My anecdotal experience:
A friend and I were wilderness camping one summer in a season that was apparently bad for berry growth, so bears were foraging for food farther than usual. And one morning I peeked out of the tent to see a mother bear and two cubs examining our food supplies some distance away. We had taken the standard precaution of hanging most of our food on a line between two trees, but Mama Bear was interested in the other stuff, and even managed to partially open a can with her teeth.
They pretty much ransacked the food site, but didn’t come near our tent and eventually wandered away. They came back the next morning and more or less repeated the process, but again, never really bothered us, though I must admit I was more than a little concerned. I became all the more concerned when I saw what happened at the campsite across the bay. The same bears had completely demolished the campers’ tent, possibly because they had been foolish enough to keep food in there. The campers weren’t hurt, but they got in their canoe and got the hell out of there fast.
No doubt they reported the encounter because a couple of park rangers armed with rifles and a tranquilizer gun showed up at our campsite later. They said they would set themselves up at the campsite across the bay, but by this point we were happy to have them around and asked them to stay with us. The plan was to tranquilize Mama Bear and capture the cubs and take the lot of them far north to an unpopulated area.
The rangers cooked a very aromatic steak over the campfire to attract the bears, and sure enough, back they came, Mama Bear and the two cubs. This time, instead of peering out at them out of the tent, there were four of us standing there facing them down as Mama Bear and the cubs circled around.
Now I don’t know how typical this is, but what happened at this point is that Mama Bear suddenly reared up on her haunches and roared, clearly in attack mode. For whatever reason, the guys with the guns abandoned the tranquilizer plan and shot her. I have to say it was the most horrifying thing I have ever experienced and it left me rattled for weeks afterwards. The good news is that we were told later that the cubs were safely captured and transported north, and seemed to be old enough to be able to look after themselves.