Hobble Creek Canyon - Bear attack

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Hobble Creek Canyon - Bear attack

From the Trib today:

Scout tells about fierce bear attack in the night
Not Just a Campfire Story
[url "mailto:brettp@sltrib.com"]By Brett Prettyman
and Michael N. Westley
The Salt Lake Tribune[/url]

[url "http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4077909#"][/url]Colton Stewart reflects on his experience after a bear bit him in his tent in a camp in Hobble Creek Canyon. He says he'll camp again. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune) Climbing into his tent Tuesday night, Colton Stewart told his brother and a friend that he wanted to sleep in the middle.
The boys scoffed at his concern that a bear that had been seen in the area when the group arrived at the Adventure Park Boy Scout Camp in Hobble Creek Canyon around 9 p.m. might come back to attack them.
"They told me not to worry about it and made me sleep on the edge of the tent. Now they feel stupid!" said the 14-year-old Spanish Fork boy.
The group had no way of knowing their scouting experience this week would include a bear attack and the animal's subsequent extermination.
But around 3 a.m., the female black bear the boys had seen when they arrived came into camp looking for food. The camp, in the mountains east of Springville, is owned by the Utah National Parks Council of the Boy Scouts of America, and hosts one-night wilderness sleep-overs for 11-year-olds. Stewart and 11 other boys his age spend about four nights a week at the camp with [url "http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4077909#"][/url]Colton Stewart points out the spot where a bear bit through the tent and into his arm. ( Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune) four adult staff members working with the younger boys. The young advisers stayed up until about 1 a.m. talking, in spite of a full slate of activities in the morning when 90 or so young charges were scheduled to arrive around 7 a.m.
Stewart fell asleep on his stomach with his arm pressed against the canvas wall of the tent. He said he heard a rustling, and then felt a pinching sensation. From the outside, the bear clamped down on the boy's left arm through the tent leaving the distinct pattern of four canine teeth pressed into his skin.
Stewart's older brother Jase was asleep on the other side of the tent when the bear bit. The wound on Colton Stewart's arm looked minor and the older brother asked if the broken skin on his upper arm was the result of a scratch from a fingernail.
"It was scary. It could have had my arm," Colton Stewart said.
But outside the tent, evidence of the bear was everywhere. The scouts found paw prints in the dirt and spotted the same teeth pattern on Colton Stewart's arm gouged into the tent's left side.
All of the boys spent the rest of the night inside cars while the adults looked for the bear and contacted DWR officials. They began their day around 6:30 a.m. just in time to ready themselves for the day's work, which went without incident.
Conservation officer Vic Layton arrived around 6 p.m. for the first of two shifts the state agency had planned for watching the campground. He was chatting with the people cooking a barbecue ribs dinner.
"They had just asked me if I thought the bear would come back and I told them something like, 'It will with those ribs you are cooking.' "
Daryl Chadwick was the first to spot the bear. He interrupted the conversation with a quick, "If you want to see the bear, it's right over there," said the 14-year-old HIghland Scout.
The bear walked along the edge of the camp, with Layton following.

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He waited for the animal to reach a safe area before shooting.
Wildlife officials believe this was the only bear in the area, but a bear barrel trap was left in case another animal shows up.
"Because it tolerated humans so well and came back to the camp in daylight, I'm confident it was the problem bear," Layton said.
Realizing that he had a bunch of young and possibly conflicted Scouts on hand, Layton decided to hold an impromptu wildlife lesson at the Adventure Park amphitheater.
"We let everybody who wanted to see the bear take a look and then we got them together and and I talked for about 45 minutes about why the animal had to be killed, the importance of keeping a clean camp and how to act and react toward bears," Layton said.
None of the campers wanted to see the bear killed but most agreed it was necessary.
"It made me feel safer," said Colton Stewart.
The animal will be tested to determine if Colton Stewart will [url "http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4077909#"][/url]He shows the puncture marks from the bear's canine teeth, which matched up with the bite marks on the tent. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune) have to undergo rabies shots.
Black bears - there are no grizzlies in Utah - will eat anything they can find. There are an estimated 1,000 to 2,500 of them in the state. Anis Aoude, regional wildlife manager for the DWR, said this is the time of year when human/bear encounters increase.
"It has been an average year for [traditional] bear food with no major losses," Aoude said. "About this time to August their early spring food supply starts drying up and the mass crops haven't ripened yet. It's a short window and they are out looking for other stuff."
Aoude said Wednesday's incident is not a cause for alarm that it is going to be a bad year for bear/human encounters.
"There are a lot of bears out there and they are not getting into trouble," he said. "This was a case of a bear finding an easy meal and going back to try to find it again."
Boy Scout spokesman Jon Gailey said the National Parks council - one of three in the state - hosts around 250,000 Scout nights per year to about 63,000 boys. A bear has never been sighted at Adventure Park since its opening in 1995, Gailey said.
A little shaken but ultimately unharmed, Colton Stewart did his best Wednesday to tell his story. He said the bite will not deter him from camping in the future, but for now, "I think I'm about ready to go home."
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