Ring video captures violent fight between man and bear on porch
A Daytona Beach man’s Ring video camera captured a violent tussle between him and a black bear after the animal climbed onto his porch Wednesday.
The man suffered non-life threatening injuries, and the bear ran away.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will kill the bear if they find it, the agency said. It’s FWC policy to kill bears in these cases to protect public safety.
About 7:30 p.m., the man was on his screened porch with his two black dachshunds when the dogs detected the presence of the bear.
The wild animal was peering over a over a flimsy baby gate blocking the porch door.
As the pets scurried toward the visitor, the bear clambered over the gate, knocking it over, and entered the porch.
Hearing the commotion, the man spun around to confront what he initially thought was another dog.
Within an instant, the resident reflexively charged toward the intruder. Man and bear immediately began wrestling on the porch’s concrete surface as the small dogs barked.
The bear clawed at the man’s back, ripping flesh through his thin T-shirt.
The man screamed and tried to bat the animal away. He threw a plastic bucket toward it. As the bear retreated, the man pulled a heavy wooden rocking bench in front of the doorway.
The entire encounter lasted about 3 seconds.
The dogs were not hurt. Although another black bear had attacked a dog-walker days earlier in DeBary, still, “incidents like this are highly unusual,” the FWC said in a statement.
The FWC gets up to 6,000 bear-related calls a year and has documented only 15 incidents of people being moderately to seriously injured by bears in over 50 years.
The victim did exactly what you’re supposed to do if a black bear attacks: Fight back aggressively.
People concerned about potentially dangerous bears can call the FWC’s Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888-404-FWCC.
If you see a bear nearby, remain standing, don’t make any sudden movements, “back up slowly and speak to the bear in a calm, assertive voice,” the FWC advises.
From a safe distance, make loud noises to scare away the bear.
The FWC says people should remove or secure all food attractants from around their houses and yards, including garbage, pet food and bird seed.
If you have a dog, bang on your door and flash your outdoor lights on and off to give a bear time to leave the area before letting your dog out in the yard.
If your dog and a bear make contact, make noise and use bear spray or a water hose to try to break them up.
Never approach or surprise a bear. “If you see a bear from a distance, enjoy the experience, but do not
move toward the bear,” the FWC says.
Statewide, the FWC receives thousands of calls every year about bears. Over half of the calls come from its bear management region that includes parts of Central and North Florida, which is a major habitat for the animals.
That region includes Alachua, Bradford, Brevard, Clay, Flagler, Lake, Marion, Orange, Putnam, Seminole, St. Johns, Sumter, and Volusia counties.
The Florida black bear is one of 16 subspecies of the American black bear and is the only bear species in Florida. There are about 4,000 of them statewide.
The FWC classified the black bear as a threatened species from 1974 through 2012, when the species was considered recovered.
In 2015, “Florida staged its first legal bear hunt in 21 years, but FWC abruptly halted the week-long season after two days because of higher-than-expected kills,” according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel.