How to Identify a Black Bear

Series Summary

Problems caused by bears are first caused by people, campers who are unaware of how to behave in the wilderness. You might prefer a quiet walk along park trails, but you just may sneak up on a bear by accident. Consider your trip to bear country less a sacred visit to the cathedral of nature and more of a romp through the frat house of the forest. Hike in large groups and make as much noise as possible, singing, dancing and rattling pots and pans. Then black bears will steer clear of you like a goth kid dodging a SAE keg party. But if you happen to come face-to-face with a black bear, tell it how much you love music by the Cure and Joy Division. Or even how much you hate those goth bands. Tell them anything you want, just say it in a monotone voice to calm the bear down. And say it as you are backing away slowly, very slowly....

In this camping education series, our wildlife expert explains what to do if you come face-to-face with a bear in the wilderness. More importantly, he tells you how to avoid contact in the first place by properly storing and disposing of food at your campsite. Remember that goth black bears want nothing to do with your rowdy good times. They would much rather hate the world alone, curled up in a cave under an Ian Curtis shrine and a Bauhaus poster.

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Jordan Pederson for Expert Village. We'd like to take a few minutes of your time and talk about safety in cougar and bear country. Black bears are the only bear that we have in Utah, but there are other bears in the western United States, the grizzly bear. In the northern continent are polar bears. So we have 3 bears in North America. The black bear is an omnivore. It has teeth much like we do. Incisors, canines, premolars, and molars. Their food that they like is very much like our food. When we leave our food around, that encourages them to come into our camp and into our lives and cause problems. We'd like to just talk to you a little bit about safety when you're camping, when you're living in the woods, at your summer camp, or at your summer home. This is a track of a black bear. You can see the small cat like claws, in which enables them to climb trees almost all of their life. Big males and big females usually don't, but the cubs readily climb trees and that's their main means of escape. This is the grizzly track. You can see the difference in size between the two. The grizzly is mainly an animal of the plains. The large claws are used for digging. They are approximate 80-90% of their diet as the black bear is vegetation. They're what we call opportunistic predators in that they will eat just about anything. "