Black bear usually haul tail, unless they have cubs or are starving.
I have ran off a couple three just by shouting, waving arms, etc. One of the dumbest animals ever. Don’t get me wrong, they can kill you, but they are retarded.
Not so much retarded as having a keen sense of who’s on top of the food chain. They have good self preservation instincts and boogie on out of there unless you get between mama and cubs
I never saw a black bear during decades of hunting in Ohio, Indiana, NC, TN, and GA.
But a couple of years ago in N Florida, I saw one, and it scared me. I was deer gun hunting in a tree with a climbing stand, and suddenly about 40 yards to the side, a bear head popped up, sniffing, trying to find me (heavy palmetto underbrush). I didn’t think he saw me, and he immediately went back down and I couldn’t see him. I never heard him come or go. About 5 minutes later, he had circled in behind me and startled me with a loud quick challenging growl! I never heard him come in, and he was only about 20 yards from me by then! I turned in my seat (about 15 feet up, and facing the tree as I hunted the swamp beyond the tree, the direction whence the bear had come originally) and looked at him, and he looked at me, and then, poof, he was gone. I still didn’t hear him going, either! If I had been hunting, walking, relieving myself, etc. on the ground, well, that would have indeed been frightening. Was he curious, or pissed that I was in his area? I really didn’t want to discuss it with him. And btw, some really nasty boars are a danger too, on the ground in N Florida.