What is "less lethal" than a shotgun over the head? I don't think I would have had that much restraint with a gun in my hand.
Old bean bag loads... Never shot a person with one, but dang I am sure they gotta sting. Took two on the bear and at last he decided that maybe he should go the other way and stop messing with me and my pop up camper. I think the game commission would have cleared me had I shot the thing, but I had the bean bag loads and decided to see if they'd work. I had problems with bears messing with me in the camper in the past and brought them with me for that exact reason.
Black bear attacks on humans are extremely rare... As you can see from this list:
1 Manitoba - 1982, no details available.
2 Tennessee - May 2000, Female hiker attacked, killed and partially consumed by a female, 112 pound bear and her 40 pound yearling, in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
3 Quebec - July 2000, bear attacked and killed Mary-Beth Miller, 24, a biathlete while on training run.
4 Northwest Territories - June 2001, Young male attacked and killed at rural campsite
5 New Mexico - August 2001, bear breaks into house and is confronted by elderly owner who dies in ensuing attack.
6 Fallsburg, New York - August 2002, bear grabs 5 month old infant and stroller from porch resulting in death of child.
7 Quebec - September 2002, A man was attacked and killed in his campsite in the Gasp� region of Northern Quebec.
8 British Columbia - September 2002, Man attacked and killed at a remote oil rigging site in northeastern B.C.
9 Ontario - April 17 2003, forestry worker stalked, killed and partially consumed by large, male black bear. No rabies or other illness detected during necropsy.
10 Northwest Territories - 2005, 71-year-old Merlyn Carter was found dead behind the main cabin of his sport-fishing camp about 300 kilometres northeast of Fort Smith. Family members shot and killed the black bear responsible.
11 Manitoba - August 26, 2005, A 69-year-old man was fatally mauled by a black bear while out picking plums north of Winnipeg.
12 Ontario - Jacqueline Perry, 30, died in a predatory attack in Missinaibi Lake Provincial Park. Here husband was seriously injured trying to protect her and then her body.
13 Tennessee - April 13, 2006, 6 year old Elora Petrasek from Ohio was killed and her mother and two year old brother seriously injured in black bear attack in the Cherokee National Forest.
What I take from this is, for the killings in the US, those areas are high tourist low hunter areas. The bears related humans with food and then turned humans into food. The killings in Canada were remote areas. The black bears had little exposure to humans, therefore they didn't relate them with danger but instead food, and not the hand out type. Areas like Pennsylvania where bear hunting is very common, you're at far less a risk of being attacked as long as your neighbor isn't an idiot and hand feeds the bears. 9 times out of 10, the bears I see when walking in the woods have run off faster than any deer. Last, most attacks have happened in the last 10 years... As black bear numbers continue to grow and humans continue to spread into more remote areas, more fatal attacks will occur.
Knowing this beast is wandering around our hunting property in PA:
I do have to admit, when I grab a snooze in the woods on a warm sunny fall afternoon, I wonder am I gonna wake up to a black bear eating my face off like that poor lady in Tennessee? Last year we had 7 different black bears on game camera. One had the tell tale problem bear markings. Double florescent orange ear tags! Which means the PA Game Commission had trapped him in the past as a problem bear and released him, unfortunately way to close to our property!
I heard that a grizzly will attack you for a couple of reasons, and usually will stop the attack when they find out just what they attacked. A black bear attacks because they want to eat you.
Grizzly bears, well they are just nasty buggers who attack you cause you are in their turf. They as you said don't usually have a desire to eat you, just maul you... Even they are not as nasty as many make them out to be though. The use of common sense in the north woods, will go a long way to keep you from being attacked. That or some high powered bear spray or high powered hand gun that you've practiced with...
