A beach trip became a lot more eventful for people visiting Pope Beach in South Lake Tahoe this week. A large black bear wandered into the area looking for food, and 18-year-old Derek Sears started recording. After a man whacked the bear in the face with a shovel, it left, leaving everyone unharmed.
In the viral video, which USA TODAY Travel shared to X, the bear first starts rummaging through Sears and his friends’ things. Sears was concerned the bear would get into their drinks. It ended up stealing Sears’s cookie, and he was not pleased.
The bear then starts walking down the beach and a man holding a shovel confronts it.
“Bro is fighting a bear!” Sears narrates as the man hits the shovel repeatedly on a park bench to try to scare the bear away with noise.
At one point in the standoff, the unidentified man whacks the bear in the face with the shovel, and it finally turns and leaves.
Watch it all go down here:
“Dude is fighting a bear.” Watch as a man uses a shovel to scare away a hungry bear from a picnic area on a California beach. pic.twitter.com/e0Qu538jke
— USA TODAY Travel (@usatodaytravel) August 13, 2024
Lake Tahoe is in northern California along the California/Nevada border. It’s home to black bears, some of which have brown fur. Brown bears like grizzlies no longer live in California, although they did historically.
Would you be that mystery man who whacks a bear with a shovel?