Shonna Dehl said black bear attacks tore into her tent near Fool Creek in Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest on July 5, even though she and Maggie Basset kept food and scented items out of the tent. The women were asleep when the ripping woke them, then tried to drive the bear off.
Dehl said the bear came straight for the tents, and she and Basset each had bear spray but could not use it before the animal hit. She wrote that their tent sat about 50 feet from Maggie’s, and that the bear returned after they drove away and completely destroyed the campsite.
Chris Servheen on July 5
Chris Servheen said the bear was way too aggressive around humans and should be removed immediately. In his view, a bear that tears into a tent and keeps coming back is not just a campsite problem; it is a bear that has already learned to push into people space.
He also said that if a bear tears into a tent, the first course of action is to spray it with bear spray. He warned, “Don’t run away” and added, “Running away can cause the bear to chase you. Spraying it is the first thing to do.”
Fool Creek in Wyoming
The women responded after the attack by firing gunshots near the bear, hiding in their parked cars and honking their horns to keep it away. When it would not leave, they drove off and returned in the morning, when they said the campsite had been destroyed.
Servheen said he recalled a handful of similar instances in his 35-year career managing grizzlies for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and he called the type of incident extremely rare. The Bighorn Mountains are active black bear habitat, and the episode leaves the hardest question open: what happened to the bear after the attack?
