One charging bear. One can of spray. The bear turned and ran.
That is how Cortlandt Koerwitz of Sacramento describes a Fourth of July encounter outside his family’s Lake Tahoe vacation home, and a video of it backs him up. Koerwitz told KCRA 3 the trouble began when his daughter spotted a bear digging in a trash can inside the garage. ABC7 heard a slightly different version: his daughters were packing coolers for a holiday boat trip when they noticed the animal.
What happened next is not in dispute. “The girls said that the bear, instead of running away like normal, the bear kind of came towards them,” Koerwitz said. He grabbed the can of bear spray kept next to the garage door and went to look.
Seconds, not minutes
The video shows him walking toward the garage, then the bear lunging at him without warning. A moment later he fires the spray, and the animal swings away. “I just kind of caught something out of my left eye, and it was the bear rushing in. We were both startled, and I just shot the spray,” he told KCRA 3.
The cloud did not stay where he aimed it. “The bear spray worked, and it worked on me too,” he told ABC7, as the overspray drifted back toward him and reached his eyes. On the recording he coughs, then says, “Got to get a mask on.”
Where the spray was sitting mattered. “So, yeah, wasn’t a lot of options if I didn’t have that bear spray,” Koerwitz said. Without the can, he said, he would have been close to defenseless. He tells anyone in bear country to keep a can close at hand.
Unusual behavior
Bears are no strangers to the area. Koerwitz said they often wander through in search of food and raid trash cans or unlocked vehicles, and he has shared video of an encounter from two years ago. This was the first time, he said, that he had seen one act aggressively.
Black bears live all across the Lake Tahoe Basin, state wildlife officials say, and loose garbage or other easy food pulls them into neighborhoods. Officials want locals and tourists alike to lock down trash, stop leaving food in cars and remove anything else that draws bears. Fox News Digital asked the department for comment, and the request was passed along to the Tahoe wildlife conflict team, a spokesperson said.
Koerwitz says he hopes the video works as a reminder to secure garbage, take food out of cars and stay alert in bear country.
Sources
- Black bear charges man at Lake Tahoe home, bear spray drives it off (Fox News)
- Bear spray helps Lake Tahoe father fend off charging bear (ABC7)
