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UTAH COUNTY -- A Springville woman who says she had a close encounter with a bear over the weekend has the video to prove it. That video is enough to convince wildlife officials there's still a potentially dangerous bear on the loose in the mountains of Utah County.
KSL News has now learned that two bears were shot and killed over the weekend by civilians who thought lives were in danger. With Kayleigh Figgat's documented experience, that makes a total of four close encounters in the last few days involving bears that are unusually unafraid, even curious, about humans.
Figgat took her fiancé for a Sunday drive nine days ago. In Hobble Creek Canyon, above Balsam campground, they saw bear droppings. Figgat got out of the Jeep to take a look.
"I look up and there was the bear standing right in front of me, staring at me like, 'Whoa, what are you?' Just staring at me. And he started walking towards me, and I was like, 'Oh no!'" Figgat said.
The cell phone video she shot convinced wildlife officials it is not the same bear shot Friday night by the campground host at Balsam.
After seeing her bear, Figgat jumped back in the Jeep.
"All of a sudden, he just stands up and puts his hands right here on the window and starts looking in," she said. "I was crying a little bit, and shaking. I was like, 'Oh my gosh! There's a bear on my car!'"
Wildlife officers also do not believe it was the bear killed on the Fourth of July. A cabin owner near the South Fork of the Provo River was unable to chase it away.
"It came back to his cabin. He fired off a couple of warning rounds. The bear wouldn't leave, and he again felt that he was concerned for people's safety, so he shot the bear," explained Chad Bettridge, with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
It is legal to shoot a bear if there's a substantial threat, but wildlife officials want you to call them first if you can.
"We can trap it, or we can haze it or send some dogs after it to kind of make it known that it's not welcome in that area. The last thing that we do is put the bear down," Bettridge said.
Figgat's bear pawed the window for a while.
"Then the bear got down and came over to my hood, right here. And he put his paws on it and was pushing on it, just like smelling underneath the hood, and just sat down in front of my car for a while," Figgat said.
She says it sat there by her Jeep for 15 minutes.
"It seemed calm. It seemed like it was very used to people. It wasn't startled or anything," she said. "Even when I started the engine, it just looked up at me like it was a dog."
That un-skittish, un-scareable behavior is unusual for bears. It suggests they've been habituated to humans by someone's careless handling of food or garbage.
If you see a bear like that, you should keep your distance and contact the Division of Wildlife.
E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com
