There Really Are Bears In The Woods

Well, it happened, my quest to see a Black Bear in the wild finally was realized a couple of Saturday's (June 14) ago at the Clingmans Dome Parking Area. I wasn’t surprised it happened here because there had been plenty of sightings in this area before.

Black Bear at Santa Land.

Black Bear near my Dad's Cabin.

The sighting happened after a long day of hiking to Andrews Bald, Clingmans Dome and the Appalachian Trail (AT), I will talk about these jaunts at a future date. Anyway, as anyone who reads this blog or knows me is familiar with my quest to spot my favorite animal in the wild since I was a kid. My desire to see a bear had
become more active in the past couple of years. Some might say I was like Captain Ahab.

Yes, I had seen bears in zoos and at some of them roadside attractions (where I talked about the evils of that here).  I have had some close calls in the past. At my Dad’s cabin in the southwest Virginia Mountains he has a bear that roams around up there. My Dad has trail camera pictures taken near the cabin and has even had them eating out of his humming bird feeders. Then a couple of summers back we stayed up there and grilled out a couple of times. No bears came around, but after we left, the next time he went to the cabin the grill had been flipped over, by a bear.

AT near Beauty Spot.

Bear scratched tree.

A few years ago I was up in Tennessee in the early spring and there was a bear that had come out of hibernation and was roaming around Greeneville. He was seen in people’s yards and even helped himself to the grease pit at Stan’s Barbeque. It seemed like everyone spotted this bear, but me.

Since then I have been to plenty of places in North Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee where there are plenty of black bears. While not seeing any I have had a lot of close calls. One of these was last fall near the Beauty Spot where I was hiking a stretch of the AT. I headed some cracking in the woods above me, heard some huffing, smelled a musty odor and on the way back near the same area I found tracks and scat (bear crap). It was this encounter that encouraged me to buy bear spray.

Another near miss on the trail was near Tray Mountain where I caught out of the corner of my some

large and black thing falling out of a tree. I don't know if it was a bear, but it could have been one. At other places, like Amicalola Falls, I have found tracks and trees scratched up where bears were digging for termites, but I had not seen any actual bears. I even found a track on the Wildcat Creek trail on my Hike Georgia outing back at the end of May.

Bear track on Wildcat Creek Trail.

The one place everyone seems to see bears is at Cades Cove in the Smokies. I have had people tell me that they have seen four or five on a trip around the loop. When I went last July I struck out like I had everywhere else. I did have a close call. As we were entering the Cades Cove Loop the line of cars had stopped and people were getting out and so did I. When I got to where everyone was looking I asked “What’s going on.” This guy answered, “You just missed a bear he ran up right over there.” This surmised my bear view experience, close but no cigar!

So, when we headed into the Smokies last week headed to Clingmans Dome and Andrews Bald I knew I would like to see one, but I didn’t get my hopes up. While about halfway on the Forney Ridge Trail we came across, in the mud, the best bear track I had ever found. It was here that Deb said she thought she heard huffing above us. It was at this point we turned on our bear bells.

Forney Ridge Trail.

Clingmans Dome Tower.

Andrews Bald.

Bear track on the Forney Ridge Trail.

Anyway, we passed people on the trail and I had more than one person tell me “I saw plenty of bears in Cades Cove.” Still, while I knew there were bears around I wasn’t banking on us seeing one. Don’t get me wrong there have been plenty of sightings at Clingmans Dome. I like a lot of others have seen the YouTube video of a hungry bear trying to break into a car. But remember, I am the guy who couldn’t see one at Cades Cove, so I haven't had a lot of luck. Well, after we made it back to the parking lot I hiked up to Clingmans Dome and did the loop of the AT and Clingmans Dome Bypass trails and ended up back in the parking lot.

My first Black Bear picture.

He was eating from a trash can.

As I was taking some final pictures I saw a guy looking at something down the slope of the parking area. Then I heard someone say bear and I rushed over and a guy was pointing to a black thing in the brush and thereto my surprise was an adult Black Bear. He was about 30 or 40 yards down the hill and he had what looked like a trash can. He was digging in and just eating away, paying us humans not much notice. I think excited covered how I was feeling.

He liked that can.

After a few minutes I remembered Deb was at the car, which was in shouting distance of where I was standing. Deb had stayed at the car while I finished the last part of the hike. I looked up at her, waved and mouthed bear. It was 30 seconds before she was with me and the bear was still there with that trash can. After about at five minutes a couple of park officers showed up with an air-horn.  The stood there for a couple of minutes wondering what he had. I told them it looked like a trash can. Anyway, they finally gave out a blast from the air-horn they had brought and he took off, but he didn’t totally leave. He was barely visible at the edge of the woods, so they blasted the horn again.

At this time they asked if anyone had binoculars so they could get a closer look at what he was eating. I told them I had a monocular and ran to fetch it. After looking at it through my monocular it confirmed what I thought, it was a trash can. They speculated where it acquired the trash can, their theory was it had come from the vault toilets at the parking area. I know that unnerved Deb because she had waited for me at the car and she was just imaging that bear passing by the car with her in it.

There is a dark side to this visitation, the park officials were worried about the bear because they had no idea of what he was eating out of that can and by the look of the receptacle it seemed as if he had been eating said can. One of the officers told me that they had recently had a case of a bear that someone had tossed a two-liter soft drink to and the bear cut-off its tongue trying to drink the soda. They later found the bear dead. Before the park rangers arrived a guy brought a bag of chips down to where we were at. I thought if that guy threw those chips to that bear he would be the next thing tossed to him. Remember kids “A Fed Bear is a Dead Bear!”

So, I finally got to see a bear, was it what I thought it would be? I would say yes, I hope the bear is alright and didn’t eat something that might harm him. I will say it was good to see one where they belong in the wild and not in a concrete prison at some roadside attraction.