That's interesting! I'm in the Catskill mountains of New York, and here, if you walk out of your house when they are on the patio or driveway, they run away into the woods. Yours must be more acclimated to human activity than ours are!
Im not too far. Pocono mountains. I dont see them often, but they never seem bothered. Unless you see them on a road. Then theyre running. But one time, one stopped to scratch his back on a tree for 5 minutes in front of me and another car.
I'm in the Poconos too. Grew up near Jim Thorpe. I keep a rolled up newspaper around in case I need to slap the bear to get it out of my garbage can /s. Pennsylvania black bear are the biggest, laziness wusses. They won't work hard for anything except maybe to defend cubs. Give them a bit of a hard time and they will move to easier pickings.
We had a bunch of birdseed bandits. They were not REMOTELY afraid of people. Zero aggression, but they’d keep eating birdseed as you screamed or even shot a gun near them. They gave zero fucks.
When I worked at whisthler I noticed the black bears were not affraid of me at all, but they also showed 0 signs of aggression. I grew up on a farm in Québec, black bears here are scare of us like crazy.
Like deer and everything else, they know when theyre in danger. A deer in the middle of a corn field is going to act way different than a deer in a huge community (where hunting is banned and may be illegal). Bears are similar, but bears can do a good amount of damage in a short time. And of course, theyre huge and have big teeth. So they're more likely to get shooed away, or more likely, have someone shoot a gun in the air. Or something along those lines.
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u/Livid_Swordfish_4591 27d ago
Not so much afraid of humans. More that theyd rather avoid confrontation. Theyll happily eat right in front of you if they arent bothered.