A B.C. man says he thought his life was about to end when he was attacked by a mother black bear Monday morning.
Ken Hogue was walking his dog Shelby in Countryside Village mobile home park near Buntzen Lake in Anmore when he came between the bear and its three cubs. The young bruins ran up a tree while the mother gave Hogue the scare of his life.
"I thought I was dead meat for sure," Hogue told CTV News.
"It happened so fast.... One of the first things that went through my mind is stand still, don't do anything, but the bear was coming at a full trot. So I thought, do I die standing still watching it, or what do I do?"
He dove out of the way, down an embankment. The bear stood over him and then took off.
Hogue escaped with just a scratched arm and a cut on the back of his head. When he made his way home, his wife Lynn was greeted by a shocking sight.
"Here he was covered in blood and the dog was covered in blood, so I thought perhaps Shelby had been hurt too, but he seemed okay," she said.
The mother bear was tracked down by conservation officers and destroyed. Insp. Chris Doyle said that it was a threat to public safety because it had injured a person. The bear had a tag on its ear, suggesting that it had already been relocated once.
After the cubs had spent hours up in the tree, officers used tranquillizers to bring them down. They will be taken to a wildlife recovery centre in Langley, and will never be released back into the wild because they have become habituated to eating garbage.
Drake Stephens of Bear Aware says the mother bear's last litter of cubs also learned to take food from humans and had to be put down.
With all the garbage in the area, he says it's no surprise the bear took its cubs to Countryside Village.
"Bears are being baited into this neighbourhood," he said.
Anmore has plans to bring in bear-proof garbage containers by next year.
With reports from CTV British Columbia's Brent Shearer and Jon Woodward
