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Just had an encounter with a black bear, what do?
So I was walking in the woods along a clearcut trail, and saw blue jeans a few meters off to my left in the brush. I inspected them and noticed a small tear but no blood, and decided to investigate further into the woods to see if anything else was there.
After a few minutes, I reached a glade and decided to stop. A few seconds later I began to hear noises of a large animal moving through brush, and decided to stay still to figure out what it was. I made visual contact at approximately 20 feet away, and thought I saw a human and therefore hunkered down. Peeping out again, I realized I was looking at a large black bear. I let it pass so as not to surprise the animal, and then when I deemed it sufficiently out of range started to yell and beat trees with my staff. Unfortunately, this just brought the bear back and a standoff ensued. Yelling and banging would not drive the bear away, and in fact my staff started to break from the effort. The bear made several small steps towards me, but stopped in the face of my noisemaking. While I did have bear spray, it was old and I did not want to be in a situation where I might use it. Therefore, I crossed back towards the path I'd taken out while yelling to the bear and made my way home.
How well did I handle that, guys? Should I call this one in as a predacious bear?
