Luckly no one was hurt but an extremely close call. About 2 year back me and my wife decided to go tent camping for 3 days at Cain Hollow campground in Allegheny state park NY. Their was ofcourse signs for bears in that area and all precautions should be taken while camping. We were very used to this we have camped in bear country before and have seen plenty in the wild from michigan, Tennessee, and ofcourse new york. We made it through our first two days without any trouble camping near the back of the campgrounds, on the third day at about 2 pm with the sun fully out we were at our campsite and we had a couple with a newborn camping two spots down from us. They just put him to rest in the tent and the father was getting somthing out of their bear box and headed towards their truck. Out of nowhere a massive black bear charges into their campsite and takes a large duffel bag out of the bear box and begins ripping it apart. The wife and husband saw this, the father ran to grab the child and the mother ran in the truck and stared slamming on the horn. This made the bear grab the duffel bag and ran only like 20ft away and started to eat whatever was inside. I was standing ontop of our picnic table watching this bear completely unafraid of any humans near it. The wife had also got on the phone and called rangers to come to the campsite. Two rangers came one with a paintball gun another with a shotgun. They at the same time rushed the bear, the man with the paint ball shooting the bear and the man with the shotgun shooting in the air. This is what i took to scare the bear or the first time. After that the rangers told everyone it would be safe to stay as the bear should now be afraid of the people there. Me and my wife felt safe enough and stayed up till about one in the morning just talking and still a little anxious to go to sleep because of what we saw. As many know the forest are rarley quite at night we heard squirrels and were aware of a family of raccoons watching us, checking to see if we had food by our fire so the sound of small twigs breaking was common. It was getting late and we decided to sit out until the fire died. Their was one small flame left when i felt somthing to my right i turned on the flashlight and there standing at most 5 feet away was the largest black bear i had ever seen. It came in quickly but wasnt running and as soon as i turned on the light it stop, lowered its head and began to growl/chattering and show its teeth while doing the lip quiver thing bears do when angry. Its head lowered even more and began to sway staring at me and my wife. After looking into it this i believe was predation aggression not at all being defensive. Me and my wife immediately stood up from our chairs, i suspect the bear thought we were smaller then we were because after standing it started to focus more on our tent then us and i put my wife behind me and pushed her to the car and put her in the passenger seat. She smacked her head pretty hard on the roof of the car and was dazed while i walked around the front of the car and got in the driver seat. We looked at eachother and realized the car keys were on the picnic right next to the bear. The only thought going through my head was the only advantage i have on this thing is that i know where it is, so i got out of the car luckly i had a baseball bat and began to walk towards the bear yelling, back the fuck up loud enough the whole campground could hear me. The bear broad side facing me began to quiver its lip and growl again, i saw then on its back right leg a huge chuck on hair missing under that you could see its pale skin with what looked like roadrash and still bloody. Also for whatever reason the bear was completely soaked even though it had not rained for several days, god know what happened to that bear before it came at us. For some reason the bear turned and walked back into the forest, I without a doubt know that bear was not scared of me, not one bit. My wife then feeling a need to protect me came out of the car still stunned by hitting her head(I love her for thinking she could protect me but definitely scared me that she got out at all)and we watched as It walked back into the forest which compared to our campsite was just a wall of blackness you couldnt see into, i heard it pace back and forth a few feet away from where i could see it and then things went silent again. I quicky grabbed the keys and we drove about 5 miles till we had cell phone reception, i have no idea how the wife earlier made call from her campsite. We told rangers that we had a bear problem and they acted like we were over reacting a sent a local cop to check things out, i told the officer what happened and how strange this bear was acting and that it might be injured. He also acted like we were over reacting and searched our campsite,without getting anywhere near the area i pointed the bear went off too, said it "looked good", nothing that would be drawing in a bear and said we probably scared it off "again" and it wont be back. It seemed to me and my wife that this was not true and he was just trying to not get us to panic or anyone that overheard what happened. We packed up our whole campsite in about 10 minutes and planned to drive all the way home. It was about 3 am when were leaving the campsite and while we left we saw the campground filled with police vehicals on literally every turn we made leaving and more still entering. I thinks its safe to say that they knew this was a serious problem and i assume they stayed there the rest if the night since most decided to find areas to park and wait just infront of other peoples campsites.

To be honest it felt like the bear wanted to element of surprise to attack me and my wife and was waiting in the woods a few feet away and wanted the lights to go out and for us to be asleep before it came in again. Im glad we trusted our gut an got out of there. Also if you were wondering the campsite was mostly filled with people and not one came to help even though we went to the help the other couple earlier to see if they were alright before the rangers came.

I wanted to post this to inform people about the danger black bears can pose and that many camp areas with bears will not tell vistors the full extent of interactions with wildlife. To this day you couldnt find any information on bear incidents in that area and i doubt we were the first. BE SAFE OUT THERE.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/treeplanter-bear-attack-tumbler-ridge-1.6899816

Chatting with a grizzly bear survivor, Bob Legasa, I learned that spraying directly at a bear allows the wind to carry the spray away from the bear but by spraying down, it's designed to billow up into the bear's face