If you visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, chances are you will remember the roadside or campground bears above all else. Bears are the most popular animals in a number of our national parks. In these mountains, where the population of bears runs into the hundreds, opportunities to observe these large wild animals are plentiful during the summer.
Since national parks are wildlife sanctuaries where no disturbance of the native animals is allowed, years of protection have served to break down the wild bears' fear of humans. Now, instead of depending on their own resources for a living, many bears patrol park roads and campgrounds. They give the garbage cans a frequent going over. An occasional offer of food from a park visitor, an illegal and dangerous practice, makes beggars of them. Bears are very often hungry and since they will feed on almost any kind of plant or animal, garbage is quite acceptable.
Feeding them, however, represents misguided kindness because the bears come to expect such generosity from everyone and consequently, trouble could lie ahead. Park rules prohibit the feeding of bears. Violators are arrested. Every year, doctors who have offices near the park treat a number of cases of bear bites and bear scratches. Some of the accidents have come about in strange ways.
One man was in the process of feeding two small cubs, when the mother bear appeared and insisted upon having some of the food. Shoving the big bear aside with one hand, the man continued feeding the cubs when suddenly he was struck a fierce blow in the face. A bear, prompted by the food that a lady kept offering to him, entered the car where the generous person was sitting. Her efforts to push the bear out of the car resulted in injuries. A man required medical attention after he applied a lighted cigarette to a bear's nose. Another man tried to boost a bear into the front seat of his car so that he might take a picture of a bear sitting beside his wife who was behind the wheel.
Because bears prefer roads and campgrounds, the possibility of a hiker meeting up with a bear along park trails is small, but there's always that chance, for a bear seems to know if you are carrying a lunch or a candy bar. He may even insist on taking it.