That first photo is a beauty. Stephen Herrero is the acknowledged North American expert on bear attacks. In this video (
https://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000000812441/stephen-herrero-on-black-bear-attacks.html) he describes the most dangerous black bears, and they're not females with cubs. Of the roughly 250 encounters I've had with black bears, only two gave me cause for concern and neither was a female with cubs -- one had been fed at a hunting club and the other had either been fed or was raiding bird feeders.
Woody, I watched Mr. Herrero's presentation, and it dispels everything I thought I knew about black bears, and I thought I knew a lot. Absolutely fascinating, and I greatly appreciate your sharing this. On a couple of occasions I have blundered into black bears after dark, to be met with major huffing and chuffing and bluff charges. I am certain that in those instances, they were females with cubs. It required a change of underwear, but fortunately, no more serious damage resulted. Now I know why. Even though I live in a semi-rural area, it is becoming more and more populated, yet fortunately our bears remain wild and generally afraid of human beings. There are exceptions, usually caused by idiots that feed them, or leave their doors wide open on a warm evening while cooking. We have several bear "break-ins" like this every year in my area. Many bears have learned how to break into cars to get the fast-food left inside. Sadly, the bears are not to blame, but they are invariably caught and destroyed by Colorado Parks & Wildlife, which has no other choice. The wildlife people don't enjoy that part of their job.
We have so many bears living near us that over the years I have been able to distinguish and recognize several individuals. Like dogs, each has a different personality. As a rule I leave them alone, remove any culinary tempations, simply enjoy their antics and, if lucky, try to grab a couple of photos before they move on. We've had a couple, though, that exhibited increasingly bold behavior over time, including parading across our deck and pressing their noses to our patio door. Some of these would visit several times a day. When that happens, I try to re-instill some fear in them with yelling, posturing and, if necessary, the application of a "bear bomb" as recommended by our wildlife agency--an empty soda can half full of small stones that makes a helluva racket when shaken and, when all else fails, is thrown at the bear. Kind of funny, actually.
The most frustrating thing to me--and I am editorializing here--are the people that move to the mountains from some pollution-choked city to "escape," but are terrified at their first sight of a wandering bear and call Parks & Wildlife demanding that they "do something" about the mean old bears that strike fear into their ignorant citified hearts. This is often a death sentence for a bear. I'd be much happier if Parks & Wildlife could "do something" about the morons that can't grasp that the bears were here first, and that we're the ones intruding on them, not vice versa. If they can't handle bears, go back to the city where it is obviously much safer.
Several years ago I was on a backpacking trip with one other fellow deep into the back country of British Columbia, setting up camp after canoeing many miles from civilization. A black bear raided our camp two days in a row, while we were out hiking during the day. I've heard that most mammals can't distinguish color, but I've seen too many exceptions to this. The bear that raided our camp intensely disliked anything orange. It shredded my sleeping bag (orange), and appeared to have jumped into the air and done a belly flop on top of our tent fly (orange), collapsing the tent. Anything in camp that was reddish or orange was thoroughly mutilated. Lest anything think we were careless with our food, that was not the case. Nothing edible was left out, and most of our provisions consisted of canned food, which we thought was safe. Not the case. The bear would grab a can, take it about 100 yards away, puncture it with its teeth, and drain any tasty liquids from the can it could get.
My friend and I found all of our canned goods equally distributed in a perfect 100-yard radius surrounding our camp. We survived for the next several days eating from the cans that the bear had punctured. At least he left us something.
We set up an alarm system by stringing empty cans on a rope around camp, and on the third day, we hid in the trees near camp and waited all day for the thief to show up again. It never did.
Magnificent and intelligent creatures, they are. It is good for arrogant humans to occasionally encounter a wild beast twice their size that could easily do them in if it chose to. Instills some much-needed humility. We could take a lesson from the fact that in almost every case, the beast chooses to simply walk away.
Apologies for the rambling, and straying from the topic of photography--I get worked up about the travesties human beings needlessly inflict upon wildlife. And this comes from a life-long hunter.
One last bruin pic, illustrating how quickly "our" bears learn how to pull a cord, yank a bird feeder over a branch, and eat everything in it. That's why all our bird feeders come inside at night.
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.