'It was really, really scary': Bear follows couple through forest, destroys tent

A Manitoba couple survived a panic-inducing encounter with a bear that destroyed their tent and pursued them through the forest.

"We're still a little shook up by the experience," said Hannah Bihun.

Bihun and her partner were sleeping in a tent on their property near the Pinawa Dam, about 100 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, when they were woken up Sunday morning by the sound of their dog growling. She looked out and saw a black bear standing about five feet away.

It wasn't the first bear they've encountered, Bihun said, but in the past, making loud noises and making themselves appear bigger made the bears move away. This time, clapping and yelling had no effect.

"My partner found a big branch that he was using to kind of make us even bigger, but the bear just kept coming at us. He even charged a couple times," she said.

They had left their bear spray in a storage trailer about three minutes from where they pitched their tent. They took their dog and began making their way through the forest, with the bear following them.

By the time they reached their trailer, Bihun couldn't see the bear anymore, but they realized that in their haste to get away from the bear, they had left their phones and keys behind.

"We were just in our underwear because we had just woken up, so we were barefoot, standing there, realizing that we can't get into the car, we can't get into the trailer."

As they searched for something to use to break into their car, Bihun looked up and saw the bear again.

She called her partner back, and they started the routine again, this time throwing rocks at the bear. While her partner held the bear off, Bihun frantically tried to break into the trailer, eventually punching through a window.

After they retrieved the bear spray, the bear's behaviour seemed to change and it eventually wandered away, Bihun said. When they went back to their tent, they found the bear had torn it up.

Bihun needed stitches for an injury to her leg and cut up her hand punching through the trailer window.

"It was really, really scary, and it's definitely changed the way we think about the time that we spend there, because I think it's easy to get a little bit complacent when you spend a lot of time in the wilderness, as we do," Bihun said.

Even though Bihun considers herself "bear-smart" and doesn't keep food or scented products in the tent, other people don't take the same precautions and that's a problem, she said.

"They're just becoming more and more accustomed to people," she said. "That's super dangerous for people camping and for people that live out in the wilderness, because we need them to be a little bit afraid of us so that we can keep a safe distance from them."

There has been a series of bear incidents in eastern Manitoba this summer.

In mid-July, a girl was injured when a bear swiped her family's tent at South Cross Lake, about 135 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg in Whiteshell Provincial Park.

In early July, a man was bitten on the leg by a bear while hiking along the Mantario Trail near Big Whiteshell Lake, about 30 kilometres north of South Cross Lake.

And no one was injured but a family had to leave a picnic lunch behind after a bear wandered in while they were eating dinner along the shore of Caddy Lake, just south of South Cross Lake in the Whiteshell.