Updated at 9:14 a.m., Friday, June 22, 2007
Ex-Marine kills bear with log, saves family in Georgia
Associated Press
HELEN, Ga. — A 300-pound black bear raided a family's camp site, and the father saved his sons from harm by throwing a log at the beast, killing it with a single blow.Chris Everhart and his three sons were camping in the Chattahoochee National Forest in northern Georgia when the encounter happened Saturday. The bear took the family's cooler and was heading back to the woods when the youngest son, 6-year-old Logan, hurled a shovel at it.
The bear then dropped the cooler and started coming at the boy, said his father. Fearing what might happen next, Everhart, an ex-Marine, grabbed the closest thing he could find — a log from their stash of firewood.
"(I) threw it at it and it happened to hit the bear in the head," Everhart said. "I thought it just knocked it out but it actually ended up killing the bear."
Everhart was given a ticket for failing to secure his camp site, said Ken Riddleberger, a region supervisor for game management with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
"We've not had an attack in Georgia," Riddleberger said. "The key thing to learn from this is if there's a bear around, do not have your garbage or food available. If we manage our food, we won't have bears around."
The attack happened the same weekend that an 11-year-old boy was killed by a black bear while camping in a forest in Utah. Sam Ives was found mauled to death after he was pulled screaming from his tent in the Uinta National Forest, about 30 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
Authorities said it was the first recorded fatal attack by a black bear in that state. His family said there was no food in the tent to attract a bear.
