A surprising guest showed up at a Pocatello couple’s campsite this past weekend.
As Ben Cotter and his girlfriend, Journal employee Danae Lenz, sat around a campfire late Sunday afternoon, a black bear emerged from the woods.
“The bear was about 15 feet away,” Cotter said. “It was a pretty large bear. I would say it was about 300 to 400 pounds.”
At the time of the encounter, the couple was enjoying the day at Big Spring Campground, which is located near Bonneville Peak approximately 30 miles southeast of Pocatello. Though they spend a lot of time camping throughout the state, this is the first time a bear has actually paid them a visit.
However, the encounter was brief.
Cotter quickly alerted Lenz, who laid her eyes on the bear right before it ran off.
“I think it heard me,” Cotter laughs.
The couple attempted to follow the animal as it rushed toward a nearby creek, but it soon disappeared into the woods.
Jennifer Jackson, regional conservation educator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said bear sightings in Southeast Idaho are rare but they do occur.
Fish and Game said grizzly bears can be found close to Yellowstone National Park. The most southerly place grizzlies have been found in East Idaho has been near Palisades Reservoir, but black bears are located throughout the state.
The black bear population near the southeastern corner of the state is even large enough to support some hunting seasons.
But every now and then, a bear sighting will cause a stir in other parts of Southeast Idaho.
In 2013, Fish and Game officials trapped a 2-year-old black bear that had been making frequent visits to Lava Hot Springs to pluck apples from a tree. The tree was located a block and a half from an elementary school.
Two years later, a black bear was struck and wounded by a car on Interstate 15 near the McCammon exit. The animal was later euthanized by a state trooper due to its injuries.
Both Lava Hot Springs and the location of the wildlife collision are within 20 miles of Big Spring Campground, where Sunday’s sighting occurred.
There has even been the occasional sighting in the Pocatello area. Last year, a juvenile bear broke into the basement of a residence in the Buckskin area east of the city. The bear returned to the home soon afterwards and scratched a hot tub cover.
Fish and Game officials attempted to trap the bear but eventually ceased operations after wildlife biologists concluded that the animal had moved out of the area.
Bear attacks on humans are even less rare than the occasional sightings in Southeast Idaho. However, one attack did occur in 2015, after a Bancroft woman accidentally stumbled across a cub while deer hunting with her family east of Soda Springs.
The mother bear attacked the woman, who sustained minor injuries.
Before the 2015 incident, the last time a bear attacked a human in that area was in September 2002, where a 29-year-old man was mauled on Stump Peak north of Soda Springs. Though seriously injured, he eventually recovered.
“When we have an attack, the bear is usually startled, protecting a cache of food or defending their young,” Jackson said, also noting that bears usually try to avoid humans.
Luckily, the bear that roamed into Cotter and Lenz’s campsite on Sunday didn’t seem to create any problems, except causing a bit of a scare.
“The camp host told us there hadn’t been any bear sightings at the campground in five years,” Cotter said.
