Actually, black bears are pretty timid. The last one I saw in the wild didn’t see/smell me for a few minutes, then I cleared my throat and it took off. A golf clap would likely work as well.
I don’t know how to discourage a bear, but I know what cheese will encourage a bear…
Camembert. 
I wouldn’t want to bet my life on that. You’ll run out of gas long before the bear will, and I’ve never seen one have a problem running downhill.
I’ve heard the problem was that their center of balance is kind of back loaded, which allows them to easily go bipedal if they like. That would make running downhill kind of tricky and may slow them down slightly. But I’ll bet they have more experience running downhill than you do, so even if true, you still get eaten, or maybe run over by a bear rolling down the hill.
Are you suggesting the bear read the labels, or was it a case of recognizing the picture on the can?
Tell him he’s lousy in the sack.
This ain’t science, but I’ve heard that there’s a residual odor on cans from the factory and animals tend to pick out what they like that way. Seems unlikely to me since the cans are usually all stuck together in the same cabinet and would share those odors. I think more likely the bear punctured a few cans, and only fully opened and ate the ones he preferred.
ETA: Also bears aren’t stupid, he may have recognized the labels from previous raids. Blackjack is smarter than the average bear, but he recognizes the cans of dog food he really likes.
Bears have a pretty remarkable sense of smell, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they could pick up residual scents that soaked into the paper labels at the factory.
Once when I was camping, a bear raided a tent nearby us. The only thing it tried to eat was a cardboard box. Apparently, the box had once held peaches and this was interesting enough that the bear ignored all of the real food just a couple of feet away. (Of course, this bear was noticed and people scared it away before it had time to do a thorough search.)
Then you have to get a little blonde girl to break his chair.
.
Thanks. Guess I’ll just have to shoot the bastard.
There is a very good short series right now on Nature on PBS about bears in Alaska. The guy gets up close and personal with browns, blacks and polars throughout the state, including the urban bears in Anchorage. I think you can stream it.
That sounds ominously close to Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. :eek:
Mothballs? What do they smell like? I was never interested enough to hold their tiny legs apart and find out.
I think the difference is that the guy from Nature isn’t a complete and total dolt.
Exactly. He does do a bit of gazing soulfully into the distance, but he’s more of a researcher and doesn’t take unnecessary chances. Yet. The next ep is polar bears, and they’re a completely different critter than the well-fed brownies of the coastal areas.
The only jarring thing for me, as someone who has traveled pretty much all of the roads in Alaska, is that the locations jump around due to editing. There are some places he’s driving that are completely irrelevant to the voice-over. Otherwise, it’s not bad.
Aren’t brown bears just the cutest things? And there is nothing more adorable than baby polar bears. Don’t you just want to hug one?
Far Side cartoons keep popping into my head when I read this thread. I want to post some, but the copyright goon squad seems to eliminate every reproduction quality image.
Polar bear cubs are adorable. It’s the ultra-predatory, gigantic parents they grow into that give me pause. They’re unafraid of humans (or anything else) and consider them fair prey.