You Mean Jumping Up and Down and Ringing Bells Wasn’t Effective Bear Deterent?
BY Herschel Smith
1 hour, 19 minutes ago
A hiker on Mount Wilson in California came face to face with a black bear in the middle of a trail, but his method of trying to scare away the huge animal was less than successful.
In fact, the man was fortunate to escape injury, or even death.
Cellphone video by another hiker in the Angeles National Forest shows the man trying to frighten the black bear (who was actually brown) by jumping up and down and making noise with bells attached to his hiking gear, KTLA reported.
The video, which was posted on Instagram on Monday by Eric Chiu, shows the bear’s reaction, which was not what the hiker had hoped for, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Instead of retreating, the bear charges at the hiker before the video stops, the newspaper reported. The hiker and the person recording were not injured, but Chiu, whose stepmother filmed the video, was incredulous.
Folks in the Smokey Mountains weren’t so fortunate.
Parts of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are closed to the public after visitors encountered aggressive bears in two areas over the weekend, the National Park Service said. In some cases, bears chased and bit people.
Rangers responded to three incidents involving bears along Ramsey Cascades Trail, a popular hike to a waterfall, and three more on Abrams Falls Trail, which is another waterfall hike, according to the park service.
In the encounters near Ramsey Cascades, two bears “approached visitors and took two backpacks,” while a third “displayed aggressive behavior and briefly chased a group,” the park service said. Ramsey Cascades Trail and Ramsey Prong Road, which leads to the trailhead, remained closed Monday as rangers continued to monitor the area for bear activity.
The other trio of incidents near Abrams Falls involved “an aggressive black bear,” which in one instance bit a visitor who had entered a closed area, the park service said. Both the trail and road leading to it had been closed, but they were reopened by Monday after several days without bear activity.
About 1,900 black bears live in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a massive wildlife area that covers sections of North Carolina and Tennessee. It’s also the most-visited national park in the U.S., according to the park service, which notes that the “combination of high visitation and a thriving bear population increases the likelihood of human-bear encounters.”
Thanks, but I’ll carry a large bore firearm rather than jingles and jangles and human seasoning packaged as bear repellent.
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On April 27, 2026 at 8:41 pm, X said:
Will jumping up and down and ringing a bell scare a black bear away? Well… the answer is “it depends.”
I’ve encountered black bears twice in the wild. The first time, maybe 25 years ago, we walked up to each other on a hiking trail. The bear was startled to see us (and we were startled to see it) and he took off like a spooked deer.
The second time, three years ago, I was deer hunting and the bear never saw me. It kicked out a doe ahead of it, which I shot, but before I could get up from my hide to approach the kill it rambled past me and up the side of a ravine and out of sight. It likely was spooked by the shot. It probably never saw the doe, either.
I think a black bear without cubs will be spooked away by humans, UNLESS it is one of those bears that has learned to steal food from humans, learned to raid dumpsters and trash, or worse, learned to not fear humans from retarded campers and hikers approaching it and feeding it.