Waylon Thomas says he was alone in his Shamattawa home last week when he saw a bear crawling out of his kitchen window.
“Once that bear [saw] me, it just crawled back inside and came after me and went out the door and followed me outdoors,” where it attacked him late on the evening of July 24, he said.
“I didn’t really feel nothing. When that bear scratched me twice and bit me twice, like, I didn’t feel nothing — not till later on.”
Thomas isn’t the only person in the northeastern Manitoba community to be attacked by a bear recently.
On Monday, a 60-year-old man was found dead in a wooded area near a path, with evidence suggesting animal predation, RCMP said. They believe the animal involved was a bear.
Thomas said the man killed was his uncle, John Wood, who had been reported missing a few days earlier.
Barbara Skeid, director of Shamattawa Health Services, said a child around six years old was also injured by a bear, also inside a home.
All the attacks happened within days of each other, she said.
RCMP said there has been an increased bear presence in the area, and the province has said conservation officers were sent out to help with the investigation into the death.
People who live in the area are accustomed to black bears roaming around, but Skeid said in all the years she’s lived there, she’s never seen anything like this, adding she chased a bear away from her own deck.
“Even in my own house, he came in,” she said.
In the past, “people would go feed [them]. They were always around people,” she said. “They didn’t hurt anyone.”
Skeid said a planned camp outing for the whole community has been cancelled in light of the situation, and members of the community have been patrolling the area, hunting for bears.
“Even one of the [band] councillors, constantly he’s driving around the bushes, and sometimes he’ll take one or two men with him,” she said.
“They say when bears attack someone, more likely they will try to come back for what they left behind.”
Thomas said that last he heard, about 14 bears had been killed, but at least two are still believed to be roaming around Shamattawa.
Everyone’s on high alert, he said. That includes him, following the attack he suffered last week.
“He came back. There’s scratches on the board outside, trying to come inside,” he said. “We stay up all night.… I’m still tired.”
Death would be 4th ever in Manitoba: expert
Michael Campbell, a professor at the University of Manitoba’s faculty of the environment, said several factors could be behind the attacks.
Population management plans after the COVID-19 pandemic led to fewer hunters coming to the province, causing a drop in the number of animals killed, Campbell said.
He also said if the bears are being fed, they may start associating people with food.
But the biggest problem may be a lack of regular garbage pickup.
“Checking the local community notice board, there’s a lot of people asking for someone to come and pick up their trash,” he said.
“You can’t leave it outside if it’s not in a bear-proof container, because the bears are going to get into it outside and they’re going to be attracted to it,” said Campbell.
“At the same time, by keeping it in the house — and if the houses are not that secure — the bears can get in.”
Campbell said black bear attacks are rare, though there have been a few cases in recent years. If the animal that attacked Wood was a bear, it would be the fourth fatal bear attack ever recorded in Manitoba, he said.
He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the same bear was responsible for all attacks.
When a mother is looking to breed again, “she chases the young of the previous year away, and [they start] to look for places to create their own territory,” Campbell said.
“Typically, if we look at many of these negative interactions where you get bears in cottages and bears in garbage dumps, they tend to be those one-year-old, two year-olds.”
Skeid said Shamattawa also noticed a lot of bears last year. Some did try to get into houses when people were sleeping, but nobody was hurt, she said.
“All of a sudden this happens,” said Skeid. “It’s kind of scary even for the kids to be outside or even someone to walk alone.”