By Joe Woody
Bears have been on my mind a lot lately and not the “Hey BooBoo…Pick-a Nick Basket” kind either. I’ve literally just been running into them more than I ever have before.
Eight to ten years ago, a bear encounter was a fairly rare occurrence. Now it’s odd if I don’t see one when I go out into the woods. On a recent trout fishing trip up Palmer Creek in Cataloochee Valley with my buddy and fellow Angler Magazine writer, Ben Bailey, we ran into three sets of Mama Bears and cubs within a quarter mile of each other.
Then…a fella got eaten up on Hazel Creek a few days ago. Park Rangers don’t know if the bear actually killed the person yet but they did find the bear eating on the remains. It happened at Campsite 82, or Calhoun as we like to call it. It’s roughly 9 miles up the trail from Proctor if you know the area. I’ve spent a lot of time there…alone.
I’ve had literally dozens of bear encounters in the backcountry over the last few years and most of the time the bear is either running away or indifferent to me. I did have a bear follow me all the way into the Linville Gorge a few years back. That was sobering but the bear was a youngster and was scared off with just a look.
But something different is going on. Food is abundant. Mamas are having two and three cubs at a time and they’re surviving. Bear hunting is not as popular as it once was in our mountains. My worry is when the food goes away after a dry summer…what are all these bears going to eat?
I fear that the unfortunate event on Hazel Creek will most likely happen again with more and more frequency. I’m not an alarmist. I don’t want to have open season on bears but we are going to have to be more diligent in the backcountry. I’ll leave bear management to the experts…but…
I now carry a handgun on fishing trips. People who plan to take walks in the woods should probably invest in some bear spray, at least.
Getting back to those mama bears and cubs we saw on Palmer Creek. When we made it back to the parking lot, a young couple asked if we’d seen any bears. I carelessly mentioned the encounters we had just had up the trail. The couple then made a bee-line up the trail to view the bears with their two year old son in tow.
We have to me more careful.
Joe Woody is Co-Publisher of The Angler Magazine GSM with his wife Debra. He is an Army Veteran and a self proclaimed “Adventure Angler”. You can usually find him wandering around Western North Carolina telling fishing lies. He is also a baseball nut and a crazy FCS Football fan. He has a Bigfoot magnet on the back of his truck.