Found a 1/2 mile with all those people looking for him sounds suspicious, until you realize that these NC woods are thick with treacherous terrain, hurricane flooded swamps, and lots of thorny foliage. I don’t know about the bear, but I can believe that it’s possible all these people missed him in the woods.
600 people on line, with 6 feet between them and 2 feet for the space they occupy is a search swath nearly a mile wide. That was the old technique up until the 1970s. That “lawnmower” would have found him in the time it would take them to walk a mile or two, and then turn back on the swath right beside it.
But now professional teams cannot stand “volunteers” and find a million ways to get them “out of the way”.