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  1. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by wilconow View Post
    James Waddell, 12, male May 26, 1991 Black Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta In the Marten River Campground, Waddel was dragged from a tent during the night and killed (no online ref)

    David Anderson, 12, male July 6, 1983 Black La Vérendrye Wildlife Reserve, Quebec Anderson was grabbed from his tent while camping as part of a group fishing trip. His body was found 100 feet (30 m) from the tent http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...,2744228&hl=en
    I stand corrected, there were two other instances with black bears. Notice the ages.

  2. #22
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    Also, there are a lot of interesting materials to research bear attacks. Consensus seems to be that the best starting point is noted bear behavior biologist Dr. Stephen Herrero's book Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance

    Also recommended is a new DVD about the two fatalities on the same night ten miles apart in Glacier in 1968. Glacier Park’s Night of the Grizzlies

    When I did dayhiking in SE British Columbia last year, I found this audiobook helpful about specific things to do (type of bear calls to make, when and where to be the most alert). It's a 30 minute mp3 for $8
    Last edited by wilconow; 04-16-2011 at 18:21.

  3. #23
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    Ives' family have sued the U.S. Forest Service because there was no warning about the bear's presence.[19][20] It was the first known fatal black bear attack in Utah.[20]

    Wow, you mean there are bears out there in the woods. I work in a store that sales after market auto parts; many of which are for off road and or show use only and we tell people that and the cusomer still want us to pay their ticket after they get stoped by the police.
    Hammock Hanger by choice

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    www.neusioktrail.org

    Bears love people, they say we taste just like chicken.

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    Better stuff to worry about.

    Bears are cool, never met one I didn't like - so far.

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    From Dr. Lynn Rogers, black bear behaviorist for the last 42 years:

    "Offensive attacks are very rare and include all of the killings by black bears. These are generally unprovoked predatory attacks in remote areas where bears have the least contact with people. Bears that visit campgrounds, bird feeders, and garbage cans almost never kill people, even though these bears have by far the most contact with people. The 750,000 black bears of North America kill less than one person per year on the average, while 1 out of each 16,000 people commits murder each year across North America.

    I now interpret aggressive displays by black bears in terms of their fear rather than mine. Their most common aggressive displays are merely rituals they perform when they are nervous. When I see any bluster, I feel safe. It means the bear wants to talk about the problem it has with me. I have never had one come after me and hurt me. The only times I have been bitten is when I initiated the contact.

    Black bears are not territorial toward people like some dogs are. Black bears are mostly afraid THEY will be attacked. My chances of being murdered are 60,000 times greater. One of the safest places a person can be is in the woods."
    I am not young enough to know everything.

  6. #26

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    Here is a link I had found and posted in a previous thread regarding some black bear attacks in North America:http://www.maineguides.org/referendu...ar_Attacks.pdf

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    Quote Originally Posted by SouthMark View Post
    Black bears are not territorial toward people like some dogs are. Black bears are mostly afraid THEY will be attacked. My chances of being murdered are 60,000 times greater. One of the safest places a person can be is in the woods."
    I believe your math is a bit off. At best it would be ~17k.

    I also greatly disagree with your belief that the safest place to be is the woods. As in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. When you factor in the number of people that go camping in bear country, the odds shift greatly. In the CONUS, there's one black bear for every 43 people that go camping...300k black bears, 13M humans. A look at that wiki page shows that most fatalities in the CONUS occurs in the four corners states that has a very low density populations of humans. Even then, the odds increase further if you camp in the fraction of each state that is a bear habitat and even further if you camp in the summer or fall. Canada appears to be even worse.

    It's not that I'm saying bears are dangerous. The risks can be greatly reduced by being knowledgeable. Camping in areas where bad bears get relocated, openly cooking big slabs of meat at your campsite by yourself and sleeping next to a big open tub of peanut butter is probably about as risky as stealing money from a pimp and then giving him an open handed slap in front of his "employees". Camping outside of bear country probably might not be acceptable, but hiking loudly, eating before you get to camp, stealth camping away from commonly used campsites and other sources of food (location!), and properly storing your food and using an odor proof bag far downwind of your camp are great ideas.

    Basically, you can't just take a very small handful of numbers like you did and make a generalization that's any good. It takes a more digging for data to come up with anything truly useful.

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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    I believe your math is a bit off. At best it would be ~17k.

    I also greatly disagree with your belief that the safest place to be is the woods.
    You misread my post. I did not say that it was my belief. It is a quote from Dr. Lynn Rogers of the North American Bear Center who has been studying black bears for the past 42 years.
    I am not young enough to know everything.

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    Quote Originally Posted by SouthMark View Post
    You misread my post. I did not say that it was my belief. It is a quote from Dr. Lynn Rogers of the North American Bear Center who has been studying black bears for the past 42 years.
    Ah, I assumed you had inserted your opinion in there and had misplaced the last quotation mark.

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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    @skinewmexico

    I checked your bear attack, and unless there were two similar attacks, the women escaped and lived.
    You're right, my bad. It's hell getting old. Maybe it just killed her dog.
    Con men understand that their job is not to use facts to convince skeptics but to use words to help the gullible to believe what they want to believe - Thomas Sowell

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    Quote Originally Posted by DapperD View Post
    Here is a link I had found and posted in a previous thread regarding some black bear attacks in North America:http://www.maineguides.org/referendu...ar_Attacks.pdf
    One predatory black bear attack was not far from the AT in NJ (dapperD's link page 11:
    Predatory Black Bear Attack
    By Jim Lockwood
    Newark Star Ledger
    August 12, 2003
    http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/
    index.ssf?/base/news-3/105539953559010.xml
    She was a 5-foot-3, 105-pound hiker, out for a Sunday
    walk. He was a 400-pound hulking young bruin officials
    described as “predatory,” looking for a meal.
    She said he came up behind her on a trail in Wawayanda
    State Park in Sussex County, chased her down and
    tackled her.
    She said she did the only thing she could. She threw a
    hard elbow at his snout, and caught him flush, stunning
    the bear and giving her time to escape.
    “This bear was in predatory mode,” said Jack Kaskey, a
    state Department of Environmental Protection
    spokesman. “This was classic predatory behavior. The
    bear was out to eat her. She had to fight for her life.”
    There was a non-fatal attack in the Catskills last week:
    http://forums.adkhighpeaks.com/showthread.php?t=14564
    http://catskill.wnyt.com/news/news/w...e-county/63297

    A related trend has been the dramatic increase in "home entry" incidents (black bears breaking into a residence to look for food) over the last five years. Between 2001-03 in the Catskill region, the Department recorded three to five home entry incidents per year. Over the next three years, however, there have been between 21 and 45 such incidents annually. Anecdotally, indications are the 2007 numbers will also be high. Just days ago (Sept. 1), a Hunter, Greene County, resident returned to his residence to find a sow and three cubs inside. The bears quickly fled - but a male bear entered the same residence twice the same day. The owner hit the bear with a broomstick and the bear ran away.
    http://www.dec.ny.gov/press/37707.html
    These home breakins are potentially very dangerous. These kinds of encounters are unpredictable.

  12. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by SouthMark View Post
    From Dr. Lynn Rogers, black bear behaviorist for the last 42 years:

    "Offensive attacks are very rare and include all of the killings by black bears. These are generally unprovoked predatory attacks in remote areas where bears have the least contact with people. Bears that visit campgrounds, bird feeders, and garbage cans almost never kill people, even though these bears have by far the most contact with people. The 750,000 black bears of North America kill less than one person per year on the average, while 1 out of each 16,000 people commits murder each year across North America.

    I now interpret aggressive displays by black bears in terms of their fear rather than mine. Their most common aggressive displays are merely rituals they perform when they are nervous. When I see any bluster, I feel safe. It means the bear wants to talk about the problem it has with me. I have never had one come after me and hurt me. The only times I have been bitten is when I initiated the contact.

    Black bears are not territorial toward people like some dogs are. Black bears are mostly afraid THEY will be attacked. My chances of being murdered are 60,000 times greater. One of the safest places a person can be is in the woods."
    I basically agree with that. The problem is we're all talking about attacks and associating it with death. And that's the problem I have with all available info out there, it all seems to only report on the deaths and all other attacks go by the wayside.

    I do believe (my assumptions here, based on what I've read) is that you're more likely to get attacked by a bear that's near a campground or similar place where it has loss its fear of people, but that attack is very unlikely lead to death. However, an attack by a black bear that has not lost its fear of humans is a predatory attack and has a much greater chance of leading to death, especially since a predator picks its prey very carefully. They don't want a challenge, they want an easy meal.

  13. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    Ah, I assumed you had inserted your opinion in there and had misplaced the last quotation mark.
    Also I don't think doctor Rogers took a very small handful of numbers and made a generalization. I believe that he has the data (42 years of personal data collection) to come up with something truly useful. His opinions are at least based on real world experiences and study. He is considered the leading expert on black bear behavior in North America.

    I have been following his work for a number of years now as he has debunked a number of myths and misconceptions about black bears.
    I am not young enough to know everything.

  14. #34
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    leftye, did not mean for the tone of my last post to sound so harsh. I need to read what I write before I hit the post button. My apology.
    I am not young enough to know everything.

  15. #35

    Default Other causes are about 1 million times more likely to kill you than bears

    I wrote an article on my blog attempting to illustrate how overblown the fear of bears is.

    About 1.3 people per year are killed by bears in the U.S. out of about 334,000,000 people. That includes all the people doing all the most dangerous things in all the most dangerous places inhabited by the most dangerous bears. It also includes everyone else in the nation.

    Use some common sense, take some basic precautions, and don't worry about bears.

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    Quote Originally Posted by SouthMark View Post
    Also I don't think doctor Rogers took a very small handful of numbers and made a generalization. I believe that he has the data (42 years of personal data collection) to come up with something truly useful. His opinions are at least based on real world experiences and study. He is considered the leading expert on black bear behavior in North America.

    I have been following his work for a number of years now as he has debunked a number of myths and misconceptions about black bears.
    I'm sure what the doctor did was dumb down the stats to make it easy enough for the general public to digest. It's dumbed down way too much for anyone that actually cares. I'm sure anything he's published is very useful.

    Quote Originally Posted by SouthMark View Post
    leftye, did not mean for the tone of my last post to sound so harsh. I need to read what I write before I hit the post button. My apology.
    No worries, I'm the last person that could complain since I'm not about the pot/kettle thing. Please feel free to continue using a harsh tone with me if you're bringing good data with it....although keep in mind that sometimes the moderators aren't as accepting, but they can't be that tough since I'm still around.

  17. #37
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    Dominant themes of our folklore are fear of the unknown and man against nature, and bears have traditionally been portrayed as the villains to support those themes, unfairly demonizing them to the public. A problem for black bears is that literature about bears often does not separate black bears from grizzly bears.

    Of the people killed in the U.S. in the last 100 years by black bears only three were in the eastern states Two in Tennessee and one in New York. More people have been murdered on the AT in the last 75 years.
    I am not young enough to know everything.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Colter View Post
    I wrote an article on my blog attempting to illustrate how overblown the fear of bears is.

    About 1.3 people per year are killed by bears in the U.S. out of about 334,000,000 people. That includes all the people doing all the most dangerous things in all the most dangerous places inhabited by the most dangerous bears. It also includes everyone else in the nation.

    Use some common sense, take some basic precautions, and don't worry about bears.
    As I said earlier, it's not fair to compare against the entire population. Most people live in cities where they will NEVER encounter a wild bear. I haven't looked up the number of people that live in remote towns in bear country. I have found that 13 million people go camping every year. Considering the amount of time spent camping versus living in the city, it's not as rosy as you make it seem.

    Let's do some very rough math.

    The assumption will be that you have to live remotely or go camping to be killed by a bear...and we'll limit this to wild bears.

    Let's make a wild guess and say that 10% of the population lives in areas where they could get attacked by a bear at home, so that's roughly 28 million people.

    Let's make another wild guess and say that those 13 million people that go camping spend an average of 5 days in bear country every year. Because that's only a 73rd of a year, we divide 13 million by 73 and add the result (180k) to the 28 million from above. This gives us a result of 28.2 million people that may get killed by a bear out of any given day. That's a difference of over an order of magnitude.

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    Colter, I read your blog. Well written and I agree totally. Bearphobia is way overblown. We can thank in part Hollywood and even the Animal Planet and NatGeo. Sensationalism sells. Hollywood even uses wolf growl sound effects for bears in the movies. A bears huffing just isn't scary enough for the movies.
    I am not young enough to know everything.

  20. #40

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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    ...That's a difference of over an order of magnitude.
    Order of magnitude? So your odds of being killed are ten times near zero? That's still near zero.

    I think it's a forest/trees type of thing. Looking at the big picture shows that you can break it down anyway you like, but a little over one person a year is killed by bears in the U.S. Out of 300+ million people, including your 28 million at greatest risk. I think that's pretty rosy.

    Quoting from my bear post where I try to put the risk in perspective:

    Approximate death rates in the U.S. per year...

    Motor Vehicle Accidents: 40,000
    Septicemia: 34,828
    Suicide: 30,000
    Poisoning: 22,700
    Falls: 21,600
    Murder: 16,929
    Drowning: 4,000
    Boating: 339
    Horseback riding: 200
    Hypothermia: 187
    Lightning: 90
    Bee sting: 55
    Dogs: 30
    Snake bite: 5
    Bear attack (average over 20 years in the U.S): 1.3

    Thanks Southmark. I think it's often a difficult topic for people to be rational about.

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