Arkansas officials have shot and killed a male black bear believed to have fatally mauled a 60-year-old Missouri man at his campsite in the Ozark National Forest. The body of Max Thomas from Springfield, Missouri, was discovered last Thursday several yards outside the Sam’s Throne campground in Newton County.
Sheriff Glenn Wheeler said a deputy went to the campground after Thomas’s son reported not hearing from his father, who had sent pictures of a black bear in his camp on Tuesday morning. The deputy found evidence of a struggle, including drag marks from the campground into the woods. The state medical examiner determined the death was an “animal mauling”.
On Sunday, a bear caught on a trail camera near the campground matched the description of the animal photographed by Thomas and encountered by another man at a roadside overlook. Local hunters and hounds tracked the bear, which was killed and transported to Little Rock for DNA testing to confirm it was the attacker.
This is the second fatal bear attack in Arkansas in recent weeks. In September, a 72-year-old man died after being attacked by a bear in Franklin County. Despite these incidents, Don White Jr, a large mammal ecologist at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, said fatal bear attacks in the state are “exceedingly rare”.
