A young male black bear spotted in western Mecklenburg County this week is likely the same one that people reported swimming across Lake Norman a couple of weeks ago, a state wildlife officer said.

Why the bear has remained in the area remains a mystery to N.C. Wildlife Resources Officer Sampson Parker. Most young male bears seen in the region over the decades were merely passing through this time of year, Parker told The Charlotte Observer.

Most vanish in a day or two as they trek to the coast or back to the mountains to stake out vast territories largely devoid of humans, he said.

Yes, they even manage to cross Interstate 77, Parker said. Without paying a toll, we might add.

Like us, black bears love the coast

About 10,000 black bears live in the N.C. coastal region and 7,000 in the mountains, according to 2020 estimates by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, the latest available year, Parker said.

Hyde County in the Outer Banks is particularly popular with the bears, Parker said. The county is the second least populous for humans.

Bears also love Tyrrell County, he said. The least populous county in the state, Tyrrell lies in the northeastern coastal plain, on the southern shore of Albemarle Sound.

Bear came from the mountains, officer says

Parker believes the latest bear came from the Caldwell Mountains into Lincoln County before swimming across Lake Norman to Cornelius and then Huntersville and west Mecklenburg.

Pam Jarvis on Unity Church Road in Denver shared video with The Charlotte Observer of the bear crossing her driveway toward the family’s basketball hoop on the night of May 21.

“Never thought I’d see a bear in Denver, let alone my own front yard,” Jarvis said on Nextdoor. “Beware, this was in the Ranger Island area at 9 p.m. just now Tuesday night.”

Cornelius residents later reported seeing a bear swimming near several Lake Norman coves and the popular Ramsey Creek Park swimming beach.

A woman along Harbor Light Boulevard posted on Nextdoor that the bear left the water near the end of her road, which runs along a peninsula off Jetton Road.

Another woman replied that her husband saw the bear swimming in the lake and followed it by boat from the cove off Pinwhenny Road, which is on a peninsula just to the south of the Harbor Light Boulevard peninsula.

Her husband watched the bear climb from the water onto Carlow Lane, she said. That’s off Belle Isle Drive and John Connor Road on the peninsula.

“It was a long swim, and it was very tired getting out of the water, but he survived,” the woman said on Nextdoor.

Bear loved homeowner’s yard

On Saturday, June 1, neighbors saw a young male black bear between Huntersville and Charlotte, including in the Wedgewood North community in the Northlake area, Observer news partner WSOC reported.

The bear hung around one man’s Wedgewood North backyard for a few hours, according to the station.

“Some people find that stuff cool,” Becca McGhee, another Wedgewood North resident, told WSOC. She walks her chihuahua mix. “I’m going to steer clear from bears,” she said.

They’re not aggressive

Parker said that unlike grizzlies and other brown bears, black bears are not likely to attack a human and typically scoot at the scent of a person.

“They look big and bad, but they’re not known to be aggressive animals,” he said.

While he’s received many reports of the young bear, none reported him being a nuisance. Only then would officers go check him out, he said.

And trying to find such bears is fruitless, he said. They hide in woods so well that no one can find them, he said.

They’re usually already many miles away, he said.

His office typically receives reports of one or two bears at most in a given summer across the Charlotte region. It’s best, he said, to admire them from a distance and just leave them be, because soon they’ll be gone.