A homeowner in McKean County killed a black bear in what is being labeled a self-defense shooting of the animal that would not leave their yard.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission was called on June 4 to a home in a residential area along Olean Road in Foster Township about a bear being on the property.
State Game Warden Justin Slomian reports the homeowners called and said they scared a bear off their lawn that evening.
“It was in their yard and on their back porch; they scared it off when they went to go outside,” he said in a telephone interview. The couple reported the nuisance bear as it was the first one they encountered on their property.
According to Slomian, the bear came back about 20 minutes later.
“They decided to go scare it off again. And when they did this, the bear kind of stuck to the wood line and the tree line at the rear of their yard, and they said they could hear it walking back and forth, making growl noises and things like that,” he said. The bear was snapping its jaws and making puffing sounds trying to warn off the residents. “Honestly, it’s kind of an odd behavior for a black bear to do, not to run off quickly,” Slomian said.
The homeowner got his rifle in case it came back. The bruin did return and got about 30 feet from the family’s back porch and was growling at the homeowner and stood on its back legs. The bear wouldn’t run off.
“With that level of aggression, the homeowner decided to shoot and kill the bear, because he wasn’t sure what was going to happen next when the bear would not retreat from typical scare methods. That’s when he decided to shoot the bear,” he said.
“The homeowner is not facing charges or anything. We feel as an agency that it was justified because it was an unusual encounter. He did list the steps he attempted to do to scare a bear off that normally works for most people.”
The agency has laws that allow people to protect themselves and property from animals like bears. People who have a nuisance bear are asked to call the Game Commission’s 24-hour dispatch center at 833-PGC-Hunt for advice about the situation. When possible, the bear can be trapped and relocated.
The male bear weighed about 200 pounds. It did not have any tags or markings indicating it was once captured by the Game Commission. “It had not been encountered or trapped by us for any nuisance problems or danger issues,” he said. The bear wasn’t tested for diseases.
Slomian points out that there were chickens on the property and the bear may have been attracted to the food they feed to the chickens. Bears are known for getting into bird feeders and garbage. “It could have just been hungry,” he said.
“This is one of the reasons you are not allowed to feed bears because it can create issues not only for the homeowners, but their surrounding neighbors and the next neighborhood over. I tell people if you feed bears and continue to put out bird feeders or corn for deer, which are allowed in this area, and the bears are coming in, we always ask them to stop doing that,” he said.
In addition, he said feeding bears creates bad behaviors. “They’re associating the house, the homes we live in and people with food. So they become comfortable coming in and approaching houses and people in search of food” he said, adding that bears have a better sense of smell than dogs. “They can be brought in from quite a distance over small scents.”
Pennsylvania has about 19,000 bears and there are plenty roaming through McKean County. During the 2024 hunting season, 78 bears were harvested in McKean making it the ninth top county in the Commonwealth for bear hunting. Statewide, hunters shot 2,641 bears last fall.
To deter bears, Slomian said people should not leave their garbage cans or pet food outside. If you have livestock, he said electric fences work well to keep the predators away.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Homeowner shoots bear in self-defense; advice given on keeping bears away
Reporting by Brian Whipkey, Pennsylvania Outdoors Columnist / Erie Times-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
