was a big year for forest fires.
Personally it was a bit unnerving, because I'd planned on tent camping most of the time but then I'd hear bears snorting around the tent at night all too often (in Teton NP they were licking the campsite picnic table at 2AM).
It was the same pretty much everywhere in the northwest, with big fires in Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, and the bears were being fored out of the mountains. The fires were so bad that the USFS was hiring crew right off the street in Kalispell, you just had to pass the physical test.
Went up to Alaska and things calmed down with the one exception of a griz sow and cub waltzing through the campground at 4PM.
Back in Wyoming towrd the end of summer it had gotten worse, with the bears so desperate/brazen that they were raiding tents for food at Jenny Lake *during the daytime*. One guy broke into the Jenny Lake campground manager's trailer through a screened window and stole a bag of potato chips. The trap went up the next day and he was nabbed within hours.
Just reading some of the more recent black bear encounter/attack/death stories on FR. It’s happening all over the country—NJ, WI, CO, TN, FL, UT, PA, NY.
Forest Service is blaming it on campers in general:
Uinta National Forest blames deadly bear attack on dirty campers
http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=0b2d3260-2ebd-4b82-8125-74e18c3a1a36
UINTA NATIONAL FOREST - A heap of garbage with half eaten food stuffed into a fire ring at a campsite in American Fork Canyon illustrates what some campers leave behind and what officials with the Uinta National Forest Service claim triggered the bear attack that killed 11-year old Samuel Ives.
“It’s usually the person who pays the price did not cause the problem, it’s prior camp experiences the black bear has had with dirty campers,” said Uinta National Forest Service District Ranger John Logan. “Wildlife fear humans and stay away from humans. It’s just when they have these food familiarities that we have problems.”
Around a half a million black bears roam the forests in North America but they have killed humans only 29 times in recorded history. More people die from spider bites than from black bear attacks.
But Logan said that once the bears experience the easy of leftovers they lose their fear of humans. “Maybe a potato that you didn’t want and threw in the bushes, or a marshmallow that fell into the fire pit. These things all become attractants to bears.” Logan said.
Less than a month ago a 250-pound black bear wandered through yards and basements in Jeremy Ranch looking for a fast meal. No one got hurt but according to the Forest Service the bear now poses a threat to humans and will likely need to be hunted down and killed.
An examination of the stomach contents of the bear shot by officers in American Fork Canyon confirmed it mauled the Ives boy. If they had not found the killer bear officials said they would have closed off sections of the forest to campers until they did.
Rangers did post warning signs around the campsites but admit they would have taken more precautions if they had known the seriousness of the bear activity that had occurred before the deadly attack. “It was reported as only a brush by,” Logan said. “Not the detail of what that really was.”
The forest supervisor will review the actions taken up to the deadly attack but said a change in the habits of campers will do more to protect people from bears than any change in division policy.
In my travels I have seen numerous NF camp sites with signage “closed due to bear activity”, but just up the road
the “experimental fee area” camp site is open for business. No bears there, no sir.
Despite this horrible, horrible tragedy, absolutely no good whatsoever will come from going after the Forest Service, twould only enrich lawyers and undoubtedly screw up camping in ways yet unfathomed.
Firearms are not allowed in (most?) National Parks. National Forest is a completely different operation. They may well have been completely legal to carry, and use, firearms.
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660223882,00.html
Friday, May 25, 2007
Warning on bears in Utah areas issued
Three encounters between black bears and humans in northern and central Utah within the past two weeks prompted Division of Wildlife Resources officials to issue a warning Thursday urging people living or vacationing in the areas to take safety measures.
In one encounter, a bear managed to enter a cabin in Bryant Fork, near Heber City. When the bear showed no fear of humans, officials killed it, a DWR press release said.
In another encounter, a bear had to be trapped after it was seen digging through a Dumpster. The third bear was seen at a distance and safely scampered off.
DWR officials ask that campers and vacationers keep camps clean and avoid feeding bears. Bear encounters can occur anywhere in Utah, the press release said.
To download a pamphlet about what to do in case of a bear encounter, visit
http://www.wildlife.utah.gov/bear.
“I think the Forest Service may have been at fault here.”
I really don’t think there’s a pressing need to assess “fault” though people always want to do so. This was the wilderness, there are bears and people there, and that’s that.
It’s very possible USFS didn’t have time to respond in the normal manner. Both incidents happened on the same day, so it may be that the first group packed out and reported it hours later, but unfortunately before the USFS had time to take much action while the second group had already settled in.
I’ve found National Parks staff to be diligent but bureaucratic, while USFS rangers are pretty much on top of things. I don’t think we’re talking about slackers.
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