Threatened homeowners killed three bears in one Kentucky county last week; a bear killed a man in Arizona last week

Greg Hawkins with the spear that killed a bear
(Mountain Eagle photo by Sam Adams)

Appalachian states have so many bears they have hunting seasons for them, but that's not the only time they can be legally killed. In Letcher County, Kentucky, last week, three bears were killed by threatened homeowners, Sam Adams reports for The Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg.

One, Greg Hawkins, "tried to scare the bear away from his dog, and when it wouldn’t leave the dog, he grabbed a bow and arrow and shot it," Adams reports. “That just made it madder,” said Hawkins, who ran the bear through with "a spear he’d been throwing at targets," Adams writes.

A state Department of Fish and Wildlife officer "said Kentucky law on hunting bears probably wouldn’t apply if the bear was genuinely threatening him or damaging his property," Adams reports. "Other Fish and Wildlife officials also said there is no way they would ever tell someone not to kill a bear that is threatening them or attacking their dog, but said if a bear is running away, that’s not a threat and it’s not allowable to kill one out of season and without a license and bear permit."

June is high time for bears, Adams notes: "Mother bears have cubs once every two years and start kicking those cubs out on their own when they’re about a year and a half old. The bear mating season here is from June to mid-July and male bears, called boars, will travel for miles to find a sow. Generally, black bears are not very aggressive toward humans, but . . . a man was killed and partly eaten by a black bear in Arizona a little more than a week ago while the man was sitting at a table outdoors drinking coffee, but such attacks are extremely rare. That was the first known fatal attack by a black bear since July 1, 2021, when a woman was killed by a female black bear in Canada."

Letcher County (Wikipedia map)

The bear at Hawkins' home "had a broken tooth and its jaw was swollen with infection, a condition that could have contributed to its demeanor," Adams reports. "But a necropsy of the bear that killed the man in Arizona showed no injuries or illness to explain its aggressive behavior. . . . Bear experts recommend making yourself look bigger by waving your arms over your head and yelling at the bear while slowly backing away. Never run from a bear because it can trigger their instinct to chase. Climbing a tree doesn’t work because black bears can climb. Hawkins, of Mayking, who said he often collects plaster casts of bear tracks for a Forest Service biologist, said he never carries a gun into the woods, but does try to have an umbrella handy to scare bears away." He said, “You open it up and flap it and it scares the crap out of them.”