Black Bear Sniffs Up Tourists At Bearskin Lodge In Gatlinburg’s Second Incident In A Week

Going somewhere with cool wildlife is always a fun time but when that wildlife decides to get a bit too close it can turn a great experience into a terrifying one. Gatlinburg, Tennessee is high on many people's destination bucket list. Tucked away in the Great Smoky Mountains, the quaint town is loaded with things to do, one of which is heading into the woods to try and spot some of the many black bear in the region, but anytime there's a lot of people near a high bear population, those bears take notice of all the available food and start slowly moving in. Just last week we wrote about a black bear raiding an amusement park concession stand and attacking a poor worker . Now, just a few days ago, another incident happened at Bearskin Lodge just down the street. A video posted to TikTok shows a young black bear approaching a woman and her child, who are clearly less than pleased with the situation and who can blame them? For the most part, black bears are very docile but we've seen what they're capable of when it's time to feast . People nearby did their best to keep them calm and the bear eventually moved on, but it was a harrowing couple seconds, especially considering the young girl standing just feet away. "You'll be fine. You'll be fine. You see if you had the food he'd take it... He'll leave" Fortunately the bear went on to look for food elsewhere and they were left with nothing more than a good story but this is the second incident in a week and officials are on high alert. Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency spokesperson Matt Cameron spoke with WATE about plans to capture and euthanize the bear from the Bearskin Lodge incident: "We cannot relocate a bear with this type of behavior, which is the direct result of people feeding bears. This is extremely dangerous and fortunately, no one was injured... This is not normal bear behavior. This occurs after a bear has obtained human food either from garbage, access to unsecured foods, or being intentionally fed by people tossing food to it and the behavior escalates." Cameron later spoke with Outdoor Life and confirmed that they set traps at the amusement park and have euthanized a bear that fit the description of the one that attacked the worker. No bears have been captured by the hotel traps yet. On one hand this is a natural consequence of a lot of people living around a lot of bear, but for as much as I love animals, I'll always be team people and we can't have little girls coming this close to being eaten or service workers being attacked and expect life to go on as normal. I don't know what the solution is but it's pretty clear that people need to stop feeding the bears, do their best to seal off garbage cans and dumpsters, and remain on alert because you just never know when one is going to appear. Here's the clip of the bear attacking the amusement park worker. Be warned, it's an intense watch.