Arkansas officials have shot and killed a male black bear believed to have fatally mauled a 60-year-old man at a campsite in the Ozark National Forest last week, authorities said.
The body of Max Thomas, from Springfield, Missouri, was discovered on Thursday several yards outside the Sam’s Throne campground in north-west Arkansas, according to Newton County Sheriff Glenn Wheeler. A deputy had gone to the campground after Thomas’s son reported not hearing from his father, who had sent his family pictures of a black bear at his camp on Tuesday morning.
Deputies found evidence of a struggle and injury, including drag marks leading from the campground into the woods. “We believe he was in the process of breaking down his camp when the attack occurred,” Wheeler said. The state medical examiner’s office determined the death was an “animal mauling”.
On Sunday, a bear caught on a trail camera near the campground appeared to match the animal photographed by the victim and also encountered by another man at a roadside overlook in the area. Local hunters and hounds tracked the bear, which was killed and transported to Little Rock for DNA testing to confirm its involvement.
“We knew the bear in the photos was a male and this one is too,” Wheeler said. “It matches the size of the photographed bear and has the same facial colorations. Not to mention it was back in the same area where the attack happened.”
This is the second fatal bear attack in Arkansas in recent weeks, following an incident in September in Franklin County involving a 72-year-old man. Despite this, Dr Don White Jr, a large mammal ecologist at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, described fatal bear attacks in the state as “exceedingly rare”.
