Dash-mounted camera captures young bear bouncing off sheriff’s patrol vehicle in Northeast Ohio

It doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone how tough bears – even juvenile males – are, not even when they have a run-in with two-ton-plus Ford SUVs.

And that is exactly what happened the evening of June 9 when a black bear came out of nowhere to clip the passenger-side front panel of a Geauga County Sheriff’s Office patrol vehicle.

The entire – but short, 18-second episode provided by the department was captured on the vehicle’s dash-mounted camera as the Ford was on routine patrol in Munson Township.

“It may be the first, and only time, a bear is caught on a dash-cam running into a patrol vehicle. At least in Ohio, anyway,” said Brian Banbury, the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s administrator in charge of information and education.

Seen by the dash-cam is a front window view of the patrol vehicle traveling down a paved Geauga County country road. Out of the camera’s right view and up from a ditch next to a driveway runs the smallish-sized black bear.

An audible “thud” is heard when the collision occurs, and the vehicle comes to a stop.

The Geauga County Sheriff Office’s chief deputy, Tom Rowan, said his deputy’s vehicle was traveling about 50 miles per hour in the 55 mph zone when the incident occurred.

“An inspection later showed there was no damage to the patrol car and the deputy wasn’t injured, which was pretty amazing all things considered,” said Rowan, who is also a retired Division of Wildlife assistant chief.

Rowan said the bear quickly ran off and disappeared into the adjacent largely rural area.

Wildlife division personnel conducted a search of the area the next day but no evidence of the bear nor of it being hit were found.

“And the next day we got a report of a black bear around the Bass Lakes area, which is not too far away from the incident,” Rowan said.

Banbury said now is the time of year when young, two-year-old males are being disbursed by their mothers, the sows coming into heat again for another mating season.

That means the young male bears have to find an area not already occupied by a larger, mature bear. Increasingly, such bears are wandering into Northeast Ohio from adjacent Pennsylvania where they sometimes fall into mischief, ripping down game and bird feeders along with beehives.

Last winter a large, mature male black bear was killed when it was clobbered by a commercial truck traveling along Route 11 near Route 6 in Ashtabula County.

But as for the young bear in Geauga County that ran off with probably nothing more than a headache, well, it’s obvious this bruin was built Ford tough.