Free Republic

California police are reminding drivers to lock their car doors after a bear let itself inside an unlocked vehicle near Lake Tahoe and destroyed the interior. The bear couldn't escape as easily as it had entered the vehicle and became trapped inside, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday. "The bear had somehow locked the doors and broke the handles off, so they couldn’t open it from the outside," Sgt. Dave Hunt told FOX40 Sacramento. While trapped inside, the bear apparently ripped the seats apart, tore open the glove compartment and pulled down part of the ceiling. The animal also urinated, defecated and spit all over the destroyed...

Many places on the Internet continue to claim that bear spray is more effective at stopping bear attacks than firearms. There is no objective source for these claims. They are mostly based on a spurious comparison of the deterrent effects of bear spray on curious or food seeking bears compared to a selection of bear attacks where firearms were present, and sometimes used.  It is not a valid comparison.  Author Dave Smith explains the problem: Efficacy of Firearms for Bear Deterrence in Alaska and Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska were 2 halves of a straw man argument...

Opinion Flurry of Bear Attacks in Fall of 2018, Are You At Risk?Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- It is the season for bear attacks. Bears are very active in the fall, when they must accumulate enough calories to lard up for hibernation. At the same time, human hunters are out and about, hunting all game animals, putting human hunters in the same areas with heavy bear populations. In the last month, there have been several bear attacks in the news. On 9 September 2018, Dr. Brad Johnson was attacked and severely mauled. He had bear spray in his hand.  He was attacked...

A Wyoming hunting guide was fatally mauled and his client was injured when a pair of grizzly bears attacked them Friday, officials said.{snip} Uptain and Chubon were attacked by bears as they field dressed the elk they had shot Thursday but were only able to find Friday, officials said. The bears “aggressively charged” the men and didn’t touch the dead elk, Teton County officials said.{snip} Authorities later euthanized two grizzly bears, a mother and a cub, who wildlife managers believe killed guide Mark Uptain and wounded his client Corey Chubon near the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks border, according...

BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. (AP) -- A woman says her dog has died after warding off a bear that broke into her family's North Carolina home. WRAL reported Saturday that the incident occurred in Black Mountain, a town outside Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Tiffany Merrill said she thought she was going to die when the bear broke in. She yelled to her children to shut their doors. Her dog Pickles quickly appeared. Merrill said the five-pound dog "started barking and got the bear's attention and got the bear outside and he saved my life." Merrill said she couldn't save...

RATON, N.M. - A New Mexico man is sharing his story of survival after he was attacked by a bear while walking his dogs. He killed the bear while its jaw was clamped around his leg, and the jaw stayed that way for a while. ... When he saw me, he pinned his ears down and immediately made a big charge at me," said Petrini. That's when the struggle began. "Down the hill, we went again rolling and he had bit me a time or two but he was never able to get on my upper body, so my legs...

A crazed grizzly tore off part of a park ranger's scalp, half of an ear and several puncture wounds. Miraculously, he survives and managed to drive himself to the hospital. “Suddenly I was just run over,” Jordan Carbery said. “It felt like two football players tackling me. The next thing I realize is that the bear had my head in its mouth and was picking me up.” Park Ranger Carberry had gone outside of his home in Bella Coola, British Columbia, to investigate a noise. He spotted a couple of bear cubs in one of his cherry trees. Then he...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – A 5-year-old girl suffered serious injuries after she was attacked by a bear overnight in east Orchard Mesa. The girl had gone outside around 2:30 a.m. early Sunday to investigate noises she thought were being made by her dog, the girl’s mother told Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers. But the girl’s mother heard her daughter screaming and went outside to see a “large black bear” dragging her daughter, CPW officials said. The bear dropped the girl after her mother screamed at it. Their home is in the east Orchard Mesa area, above the Colorado River corridor,...

In the Land of the Midnight Sun, those who traverse the Last Frontier must choose to carry or not carry, and they must choose wisely. As I coast into what may be my sunset years, I have come to realize there are two kinds of people in this world. Some of us believe there are things out there that will hurt or kill you, and there are some who do not. A few of the things pretty high on my list include a summer lightning storm, a poisonous snake, a crazed terrorist and an 800-pound bear. People on the other...

Two men met a grizzly bear while scouting for hunting areas and the encounter didn't end well. Both men were badly mauled by the bear. Two men were hiking and scouting new areas for potential hunting grounds in British Columbia when they encountered a sow grizzly bear with cubs. The protective bear mauled both men and put them both in the hospital. The attack occurred in the Dewar Creek area of the southern Purcell Wilderness Conservancy north of Kimberly, where the two men are from. "It happened on Saturday, June 10 at about 9 p.m.," said Conservation Officer Joe Carravetta....

This video shows Todd Orr a former Trails Engineer at Gallatin National Forest records himself talking about the aftermath of a bear attack that he encounter while on a hike. He stated, "he had pepper spray with him and did use it to defend himself but wasn't much help”, but it was better than nothing. Here's the excerpt from the video: Yeah, life sucks in Bear Country. Just had a Grisley with two cubs come at me from about 80 yards and, uh, I sprayed the shit out of her with bear spray, and then I went on my face...

Human flesh and hair have been found inside the stomach of a bear thought to have killed at least one person in Japan. Locals have been warned to stay away from the mountainous Akita region after the body of a badly mauled woman was found last week. Last month three men in their sixties and seventies also died in apparent attacks while harvesting bamboo in a mountain forest. Bear attacks on humans in the region are not unusual - but fatal ones are. Local vet Takeshi Komatsu said it was possible the bear may have "got a taste for human...

An assistant professor who was mauled by a bear while teaching a mountaineering class is in critical condition. 35-year old, Forest Wagner, was teaching to a group of 12 students on Mount Emmerich near Haines, Alaska, when he was attacked ... Wagner has been teaching in the outdoor studies program at the university's Juneau campus since 2006. ... A second man, 77 year old, Glenn Bohn, was mauled on Friday by a bear. He is recovering from his injuries. Bohn's son-in-law killed the bear during the attack near Mile 68 of Denali Highway.

Barbara Paschke, 85, died as the result of injuries she suffered during a black bear attack inside her home ... from injuries she suffered during a black bear attack inside her Ashley Lake home last Sunday afternoon. The woman, Barbara Paschke, died at 10:30 a.m. while she was hospitalized at Kalispell Regional Medical Center. She died due to injuries from the attack ... The attack occurred inside Paschke’s home between Batavia Lane and Ashley Lake Road; although it’s not clear how the bear got inside Paschke’s home, it exited through a window, investigators said. The attack was severe, officials said,...

GREENWOOD TOWNSHIP, MI — A 46-year-old man was injured in what the Michigan Department of Natural Resources suspects was a black bear attack. ... a black bear came from behind, knocked him over and attacked him. "Using his hunting knife, the man stabbed the bear, which scared it off. The bear is thought to be injured," the DNR said in a news release. "The DNR was informed about 45 minutes later." Sgt. Jon Wood spoke with the hunter and advised him to seek medical attention. The DNR's Law Enforcement Division is continuing to investigate the incident. The DNR plans to...

A Swedish man has spoken about his close brush with death when a bear he believed he had killed lunged up and launched a violent attack on himself and his hunting partner on the first day of Sweden's annual cull. Roles were reversed at the start of Sweden's annual bear hunt on Friday when two Swedish hunters had to be taken to hospital after they were attacked by their own prey. “I had had my eye on this bear for a week and a half, because it had been walking around eating oats in this area,” Per-Anders Wärme from Bollnäs...

Bear attacks and nuisance complaints could result in Florida bringing back a hunting season for the animal, as the state's wildlife agency says they're running out of options. Leah Reeder was out walking her dog in the Florida Panhandle last month when she was brutally attacked by a bear. She was one of four bear attack victims in the past year throughout the state. Add the attacks to thousands of nuisance complaints throughout Florida. "We're at a point where bear populations are strong and expanding, and we're having more and more conflicts, more and more killed on the highways," FWC...

Police in West Milford have released five photos taken by 22-year-old Darsh Patel before he was killed by the 300-pound black bear while hiking with four friends in the Apshawa Preserve. The photos show the bear behind a fallen tree in the woods. Investigators say the phone was found with puncture marks from the bear. ... West Milford police and the state Environmental Protection Department said last month that the bear did not seem interested in food and exhibited “stalking type behavior.”

Three recent cases of bear attack in Wyoming illustrate the flaws in studies purporting to show that bear spray is superior to firearms as a defense against bears.    On September 20th, 2014 the following incident occurred.  From county10.com: (Dubois, Wyo.) – The Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service both confirmed today that a third bear incident occurred this past weekend, on Saturday in northwestern Fremont County. In this incident, Lander Large Carnivore Specialist Brian DeBolt said a Grizzly bear was shot and killed “in an act of self defense” in the East...

Lorna Weafer, the 36-year-old Suncor instrument technician who was mauled and killed by a black bear ... Weafer was on her way back to work from a washroom when she was attacked by a large, male black bear while working at a Suncor oilsands site north of Fort McMurray, Alta., around 2 p.m. on Wednesday. She was declared dead on the scene. ... Mike Ewald, an investigator with Alberta Fish and Wildlife, said Weafer’s co-workers tried to scare the bear off using fire extinguishers, a water cannon and air horn — “all general things that should scare it off,” Ewald...