When I was a kid, 5 years old about... On a warm August morning my dad brought my sister and I on a walk down our dead end road through woods that opens up to a long narrow field. You couldn't see the field until you got right to it and the idea was to be quite and hopefully sneak up on any deer that may be on the field. When we finally got to the edge of the field there was a lone bear cub no more than 20 yards away on the edge of the field. I remember my dad whispering to us to quietly turn around and head back home. Every once in a while this story comes up and my dad admits this is one of the scariest moments of his life not knowing where the cub's mother was, fearing how she would react to us if she was nearby and surprised by us getting so close to her cub.
MRBB, curious on your thoughts. Was this a truly potentially dangerous encounter or not?
that's one of them MAYBE kind of answers,
as even bears with cubs, tend to flee long before fighting, as a injured mother isn;t much good to her cubs and they know this!
another things is, odds are pretty high that if you were that close the mother bear very likely knew you were there, they can smell you long before they can see you most times
and with that, she can use her judgement to decide what or what not to do!!
another factor that comes into play a lot with black bears any how, is how much human contact they have on a regular basis,a s there si a big difference in a black bear living in extremely remote places that may NEVER see a human
and one's that live in area's where human contact is rather common!
the reactions of will be way different
as what one will tolerate the other won't in most cases!
I have been up close and personal with a LOT of female bears with cubs(I have crawled into dens with them so close?? is some what of an understatement LOL )
I have been turkey hunting and had them walk up to with in inches of me, same with hiking and come across them!
I have had my dog tree a few with cubs as well.
in all my years about them, I have only had two female give me a bluff charge, and one was actually in my back yard, about 20 yrs ago, and I was actually inside my house looking out a window, when she, for what ever reason, she seen me or something, and she charged my house, got to the house and slapped it rather hard, then ran back to her cubs!
TO this day I have no clue why, or what would have happened had I been out side?
the second one happened to me while fishing in a very remote place and I was about 16 yrs old, had truck parked about a 1/4 mile away, and there was a ton of chipmunks running about!
I was in a small corner of a lake, had about 30 ft of water between one side of lake and the side I was on, like a finger running into the woods,
I seen the bear on the other side of me and honestly wasn't scared and was enjoying watching it eat blue berries, it also knew I was there and didn;t seem to care!
I was sitting on my side, when I heard a noise behind me, I figured it was another one of them darn chipmunks running about and paid little attention to it, then the noise got louder! I turned about and has 3 cubs about 5 ft from me, and all of a sudden they started crying and making all sorts of noises, and went up a tree right next to me!
AT this point, I now knew I the bear I had been watching was most likely there mom??
and well, I looked back at her and she was on her way to me, what MAYBE saved me LOL< was in stead of running around shore to get to me, she jumped into the water and started swimming across the 30 ft of water or so!
which slowed her down more than i think running would have!
well, all I can tell you from there is
by the time she hit my side of the shore, I was LONG gone , at 16 I could run pretty fast! HAHA!
she I gather got to her cubs , seen I was gone and they went on there merry way, and I can say that due to, well me being me?? when I got back to my truck, I grabbed a camera I kept in there and went back hoping to take some pictures of them (had a big zoom lens so planned to give them room) but when I got to where I could see things, they were no where to be found!
the way I view the first encounter is, well, she was female, full of all sorts of hormones from having cubs, and how know's some times,,. like it or not females are females, and hormone's from giving birth effect them ALL< NO bash towards females either, just facts here! , there bodies go thru a lot of transformations IMO! and as such, never know what that does to there mind or logic or mood swings and so on!
AND??< some times there is no logic to what a wild animal will do! there wild and how they deal with humans,can be unpredictable!
Maybe not a real answer for you, as there just isn;t ever a real "WHAT WOULD HAPPEN" type answer when dealing with wild things and things that can make decisions for themselves!
as again when you deal with wild animal's anything can happen
but in my years dealing with black bears, I tend to feel if they know your there, 99% of the time they will leave you alone, and this one takes more balls than brains maybe, but most all charges are bluff's
even when they have cubs involved!
a lot of times its the reaction of there human that effects things more than , just those of the bear!
)