Black bears and torch lights

bash_bob

I am hiking in black bear country (no other kinds of bears there). It's dark, I have a whistle hanging around my neck to scare away such a potential bear and I'm using my torch light to be able to see the path. Now, for some reason, the light and noise I made till now were not enough to scare away a bear. It stands on the path, 10 meters away from me. I'll blow that whistle soon, but what do I do with my torch light? Do I shine it into the...

Originally asked by helm on Stack Exchange (outdoors) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

By "black bear", I'll assume you mean Ursus americanus , the North American black bear . These bears are opportunists and aren't looking for a fight. In all the encounters I have had with them in the wild that I know of, they have run away as soon as they noticed me. I probably had many more encounters where the bear noticed me and took off before I noticed it. Encountering wild black bears while hiking is usually not a problem. There are three cases where you can be in some danger: The bear is a mother with cubs. Black bear mothers are very conservative in protecting their cubs. They will attack if they think you are a threat to their cubs. If you see cubs, back up slowly while keeping eye...

Full answer by Olin Lathrop: https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/6791 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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