A man who went into Great Smoky Mountains National Park to poach ginseng root (pictured here) might have been killed by a bear/NPS
A black bear believed to have scavenged on the body of a man who went to Great Smoky Mountains National Park to collect ginseng roots was killed Sunday morning by park rangers. Whether the adult boar actually killed the man remained to be determined, park staff said.
William Lee Hill, Jr., 30, of Louisville, Tenn., and a friend had gone into the park near Cades Cove a week ago Friday to hunt for ginseng, a root used by some as a traditional home medicine. Prices can go as high as $800 a pound for ginseng. While the root can be collected outside the park, it is illegal to do so inside the boundaries.
When Hill failed to meet up with his friend, a search was launched last Sunday. The man's body was found Tuesday afternoon in the woods about 2 miles north of Cades Cove and about a half-mile from the Rich Mountain Road.
Searchers who found the body, which had signs of being fed on, saw a bear in the area. It "would not leave the area, and continued to show aggression towards our searchers and others who came in to remove the body," park spokeswoman Julena Campbell said Sunday.
Since it wasn't known whether the bear had killed Hill, the decision was made to place a GPS radio collar on the bear and let it go pending further information, she said. While rangers were putting the collar on the bear, they found evidence of human DNA on it, she said.
On Wednesday, park staff, in discussions with Superintendent Cassius Cash, decided to destroy the bear. However, the GPS collar placed on the animal was programmed to send out location signals every two or three hours, and so it took longer than expected to relocate the bear, said Ms. Campbell.
Additional traps were placed near where Hill's body was found, and while the bear didn't go into any of them, on Sunday morning shortly before 10 a.m. when the traps were checked the bear was seen in the area and was killed, she said.
A necropsy on the bear, which was estimated to weigh about 175 pounds, was planned. Park officials also were awaiting autopsy results on Hill to determine how he died.
"This one’s a complicated case," Ms. Campbell said. "We don’t know what we'll find out.”
Comments
Stupid choices come with stupid consequences and whether or not trying to take care of family there are safer ways to do so. No excuse for doing it and shows how selfish it was to make a choice so dangerous and yes its very sad for family and bear but hoping this is a life lesson for many others
It doesn't sound as if you have a very good understanding of typical American Black bear behavior. They're not particularly aggressive. They're in fact rather timid, and some theorize it's because it's wired into their psyche to run away from the more dangerous grizzlies that coexisted with them. I've seen them and although I was cautious I wasn't fearful. Many have noted that black bears with cubs will even run away and then return later to retrieve them.
This was unusual behavior. It can't be attributed to black bears simply doing what they're doing. Even if it just came across a body, predation on humans is also highly unusual.
Wow, these comments are truly frightening. First, no one even knows at this point if this man was killed by a bear, had a heart attack, fell and hit his head or any one of many other possibilities. But lets assume he was indeed attacked and killed by this bear. You still don't know what precautions this man did or did not take nor what any of the circumstances were. He could have stripped naked and smothered himself in honey or been armed with a dozen cans of bear spray and singing the star spangled banner for all you know. As for being in the bears home. Just what makes it the bears home any more than ours? To say that bears have always done this sort of thing well guess what, so have humans. I am not going to defend the poaching of anything but harvesting ginseng or walking in the woods is hardly as one commenter stated, a "dangerous" activity. And tell me where your love of bears comes from? Is it from an illustrated picture book? A zoo? Watching them on National Geographic? How do you suppose you know what a bear is if not for the fact that someone got close enough to obsereve them in the first place? Were they irresponsible and deserved death too? I guess some here feel we should ban people from the parks and forests and everyone should just stay indoors (dont ask me where the materials for those homes are supposed to come from). It is a shame a man is dead and a bear was killed as a result, but It was the right thing to do.
Although I agree with ALL CAPS being rude, "sanctimonious" pretty much describes the rest of your comment.
We just got back from Glacier. There there are signs everywhere and you are told to carry bear spray out on the trails and they even have short classes on how to identify different ones,what to dowhen you see one up close and how to shoot the bearspray when you need to. i guess I would have liked to see the rangers wait for info as they had a way of keeping tabs on that particular bear. As to Gatlinburg,the bears are way too comfortable around us. A bear just came up the gully, over the low fence and ambled around the swimming pool scaring everybody out of there. I suggested to the managers of the place that maybe they should put up a real fence on the wild side of the pool. They just shrugged and said the bears go everywheres anyway, they were even found on the third floor of one of the Ripleys a while back. It's a tough question except for the part about people being really deeply uninformed and stupid, which is not the bear's fault.
I think the best thing to do is shoot mean bears
I've trout fished WNC all my life and I've had a few experiences with black bear. When you're fishing, you might see wet paw prints on the rocks, hear a bear crossing the stream to evade you as you walk up on a hole, or catch a glimpse of a bear running away from you but in most of WNC the bears are pretty wild and scared of humans because they get hunted and in a lot areas they're dog hunted. Those type of bears are pretty predictable, they haul butt as soon as they see or smell a human.
However, the park bears have little fear of humans and are much less unpredictable. I was fishing solo at Hazel Creek and spotted a bear above me and it was intently watching me. I started slowly walking back down the creek to the shoreline to get back to where I beached my boat. That bear paralleled me from the wood line all the way out. When I stopped, it stopped, when I moved forward, it moved forward. It was definitely paralleling me which I knew too well can be the precursor to an attack. I didn't dare run or even look towards it but I could see it up there less than 50 yards from me out of the corner of my eye. I knew any second that bear could charge down the hill and be upon me. It was the longest walk of my life. When I got to the boat, I untied it, let it drift it out into the channel and just sat there quietly having an aneurism from all the adrenaline rushing thru my body.
I have no problem with the killing of this bear. If I walked up on a bear guarding the remains of a human, I wouldn't even have to think about, I'd shoot that bear. It's not like the park will miss it. There's probably too many boars in the park as it is and that can contribute to the bear population becoming frenetic and unstable.
I know the bear huggers would squeal but something needs to be done to put some fear of humans back into the park bears. Perhaps a limited hunt by well qualified hunters. Or allow some bear dog training in the park.
The re-introduction of the black bear in North America is the most successful large mammal reintroduction ever attempted in the world. Black bear populations are doing well all over, growing and expanding in every state where they occur, and that means there will be more human/bear conflicts.
There is. For decades NPS wildlife management has been using hazing techniques - from pyrotechnics to paintballs and even rubber bullets fired from real shotguns. For the most part these bears aren't stalking humans - especially not black bears. They're looking for food. If there's any loss of their natural fear of humans, it's because they've been conditioned to lose some of it because they've managed to obtain high-calorie food sources that people haven't properly stored.
If it doesn't work, then yeah killing them is the only solution. I'd love a world where that wasn't necessarily, but it is.