Photo of Deadwood Mountain in the wintertime. Snow is not that common in Oakhurst, but it snows every winter. It usually melts pretty quickly. At 2000-3000 feet in this part of California, there is just not that much snow period.I really have no idea what a bear is doing in Oakhurst at that time of year. It doesn't make any sense. It's below their normal elevation range and it's the wrong time of year for them anyway.
I don't live in this Sierra Nevada foothills town anymore, but I did a year ago, and I lived there for 15 years.
Photo of the Oakhurst Basin, apparently taken from Deadwood Mountain. The snow-covered mountains in the background are the Sierra Nevada Range. Oakhurst is located in the foothills of the Sierras, mostly below 3,000 feet. Snow falls mostly above 3,000 feet here, and most Californians hate snow, so that's why folks tend to live below the snow line.The town is located about 2,200 feet elevation.
A pretty cool photo of the Oakhurst Basin. The basin ranges from about 2,200-3,000 feet. That strip in the middle is something called "the town", as in, where the businesses are. The terrain here is mostly called Interior Live Oak Woodland, but at 2,850 feet where I lived for 14 years, it starts shading into Ponderosa Pine Forest.There are about 15,000 people living in the basin, and the vast majority of them are White. Not all of California is Greater Tijuana yet. The town is very peaceful, even boring, and there is virtually zero crime.
I lived at that elevation for about a year, and then at about 2,840 feet for about 14 years. In neither location are Black bears common at all. In 15 years, I never saw one single bear in or around town, and I was out hiking around all the time.
Once, at a home I was living at, a bear raided a wooden enclosure built to enclose trash cans (it was built to keep raiding raccoons out). The bear simply destroyed the wooden enclosure the same way you and I turn a doorknob. After that, trash cans were put in the garage and the garage door was locked.
The raid occurred in the middle of the night in late August. Around this time, food starts getting scarce in the mountains due to it being late summer, and a lot of animals start moving back downslope in search of food.
Bears are pretty rare in Oakhurst. When they are seen at all, it's in late summer. At that time, they have also been known to raid homes were people are away on vacation. Nothing really stops these things from getting inside your house. Once inside, the pretty much tear the place apart looking for anything edible.
I've seen these animals in the wild, even up close, a number of times. They are absolutely gigantic.
The Black bear is a gigantic and impressive animal. A single claw (!) was used to puncture and drain and entire carton of milk. The hole left by the single claw was shocking. If you ever see a Black bear in the wild, it is bound to be an impressive experience. These animals are feared much more than is reasonable. There are 800,000 Black bears living in North America.The number of encounters per year must be much larger than 800,000 - it should be in the millions. There is barely one fatal attack a year for millions of encounters. You're much more likely to die crashing in a car or via suicide by fork due to your diet. There has not been a fatal encounter in California in the past decade, and there are thousands of these animals in the state.
You would do better to worry about other things, as long as you must die of something. Even then, most fatal attacks occur in Canada, and Grizzly Bears are vastly overrepresented. Black bears have killed two adults in the US in the past decade, and in the past 130 years, five adults have been killed by Black bears in the US. There's hardly even anything to worry about!
I even saw a mother with cubs in Yosemite once and another time in Olympic National Park. In Olympic, we were hiking and saw some bear cubs in an apple tree. If you see cubs, Mama Bear is not far away, and sure enough, pretty soon she showed up. Just keep your distance, and there is not much to worry about.
Once when I was a teen, I was camping with my family in Glacier National Park in British Colombia. We pulled in at 9:30 PM and headed to bathroom. A bear was headed the other direction alongside in the woods. They grunt as they walk along. I noted that there was a bear heading towards the campsite, and my younger brother helpfully noted that it was not a bear but a "woodcutter".
Well, 10 minutes later, we were back at the campsite. The bear had our 40-pound ice chest and was lifting it over its head and smashing it down on the ground. Standing, the monster seemed to be over nine feet tall. It probably weighed 450 pounds. These things are gigantic animals. It looked like Godzilla. It roared and growled as it smashed the ice chest on the ground over and over.
My younger brother ran towards the bear, yelling and banging pots and pans together (this is actually recommended behavior). Everyone yelled at him to cut it out, but he was fearless. After a while, we just gave up and went away. The bear opened the chest and ate everything inside. A milk carton had a single claw mark in it and had been drained.
One time when I was a kid, my folks took a picture of me sitting on a log in Yosemite with a bear cub sitting next to me. How stupid can you get?
These things are somewhat dangerous, but I have seen them up close and personal about six times in my life and was never worried. If you are in bear country, carry a big long hiking stick with a sharp point to use against the bear if it gets aggressive.
Black bears are vastly less aggressive than Grizzly bears nevertheless.
Mostly, they tend to act bored if they see you, and just sort of saunter away. Considering the large number of bears in the US and the number of humans who must have regular closeup bear encounters (I saw bears recently in Yosemite National Park) the number of people killed by bears is quite small.
The truth is that even if you hike a lot, you hardly ever see these things. I've spent a vast amount of time hiking all over California and to a lesser extent other parts of the West, and I've only seen bears on one occasion.
I'm also cynical about bears. A lot of folks who don't have them around either think they are really cute like teddy bears or else they are terrified of them.
I just regard them as pests, and I don't really want them around. They raid trash cans, cars and vacant homes. They're destructive animals - destructive to property - and I'd just as soon not live around them.
Furthermore, it is true that they are somewhat dangerous. There have not been any fatal attacks in California recently, but there have been in other parts of the US. These things are much more dangerous to adults than mountain lions. I've lived around mountain lions my whole life, and with all my time hiking in wild areas where they exist, I've never seen a cougar yet, but I'm sure they must have seen me.
That's pretty much normal. It's quite simple to go your whole life living right in mountain lion territory without ever seeing one of these impressive animals. Unless you are jogging or mountain biking in wild areas, a mountain lion is very unlikely to attack an adult. Mostly, they attack kids, probably because a kid is the right size for prey.
When you start running or riding a mountain bike, I guess you sort of turn into a deer to a mountain lion's brain. These things are not as smart as you think they are. If you don't look like prey to them, they are very unlikely to attack you. Even if they do, you can often fend them off with that huge stick I carry. Just charge the thing as it charges you and attack it with the huge pointed stick. That'll work most of the time.
I'm really not worried about wild animals at all. I've never seen a rattlesnake either in all my time in the wilds. I saw a road-killed one once, but that doesn't count. 99% of people bitten by rattlers are trying to kill the thing. It's probably way more scared of you than you are of it.
If you live in any large US city, the human animals are way more dangerous than any four legged critters you will ever encounter in your entire life in the US wilds.
There are 800,000 Black bears living in North America. Minnesota has 30,000, North Carolina has 11,000, New Jersey has 3,500, Pennsylvania has 15,000 and even Florida has 2,400. Considering how huge their population is, attacks on humans are extremely rare.
The Black bear in California is Ursus americanus californiensis, the California black bear. It seems to be doing pretty well. Hunting season is open, and a number are taken every year, with little effect on population numbers. In this state, they are mostly confined to forested areas and high mountains.
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