List of fatal bear attacks in North America by decade

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555

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This may not be new news to most of you, but with the increase in the number of Bear that we see here, I find this list interesting.

I have lived in this area of woods, here in PA for more than 50 years.
Most of my camping in the 60's was just a bedroll on a ground cloth next to the campfire or a tarp made into a shelter.

With most of my life in the woods I didn't even see a Bear in the wild till the Mid 1980's, these animals were just that rare. The Bear population really picked up in the late 90's here, after we crossed into the 2000's the chances of crossing paths with Bear in the Woods are high.

With the Bear, The coyotes that have moved in, More Bobcat and Now Mountain Lions that seem to be in the numbers that the bear were in the 60's but who really knows their number, all I know is I was out about 11PM with the dogs and could hear the growl of a large cat about 200ft from my house, 6 months later one of my kids was driving down our road and had a Mountain Lion cross within 10ft in front of the car. I trust what they saw because we have watched the Bobcat together and they would know the difference.
They also saw the long tail on the cat. It was about the size of my 80lb avatar.

It just makes one think as you travel at night in the woods.



List of fatal bear attacks in North America by decade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America_by_decade
 
It may be misleading to think that this list indicates a higher rate of bear attack. As noted in the article, the more recent the attacks, the better they are documented.
 
As more and more people encroach on wildlife habitats and more and more people are anti hunting, especially predators, human predator encounters are bound to increase. Chris
 
15 Fatal bear attacks over an 8 year period (2000 till 2007). Considering how many millions of people travel and work in the wilderness areas of North America and that these statistics are for three Bear species: Black, Grizzly, and Polar. I think that many people get killed in traffic accidents in my home town (Edmonton, AB, pop 730,000+) each year and considering our newly acquired rush hour grid lock and $100 Oil prices I doubt anyone has stopped driving.

Certainly Bear Awareness is very necessary when traveling in Bear country. Remember that there are 301 million people living in the US (plus 10 million illegals I assume) and 33 million in Canada. Over an 8 year period we in NA have suffered 1.8 fatal Bear attacks per year, thats 0.00000053% of the population of NA killed by a bear each year. Even if only a half of the population of NA live within Bear country and only a 10% of them travel in the wilderness it is still a very small number.

Bears are part of the wilderness, make noise, avoid travel alone in areas of high Bear concentrations. Carry Bear Spray or Bear Bangers or a gun where necessary (for Polar Bear). Keep your camps clean and never clean fish or game anywhere near your camp and you will have very little if no trouble with Bears. Most of the these cases in Canada at least were ones where someone either ran into or upon a Bear before they could react.

Bruce Zawalsky
Chief Instructor
Boreal Wilderness Institute
boreal.net
 
The Fallsburg NY incident was an incident waiting to happen .In a campground where people carelessly threw garbage around.There were at least three bears there on a regular basis and they may have killed the wrong one! The infant may have been mistaken for something to eat like the garbage in the area !! Many black bear "attacks" involve food left about carelessly.
 
I remember the 1991 attack on Bates Island real well, my family has cabins on a lake near Opeongo (in Algonquin Park). I see bears every once in a while here in the Upstate NY area and have never had an issue, but we used to have problems with them in Algonquin Park. Bears would break into cabins looking for food sometimes (the rangers would hunt them down and shoot them), and sometimes they (the bears, not the rangers) would break in at night when the cabins where occupied.

I remember my two cousins and I walking my dad's German Shepard on the Highland Trail in the Park and a baby bear came wandering out into path. Our dog went crazy and chased the baby up a tree (they can climb!). The baby started screaming and we heard something coming hard through brush. I yelled for my cousins to run and we hauled ass (our dog had the good sense to come with). I have always been told that mother bears are pretty protective of their cubs, seemed like a situation that could have ended up with a dog or kid on the wrong side of the lawn!
 
Mneedham, you were very lucky that you reacted like you did. had you stayed there would have been someone in hand to hand combat with a bear while the dog stood by and barked as most do.

More folks in the bush are more chances for bear encounters to end in a fight. I watched a mother bear and her 2 cubs wander around the outskirts of a public campground in Shenadoah NP a few years back; and a bunch of city slickers walking up to within 25 ft of them taking pictures. I was hoping the sheeple would get eaten but no luck. I had been watching a doe and fawn earlier in the day and noticed the doe gone but the fawn still there hiding. The mother bear walked right up to the fawn and killed it on the spot. I could not believe it, if I did'nt see it happen just like that I would've thought i was hittin' the Jack too hard! She dragged it off into the woods with her cubs in tow, and I lost sight of them.

A shark bang stick with a 12ga slug would be a sweet 'walking stick' to encounter an aggressive bear with you would think?
 
The fastest I had ever run in my life was one evening in 1964 when a group of us at Bard College strolled down through the woods towards the Hudson River. There was noise in the bushes near the trail and I realized "It's a bear!" and took off running, the others trying hard to catch up to me. The bear made a lot of noise, too, crashing through the underbrush, running the other way. :)
 
1Tracker,

Yep, hand-to-hand combat with an angry mother bear is likely to be a relatively short conversation...

Esav,

We get the occasional bear in our lawn and they are always running as fast as they can away from us too. I usually bring my dogs in for a while, my bulldog is more of a lover than a fighter, but my pitbull is fearless and protective..
 
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