Dan's Outside

Ex-Marine Kills Bear With Log

According to an article in SFGate…

A camping trip to Low Gap Camp Grounds turned into a harrowing experience for Chris Everhart and his three sons when they tangled with a 300-pound black bear. But the encounter last weekend proved fatal for the bear.

Sounds like a story about a pretty tough guy taking on a bear and winning, right? Not quite so fast.

The bear had taken the Everharts’ cooler and was heading back to the woods when 6-year-old Logan hurled a shovel at it.

He left their cooler out and unsecured in bear country, and the six year old was close enough to throw a shovel at the bear!

Fearing what might happen next, the Norcross father and ex-Marine grabbed the closest thing he could find — a log. “(I) threw it at it and it happened to hit the bear in the head,” Chris Everhart said. “I thought it just knocked it out but it actually ended up killing the bear.”

A better strategy might have been to grab the six-year-old and back off. Bears will rarely attack a person unless provoked.

Because a camper left food lying around and a child unsupervised and then attacked the bear when a retreat would be the right thing to do… another bear dies.

The man was given a ticket for failing to secure his camp site, said Ken Riddleberger, a region supervisor for game management with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

That’s good news, at least.

Some bear country protocol:

• Keep food secured in bear country – in the food locker in car campgrounds and in bear canisters (in most circumstances) in the backcountry.
• Keep a close eye on children in country where bears and large predators such as mountain lions live.
• If a bear comes into camp, adults may try to harass the animal if they know what they are doing – yell, bang pots, throw small pebbles – but give up if the bear is not responding to this. (All bets are off if the bear is a grizzly…)
• Be sure to leave an escape route for the bear – don’t trap or surround it.
• If a bear gets your food, give up. The food belongs to the bear now. Fighting a bear for your cooler is a really, really bad idea.

June 21, 2007 - Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary