I got closer than that to a bear one time and hope i never do it again lol.

I was Going to college and its up in the mountains and here we had 2 families (brown? bear mother and cubs) that made their home near campus. I decided to take a midnight stroll one weekend and we were notified about the recent bears so i knew they were nearby, of course there would be no action taken to remove the bears cause they were not causing a disturbance. while i was strolling around i heard a few small branches crackle above and i look up to see 2 pairs of eyes look at me and i just back away slowly thinking "where is the mother" and i heard a huff in the shadow, 10 feet away on one of the side of a campus building out pops a bear and it just looks at me as i continued to back away.

i got away around the corner and they didn't fallow. on my way back i saw a group of five walking the way i was going and warned them and they turned around with me. I alerted a RA and just went back to my room.

(Its not the last time i ran into this bear either but i don't want to make this too long lol)

Holy crow man that's the kind of situation that gets most people mauled or killed hell has no fury like a mother bear defending her cubs you are one lucky guy my friend thank you for sharing this story and please feel free to share the rest if you wish I'm not a stickler about the length of comments or the story's shared by viewers

Well here's the rest.

there was a bomb fire for homecoming week at the college and it was across campus and me and some friends were saying "hey we should climb a tree" then we climb a tree and im at the bottom with 2 others while two of the people in our group climbed a tree and then they said "holy shit" and we look up and see the two cubs right next to them. we all instinctively started to look for the mother while the two gently and calmly crawled out of the tree, and here when we were walking away we saw the mother crawl out the tree next to us and she just looked at us and when we got a good 20 yards away we booked it into the nearest building.

when we looked back she was still watching us from the tree, while the cubs played by her feet. after a few seconds she turned around and walked away.

i swear animals are so calm over there. even the herds of deer are not afraid of us. they just let us walk by them not even a foot away. and just to show me how calm these animals are my friend tackled down a deer and it just got back up and continued to eat the grass on the quad.

Dang man that's a couple really close encounters I am very surprised that animal control hasn't been called out to relocate the bears to a safer area I mean I know you said they haven't been digging in trashcans or causeing great disturbances but still those encounters could have ended much more violently but at least everyone stayed calm and moved away slowly

Well theses bears are drawn to there home... They did relocate them the year before but they came back.. And they did eventually relocate them about half way through the semester