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Former Marine kills bear with log

HELEN, Ga. — A camping trip to Low Gap Camp Grounds near Helen turned into a harrowing experience for Chris Everhart and his three sons when they tangled with a 300-pound black bear.

But it proved fatal for the bear.

The bear had taken the Everharts’ cooler and was heading back to the woods when 6-year-old Logan hurled a shovel at it.

Fearing what might happen next, the Norcross father and ex-Marine grabbed the closest thing he could find — a log.

“[I] threw it at it, and it happened to hit the bear in the head,” Chris Everhart said. “I thought it just knocked it out, but it actually ended up killing the bear.”

The man was given a ticket for failing to secure his camp site, said Ken Riddleberger, a region supervisor for game management with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Riddleberger said some U.S. Forest Service agents were at the camp issuing a citation in an unrelated case. They got to the scene in a few minutes and verified what happened, he said.

Riddleberger said fines are usually set by counties, but Everhart’s will be set by the federal government since the incident happened on federal property.

“We’ve not had an attack in Georgia,” he said. “The key thing to learn from this is if there’s a bear around, do not have your garbage or food available. If we manage our food, we won’t have bears around.”