Arkansas is seeing an increase in its black bear population, leading to more interactions with people and at least one fatal encounter. Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth has more.
On Sept. 3, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission got an alarming and unusual call that a bear had attacked a man in the Mulberry Mountain area of Franklin County, along Highway 23.
Keith Stephens, chief of communications for Arkansas Game and Fish, says the man, 72-year-old Vernon Patton from Ozark, was using a tractor to move gravel on his property when the attack happened. His son was working with him but wasn’t with him at that exact point…