Visiting bear country while a bear visits my home

While mountain biking in the mountains of Western North Carolina a few weeks ago, I finally got to add another species of wild mammal to my life list.

My buddies and I were pedaling up a gravel two-track through the DuPont State Recreational Forest, a gorgeous 12,500-acre wonderland of trees, streams and waterfalls spider-webbed with 86 miles of trails, when we reached an upland meadow.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large, dark shadow busting across the wildflowers in the direction of the trail ahead. Based on decades of similar deer encounters in Ohio, we let up on the pedals expecting to watch one or more white-tails dash blindly across our path, but when the animal hit the gravel with thundering bluster, we were amazed to see a young black bear not 50 feet in front of us. Whether noticing us or not, the bear continued onward, leaving me with my first bear sighting.

When I called my wife later that evening with the exciting news, she told me I might not have needed to travel nine hours from home for the experience. She had just seen a post by the police department along with a video of a black bear that had been spotted in Wooster, just a few miles away!

The American black bear is a species that thrived in the heavily forested Ohio country prior to settlement. Because it posed a danger to both the pioneers and their livestock, it was purposefully driven out, along with the cougar and gray wolf. A century and a half of land clearing and timber cutting kept the bear and its contemporaries at bay as Ohio’s vast forests were decimated.

The shift toward reforestation over the past 75-100 years has allowed habitat to rebound, and with a population of black bears still extant just across the Pennsylvania border to the east and the Ohio River to the southeast and south, it was only a matter of time until the species made its return.

Currently, the majority of Ohio black bear sightings occur in Ashtabula, Trumbull and Geauga counties, consistent with the land passage across the state line; however, more than half of Ohio’s 88 counties have experienced at least one confirmed sighting over the past 30 years. Ohio’s bear population is clearly increasing, according to wildlife biologists.

Omnivorous and opportunistic, the black bear’s diet leans heavily on plant material like berries and seeds, augmented by grubs, honey, small mammals and roadkill. But just like the raccoon, it adapts quickly when it moves into an area filled with trash-canned food scraps and bird feeders filled with seed calories.

Be mindful of your practices and try to avoid allowing your trash to become too “unnecessarily aromatic,” lest you find yourself at odds with a curious new neighbor!

If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.