What "comes natural for a bear to survive" is to be afraid of humans.
What comes natural for humans to survive is to kill bears that kill humans.
Nature is "red in tooth and claw" but that does not mean that bears get a pass.
Posted on 04/14/2006 6:52:17 AM PDT by george76
Authorities hunted Friday for a black bear that picked up a 2-year-old boy in its mouth and mauled his mother, critically injuring them before killing the child's 6-year-old sister.
Witnesses told authorities the bear picked up the boy in its mouth while the mother and other visitors tried to fend it off with sticks and rocks, said Dan Hicks, a spokesman for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
When the bear attacked, the girl ran away, authorities said. Rescuers found the girl's body about 100 yards down the trail from the falls.
A bear was standing over her.
"Allegedly, after the rescue squad found the little girl, one of the squad members fired a shot from a small caliber handgun," Hicks said Friday.
"We don't know whether the bear was hit or not. There was no blood, but it chased it off."
In May 2000, a woman was killed by a black bear near Gatlinburg.
Glena Ann Bradley, a schoolteacher from Cosby, was attacked by two female bears when she took a walk on a trail near a Smoky Mountains campground.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
You don't get it. No sense in continuing this any longer.
What "comes natural for a bear to survive" is to be afraid of humans.
What comes natural for humans to survive is to kill bears that kill humans.
Nature is "red in tooth and claw" but that does not mean that bears get a pass.
I agree, no sense in continuing it.
I gotta go change the diaper on my two year old grandson.
We live on the edge of the Wekiva Forest here in Central Florida. After the hurricanes of '05, a family of black bears, including an uppity juvenile male, started coming in around the houses to scavenge.
Mostly they stay to themselves, but there have been some incidents -- mostly involving yappy shitzy dogs, etc. My husband was walking the dog one night and came upon what he thought was a homeless guy digging through our neighbor's trash. It was only when the 'guy' stood on his hind feet and grunted did he realize it was a bear. Thankfully, the bear, despite being at least 4 times larger, was intimidated by our dog and scampered off into the woods.
The bad news is, the bears have become minor celebrities in our area, and we have the brain trusts who somehow think its a real good idea to try to engage them in cuddle fests and entice the little ones with food.
They say there's never been a black bear fatality in Florida, but I think that'll probably change in a few short years.
Scary stuff.
I was commenting on toldyou's dismissive post of a citizens right to defend oneself and family, and the citizens (in general) failure to control government, bureaucrats and wacko enviro and animal rights groups.
everybody else caught on immediately and discussed gun control, predator protection, predator behavior; and the propaganda that fools these victims into allowing this situation to continue.
I once owned a good bear, he was spread out on the floor of my father's home in the Sierra Nevada. My mother while living there alone was in an identical situation to the 93 year mold's (she was 78). She unloaded a 20 round magazine form an M1-A that I had prepared for her as I instructed. The bear fled and died more than half a mile from her home. Mom moved to the city with only bruises from the rifle. At 93 she would not have been able to manage the rifle, and all the idiot laws and bureaucrats in the 20 years since would have made her uncomfortable about even having it if she could.
And about your "I hope you get caught" comment, I'm sure you won't get caught, .... defending yourself or your family.
Hey kiss your Mom for me!!! What a great story. Good bears are flat bears!
Absolutely not. I'm loaded for "bear". ;-)
Bear Caught in Tenn., Forest Service Says
(AP) - A black bear was caught in a forest recreation area Sunday and was being sent to a veterinary school to determine if it was the same animal that attacked a family, killing a 6-year-old girl.
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0406/319690.html
Well, try this.
How about killing the bear so it doesn't attack more humans. Once a bear attacks a human it will do it again.
A lot of well meaning but stupid humans (ones that don't believe an animal should ever be killed) actually feed the bears up here in the Smokies, then when the bears get aggressive, they can't understand why.
Most of these aggressive bears end up having to be killed, to keep them from attacking again.
Yes, the Cherokee National Forest (where this happened) is where the bears live. But we don't live in the Garden of Eden like Adam and Eve did, and there are lots of humans in the world too. To allow a bear known to attack humans to just go about its business would be epitomy of stupid.
I know the guy, Dan Hicks, that was interviewed for that story on TV (although I didn't see the TV interview).
I'm very close to where this happened, and work closely with wildlife officials here. I can't believe Dan said bears don't hibernate here. They do. I have photos of the GSMNP, UT and TWRA biologists removing bears from the dens during hibernation to relocate them to the Big South Fork during reintroduction efforts.
I suspect the bear attacked because it has just come out of hibernation recently,last fall's acorns are scarce now, and the berries they feed on aren't out yet, so this is a rough time for wildlife. Yes, bears do eat other animals, and Bob Miller, the wildlife biologist for the GSMNP told me recently some of the elk in the elk reintroduction effort fell prey to bears.
Two bears attacked/killed and partially ate a woman here in the Smokies a few years ago.
This past fall we had a record acorn crop, so the bears went into hibernation in good shape. This means bear reproduction here will be high also. Look for more encounters this summer.
I camp in the Cherokee National Forest a lot, and one campground I frequent had a nusiance bear coming around trashing the campground area a few years ago. Once a bear loses its fear of humans it is very dangerous.
There are a lot more encounters with bears than we realize, and many are not reported. I have a friend who is a fishing guide in the Smokies and he had a bear chase him once. They only thing that saved him was he dove into a deep pool of water in the stream and stayed under as long as he could. That bear was definitely going to harm him.
The bear hunters here, and the hounds they use, are a good thing. They keep the bears' fear of humans intact.
Here in WA, against the better judgment of anyone at the Game Dept, an animal rights group proposed, and succeeded in winning by state voter initiative, a law banning the use of hounds, traps, or bait for bear and cougar. They advertised on TV and won people's emotions.
As you probably know, without hounds or bait, the rate of success in actually finding and bagging either animal goes WAY down. Last year they opened up bear season to be pretty much all summer and fall in our state forest, just to attempt to mitigate the damage too many bears do to young trees. Our state forest is a working timber crop. The state wants the bears controlled, and in this one case, it's the gullible, easily misled populace, and not the government, who actually screwed up what was good wildlife management here.
Of course, they banned hounds, except to pursue and catch problem bears... trouble is, if you ban hunting with hounds, who's going to go to the trouble of keeping hounds so they're available and ready when needed?
I don't think the ban law will last, I think it can be overruled once the results become a problem.
In any hunting season, the smart animals are pursued and escape... Even good hunters are foiled in trying to hunt bear and cougar. The bear and cougar that get killed are those who allow themselves to be seen... Darwinism works in our favor.
Not all hunting even leads to a kill... sometimes there will be a combination of a kill season, and a pursuit only season.... an extra time to hone the skills of the hounds and hunters in pursuing the right game. Those seasons are valuable for their impact on the attitudes of the prey as well.
If you'd like to be on or off this new (maybe) Upper Midwest (WI, IA, MN, MI, and anyone else) list, largely rural issues, please FR mail me. And ping me is you see articles of interest.
Exactly, and all this trains these animals to fear and AVOID humans/human areas. Good for us and good for them. We can't be perfect and achieve a perfectly safe Forrest, but we can make improvements and reasonable attitudes toward pursuit, use of hounds, and rocksalt loads will move in the direction of training predatory animals before a forced killing.
I live here close to where this bear attack happened. And I have many friends who hunt bear, one who raises Plott hounds that her grandfather bred from original George Plott lines.
A few years ago a friend/outdoor writer was telling me about writing a story where wildlife officials had taken Plotts, Redbones, and Walker hounds up to Vermont or somewhere and used them to run bears that were causing problems in a populated area there, where hunting bears was outlawed.
The use of hounds to hunt bear is a time honored tradition here, and very effective in keeping bears wild and lowering bear/human encounters.
If you ever get a chance to read the "Encyclopedia of the History and Culture of Tennessee, read the hunting dog section. I wrote that.
I took some passages written by some early explorers who encountered some trappers/bear hunters, settlers here and the writer said the settlers placed as much value on a good hound as they did a horse.
Tennessee has hound bloodlines that rival any in the country. Those bloodlines are so good, in fact, that the raccoon populations crashed in the 1970s, and state wildlife officials, in their reports, attributed part of the population crash to the plentiful supply of good hounds.
My friends who hunt bear here (and coons) mostly hunt for the thrill of the chase, working the dogs. They rarely harvest the raccons now, just hunt for the "race," as they call it.
The Cherokee National Forest, where this bear attack happened, is bordered by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On the other side of the park is the Pisgah National Forest in N.C. The three big tracts of federal land hold most of the bears in this region.
Unfortunately many of the business owners and landowners in this area feed the bears so the "tourists" can see some bears. Many of these people are transplants from cities up the eastern seaboard who don't understand, or like, bear hunting. We had some major clashes a few years ago between hunters and northern transplants over bear hunting.
Most of the hunters I know hunt in the Cherokee, and hunting isn't allowed in the GSMNP. Since we had a record acorn harvest this past fall bear reproduction will be outstanding, and I predict you'll see more bear/human encounters this coming summer and fall. Although it is illegal, many people feed the Smokies bears, and this causes a dangerous situation. When these bears see humans as a connection to food, there will be clashes.
That bear that attacked and killed this little girl probably was a Smokies bear, as the bears move through both the park and the national forest. While hunters kill a few bears every fall and winter during bear hunting season, well meaning "animal lovers" also cause bear deaths. When these bears reach a point they become aggressive towards humans they are put down "killed."
BTW, as part of my job I have to read reports on bear/human encounters in the GSMNP. The park has a website, and on it you can read their newsletter and the park biologist's reports on bear encounters.
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