I had my sons in a backpacking store a while back, and showed them a bear bell. They asked me what that was for.
I explained that it is very dangerous to surprise a bear on the trail. The animal might feel threatened and attack. So you tie this bell to the bear so you’ll hear it and can avoid that area.
They said, “Oh, that makes sense.”
They said, “Oh, that makes sense.”
There's the mark of truly responsible parenting: providing an alternate reality against which the youngster will learn to judge, through his own experience, the true shape of Reality! (It might involve a consequent period of hospitalization, but no education comes without a price!)
A friend of mine in California sent me a notice that local rangers were trying to educate the public about the differences between black bears and grizzlies, as well as how to distinguish the poop of each of the species of bear. Grizzly poop (he claimed they said, though I suspect a jocular lack of veracity) may be identified by the presence of exhausted cans of bear spray as well as bear bells.
I once spoke to a Smokies ranger and asked what one really should do in case one was approached (or attacked) by a black bear, as I had read advice that ranged from "Hold your ground and the bear will likely turn aside" to "Lie still and pretend to be dead, as it is known that bears do not eat carrion," but I could not be sure that the bears had read those books that said this. The ranger replied that the best advice was to make yourself look as big as you could (by, perhaps, standing on a rock and spreading your arms wide) and to make as much noise as possible (I think my screaming and crying aloud to God would take care of that)--otherwise (I seem to remember her saying, but cannot be sure) to fight back with all you had--excellent advice, but not very encouraging in terms of probable outcome.
Thank our blessed Lord, I have never been close enough to a bear in the wild to have to put any of these to the test--most have been across a field in Cades Cove, or up in a tree or off in a hollow to one side of US 441 (where "bear jams" take place once a bear has been sighted and traffic piles up as people rubberneck to see it) or safely dead and stuffed in that Sugarlands Visitors Center in the exhibit of Wildlife of the Smokies. Bears have also likely not seen Disney films in which bears are amiable buddies that can scat like Phil Harris.
I’ve hiked, canoed and camped in grizzly country in Canada and Alaska and always wore bear bells when walking. I also carried, in Alaska.