Posted on 07/05/2011 9:42:51 AM PDT by george76
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. -- A late-night bear attack left a camper scratched and shaken near South Lake Tahoe over the weekend.
The bear ripped open the camper's tent and
(Excerpt) Read more at ksbw.com ...
Large bodied predators have a term for campers in tents:
Snak-N-A-Sack.
When gunpowder speaks, beasts obey.
Had the camper been armed, Bad Bruin Behavior (BBB) could have been avoided. And a nice rug could have been possible.
If people decide to bring food inside their tent, a visit by a bear should come as no surprise.
Sometimes people are the food.
“Scratched”, I’ll bet!
NOT Armed = Suicide wish or Insanity!!
Very seldom with the Black Bear. They deserve respect, but are nothing like a Grizzly. While they can become aggressive, they typically are timid scavengers.
I have lots of experience with these types of bear, having spent a good portion of my youth backpacking throughout the Sierras. I've had bear encounters, including a time when a black bear walked into my camp in the middle of the day and walked off with my fishing bait. In that case, I stupidly left my supplies unattended for two minutes and chased him off by banging on a pan.
I've seen these type of bear break car windows in parked vehicles in order to acquire food. While I know over the years there have been a couple of reports of a bad confrontation, these bear are easily dealt with by just being smart, and using the food storage devices located throughout the Sierras.
Yes some of the bears get conditioned to associate people with food. Its nearly always the fault of stupid people.
The black bears are becoming more common here in suburban
King Co WA. A cub was hit by a car on the freeway
near Bellevue, and a grizzly was photgraphed
off the North Cascades Hwy a couple of weeks ago.
Kind of neat that we have bears nearby, but they are
big enough and hungry enough to be a pain if one is
careless with food and garbage.
He may have been armed. The story is short on details.
Since he was sleeping when the bear swiped through his tent
and scratched him, being armed wouldn’t have prevented it.
It would help after that of course, if the bear continued his attack.
The guy says he didn’t have any food in the tent. Don’t know if his clothes had food odors or if he ever had food in the tent.
This is a poorly written story. Was the guy scratched accidentally or did the bear actually attack him?
As the question is one of intent, and the bear was not interviewed, I will forgive the reporter for not asking.
More people are killed by black bears than by grizzlys, probably because there are so many more black bears than grizzlys.
The problem is that many large predators, over protected in many areas, have not learned to fear man. Many have learned to associate man with food. Hence, the increasing number of bear, lion, and even rarer, wolf, attacks.
A little bit longer, the Yellowstone wolf packs will be seen fighting off the repopulated Sierra mountain lions over who gets to eat the remainders of the grizzly bear snack-in-a-bag meals (er, campers) now over-populating the high country.
The story of the black bear who travelled 50 miles to visit the Virginia Beach oceanfront back in April......
http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_news/va_beach/%22shadow-the-bear%22-released-
I want to hear the Bear’s side of the story.
We don’t have bears around here, but I have had a raccoon or two try to get into my tent...yes, food and stuff inside. I don’t know who scared the other more.
A neighbor family had a badger that would camp in their outhouse in the winter. They’d whack the heck out of the side of the outhouse with a bat before entering. One time, unnoticed, the badger didn’t exit. The neighbor did, and quickly too.
Kinda like a wilderness happy meal for wild predators.
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