BigGameHoundsmen.com

Here's a link to a story about a bear tossing around a boy scout in his sleeping bag...

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.d ... 2/-1/rss01

This is in Hickory Run State Park in PA. Whadya bet the kid had illicit food with him?

Some of those responses are amazing. My fiance just got home from a trip to the Poconos. She is gonna love this story.

Yes, folks need to be responsible about food, but at the same time you can't tell me that an animal as smart and with as good a sense of smell as a bear does not know what he/she has ahold of when they grab that person in the sleeping bag. Obviously it helps to educate the bears and put a little fear of 'dog almighty' in them. But at the same time bears sometimes just attack people, sometimes to eat and sometimes with no rhyme or reason, thats just the way the good Lord made them...and part of why I respect them so much.

It's always wise to respect a bear and what they are capable of doing. I've been in spitting distance of too many bears and know full well that one of those bears will eventually make the charge, just a matter of time.

You are correct Liz in saying bears make attacks or charges for many different reasons and man is not always the problem. I've run down bears for the state over the past seven or eight years when they wouldn't get into their traps, hazed them, pursuied them, kicked them out and ran them again upon request from law enforcement, ran them down and killed them, and ran them down for others to kill. Some of those bear had climbed through windows or just in campgrounds or destroying private property. For whatever reasons a bear steps over the line and it's dead in our state.

The liberal media and many managers always blame it on public for food or trash but on a realistic bases we camp, vacation and cook on public lands where bears live and there will always be conflicts as long as there are bears. Personally, I believe a hungry bear that hasn't ever eaten human food will come in downwind of a summer barbeque cooked in the out of doors. And we aren't going to stop cooking and camping in the high country where bears live...so the only option is harass what we can, clean up the campgrounds and kill the bears that step too far over the line.

DWR called me to run down a bear that had been entering a boy scout's camp a couple summers back. There were two-hundred boys in that camp and the cooking aroma must have been GREAT! They had set a trap and had asked for help because the bear wasn't cooperating. The boys all went home on Saturday evening and a new group came in on Monday, so I told them I'd come up on Sunday.

Sunday came and when I pulled in next to the cook tent area the dogs all blew up, so I kicked them down. They ran over just out of camp and opened on a bear trap which had the door shut. I went over and sure enough it was loaded with a bear. The campground host walked over and told me "I just heard that door slam shut five minutes before you pulled up." Well, I telephoned DWR and they came and took the bear away.......The state of Utah has gained less and less tolerance for bears since that young boy was killed here back in June, just a fact of life.

ike

I live in bear country. They regularly rip my garbage shed apart. They've come up on my front steps just checking things out (until the hound woke up and opened). They've stolen bird feeders off my window (don't feed the birds any more).
Part of the problem was DEC used to transfer nuisance bears to our mountain--for some reason the DEC didn't think there was enough population here to matter. They've stopped doing that, but those nuisance bears taught the other bears some bad habits. They're constantly in the dumpster at the seafood restaurant 15 miles away...
I really don't worry about sleeping in our woods with bears, but I wouldn't keep any food within reach of where I sleep. All food goes in a cache dangling from a high branch. In fact, I am much more worried about porcupines in camp, because they love to eat leather boots and will walk right up to a sleeping tied-out hound.
I don't think bears are a remotely endangered species in the Poconos. If there's one molesting boy scouts, its gotta go! And please don't relocate it to my neighborhood!