I've chased a Black bear off.
So has Richard, my partner.
Getting between a sow and her cubs is another thing, of course.
I was Hiking in Sequoia National Park with my x-wife.
Walked around a tree ( Which is something you only really do with Sequoias. Takes a while, too) and ran into a bear.
X-wife got really scared, so I ran at it and yelled, causing it to take off.
Had I been on my own, I would have backed off, leaving it to it's own business.
I worked on a Hummingbird project in California in 81.
We had bears as regular visitors in our mountaintop tent camp.
We'd just chase them off.
So I'm not just blowing smoke out my ass on this, Mick.
Just to make it clear, I would never have attempted that with a grizzly.
Been around those while hitchhiking in the North West territories, Yukon and Alaska, And I was always extremely careful about those.
A Polar bear would just look at you as you came at it, smile and eat you.
When we camped out in one of the most remote Sequoia groves ( Not going to mention it's name, we'll be going there again), Richard got up early and walked around.
Ran smack into a Black bear, yelled at it, and it took off.
He showed us the footprints in the snow later, and you should have seen the spray of gravel on top of the snow, when that bear thought it was going on a South African's meny.
Richard has been a safari guide in South Africa, he has been around the big 5, so a Black bear wasn't scary to him, just a great thing to see.