I'm not making light of the danger, but facts do help put the risks into perspective and the odds of being attacked are really very low and that is worth noting.

It's also worth noting that most black bear attacks do not result in serious injury.

The odds of being attacked decrease a lot when you're away from campgrounds where bears are known to hangout, decrease even more if you're not feeding them at those hangouts, and even more again if you're not alone.

The odds of you being with a group and getting attacked while backpacking are almost nil. I have never heard of it happening here in the Ozarks or Ouchitas.

I could not find any statistics for New York on attacks, but I did find only one death recorded in all those years 140 years that records have been kept. More people have actually been killed by Polar Bears in zoos in New York than by wild black bears during those years.

I don't think any of the members here have been attacked by a black bear. W_D has chased more than a few off, but she wanders around where there's lots of them and they're a lot more accustom to seeing people who aren't shooting at them all the time.

I could be wrong, but I can't find anything that indicates there's even a moderate risk of getting attacked by a bear in New York. It looks to me like the risk is almost nonexistent.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't take normal precautions, I just wouldn't worry about it much.