Great Smoky Mountains National Park's black bears can view park visitors as prey/Tennessee Wildlife Resources file

Two attacks in less than a year at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, one fatal, recast the image of the park's black bears from animals timid of humans to opportunistic predators even park visitors need to be cautious of when traveling the backcountry.

Autopsy results released Thursday pointed to "trauma caused by a bear" as the cause of Patrick Madura's death in September 2020. The 43-year-old Elgin, Illinois, man was on a multi-day backpack in the park that straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina border and had reserved backcountry campsite 82 for the night of September 8. Three days later, backpackers coming down the trail saw his unoccupied tent, spotted a black bear scavenging his remains, and reported it to rangers.

Law enforcement rangers and wildlife officers reached the campsite shortly after midnight, confirmed the report of a deceased adult human male, and killed a bear seen scavenging on the remains. A necropsy found the bear to be a healthy, year-old, 231-pound animal.

This past June there was another bear attack, this time on a teenager sleeping in a hammock while on a backcountry trip with her parents and two siblings. Rangers who responded to the incident found the bear less than 100 feet from campsite 29 when they arrived about 5 a.m. on June 18.

While Ranger Heath Soehn kept an eye on the bear and tried to scare it off by throwing rocks, Ranger Kyle Shanberg attended to the teen, "who was alert ... but large blood loss was clear" from wounds to her head and left hand.

After stabilizing the girl and calling for a helicoper medevac to transport her to the University of Tennessee Medical Center, Shanberg joined Soehn in trying to get the bear, which had been circling the campsite, to leave the area, throwing rocks and yelling at it.

"The bear was just out of distance I could reach with rocks and had no response to our hazing," Shanberg wrote in his incident report. "I walked down a small embankment from the campsite to get closer to the bear to hit it with rocks. As I threw more rocks at the bear and yelled, the bear then charged towards me running quickly. I backed up, pulling my handgun out and signaled to Soehn to take the shot.

"Soehn fired once with the shotgun, striking the bear as it was charging," the ranger continued. "The bear collapsed approximately 20 feet away from us. I noticed it was still breathing and moving and Soehn fired again. The bear then stopped moving."

While a formal necropsy wasn't performed on the bear, it was tested for rabies, which it did not have, according to park staff. The animal "was a male, approximately 95-100 pounds," the park reported. It's overall health condition was deemed "fair."

Until the Madura attack, there had been just one other fatal bear attack reported in the park's history. That came in May 2000, when Glenda Bradley, 50, of nearby Cosby, Tennessee, went for a hike along the Little River Trail near Elkmont and fell victim to a black bear sow and cub that had shown aggressive behavior to other park visitors in the days leading up to her attack. 

Black Bears Are Iconic...And Dangerous

Great Smoky is home to nearly 2,000 bears, very few of which exhibit aggressive behavior towards humans. Still, park biologists say visitors need to keep their guard up.

"Bears are an iconic symbol in the Smokies, but they are also dangerous wild animals, and their behavior is sometimes unpredictable," Bill Stiver, the park's supervisory wildlife biologist, said in a park release. "There are inherent risks associated with hiking and camping in bear country. Black bears are the largest predator in the park, and although rare, attacks on humans have occurred, inflicting serious injury and death.”

Dr. Stephen Herrero, arguably North America's top bear expert, said it can be impossible to predict a black bear's behavior.

"No one will ever know the bear’s motivation in this incident. To me it may have begun as exploration by the bear and after a while become predatory. Black bears do rarely prey on people," he said in an email.

Research (attached below) into black bear attacks in Canada and the United States between 1900 and 2009 that Dr. Herrero and four colleagues in the two countries conducted found that there were 63 human fatalities tied to 59 attacks. The bulk of the attacks occurred between 1960 and 2009, a statistic attributed to growing human populations in bear habitat in the two countries.

While Bradley was attacked by a sow with cubs, Herrero's research found that the fact that "most fatal black bear attacks were predatory and were carried out by 1 bear shows that females with young are not the most dangerous black bears."

"Fatal attacks do not appear to be associated only with a specific black bear population, geographic area, or habitat. Fatal attacks were most numerous during the month of August, when most black bears are ingesting high-energy foods in preparation for denning," the scientists found. "Rarely, a person may be perceived as potential high-energy prey. During August there are also many people pursuing outdoor activities, thus increasing the chances of contact with black bear."

Daryl Ratajczak, who in the mid-1990s worked in the Smokies with black bears as the manager of the Appalachian Bear Center and later worked as big game program coordinator and chief of wildlife for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, said black bear attacks such as those in the national park's history aren't common. But they shouldn't be ruled out by park visitors, either, he added.

"I would say these kinds of attacks are extremely, extremely rare, but one does not have to look too hard to find where and when they occur. Almost every year they happen in North America, and the Smokies are not exempt from these kinds of incidents. There have been similar attacks in previous years as well as the unfortunate fatality of Glenda Bradley back in 2000," Ratajczak, who now works to educate the public on wildlife issues, wrote in an email.

"Encounters with bears typically fall into two categories: defensive and offensive situations. There is a myriad of reasons why a bear would react defensively. A mother with cubs is probably the most well-known situation of all, but a bear can act defensively if you invade their personal space or you are near one of their food sources," he added. "Whenever a bear reacts defensively, in most situations they will put on a show. They will act all blustery and will give you ample warning that they are agitated with your presence. They will pop their jaws, huff, swat the ground, and possibly bluff charge. They are putting on a show because they are telling you they want to increase the distance between you and them. Either you backing away or the bear backing away diffuses this whole situation. These are by far the most common encounters humans have with a bears with both sides wanting to create space between the other. With black bears, although there may be injuries in a defensive attack, rarely do they result in a fatality.

"The rarer but more serious encounter is the offensive bear encounter. Though it is speculation, that is what this particular event appears to be," noted the biologist, who reviewed the park's incident report on the teenager's attack. "In an offensive encounter, a bear tries getting closer to an individual, usually in anticipation of a food reward. In many cases, it is because they believe there is potential food that could be obtained. This is often an issue with food-conditioned bears. These are bears that have been rewarded by receiving anthropomorphic foods (human provided); hence, they equate humans to the potential for a food reward.

"In extremely rare cases, bears may seek the human as the potential food reward. This is what occurs when you hear about a predatory bear attack. Again these are extremely rare. More often than not these cases occur in deep backcountry areas in Canada or Alaska where bears do not encounter humans as much. Because this particular bear was a lone individual that came into the campsite at night and it wouldn’t leave even after rangers had arrived, it is my best guess that this bear was acting offensively. What the exact food source in the camp it was after is unknown. Regardless, its behavior was quite worrisome and the rangers acted appropriately."

According to Rangers Shanberg and Soehn, the family's campsite "showed no indications of food storage issues or any attracting materials for bears. All backpacks were stored properly up in the (bear) cables suspended in the air."