Night time animal encounter: Bear or Boar?

Question

On a recent bike trip through the Carpathian mountains we had a night time encounter with a large animal, which we never saw. But I recorded some (probably a little scarce) evidence the next day.

Exact location of the incident

Description of the incident

We were sitting on a field close to the tree line a large hill (or little mountain). The sun had just set and we had just eaten noodles and pesto for dinner. When we suddenly heard a large animal approaching from within the woods (a few thick branches cracking and rustling). My partner asked me what that could be, I responded: boar (since it was the most likely and I wanted to prevent any panic). We started to clap really loud to scare it away. It started to grunt pretty loud and seemingly increased it's paste toward us (which could also just be my panic influenced perception). I panicked and put my 4000lm tactical flashlight into strobe mode towards the noises. The animal slowed down and slowly retreated.

The noises where more continues than I'm used to from boars and there definitely was no squeaking quality to them (which was what I was desperately trying to here in that moment). I'd think that boar sounds are more discrete and distinct than bear sounds and I think they where, but of course my perception was also under the influence of a lot of fear and of what I wanted and did not want to hear so I'm not 100% sure.

In that moment, judging from the sound we came to the conclusion that it had to be a bear and just left everything as it was: tent standing in the woods, food in a not-bear-proof bag which had not been hung into a tree yet. We wanted to ask the people living in one of the three houses down the hill whether we could set up camp in their garden. But since their gates where locked and there was no bell at the garden gate, we gave up and just got a room a few kilometers down hill and did not return to the camp until the next morning. The bag of food and all of our camp was untouched so either animal had either been scared far away or wasn't curious or hungry.

These are the pictures I took in the morning when packing up the camp. The ground was pretty steep so the tracks are all quite smudgy. The mud was also pretty hard (we did not leave any tracks in it when walking in our biking sneakers). I think only the part of the hoofs or claws on which the most weight was resting has left any tracks. Sadly I wasn't smart enough to put anything for size comparison next to them. I also could have picked apart the parcel too see more of what it had eaten (the thing on top of the parcel looks like part of a mushroom). And of course what I saw could be from a completely unrelated animal. Since it was hard to say how far from us and into the trees the thing actually was.

Droppings

Tracks

Maps of Animal Populations

Boar:

Bear:

Answer 1

Can't tell you just from the description for sure, but as someone used to american bears and american boars, all your pictures lean way way more bear than boar ((though none are perfect and not familiar with european species//examples so not completely positive, and like you said maybe unrelated to your encounter)). One of the biggest reasons I lean bear in your story is they are usually more active at dawn//dusk, whereas wild hogs are usually active in middle of day and middle of night like post midnight.

Answer 2

There is nothing in the description that IMHO would not go along with a wild boar. But there isn't that much to distinguish boar vs. bear in the description.

• Droppings: probably no good to distinguish. Both boars and bears feed on mostly on vegetables in summer (including berries, fruits, roots, mushrooms). Both are scavengers as well. Bears are more predators than boars, though.

  As a rule of thumb, boar droppings look similar to human droppings.

  Since brown bears* in Southern Europe are among the smallest brown bears (German wiki page says: only about 70 kg), the droppings would be about the same size as wild boar or human.

• Noises, IMHO far more distinctive between boar and bear:

  • rustling and breaking branches towards you means an unconcerned animal. A bear aware of you and after your food would be astonishingly silent.

  • continuous grunting: I've heard wild boars (FWIW, in the evening/early dark) continuously rustling and happily grunting as they feed. No squeaking (and why would there be: that's astonishment or alarm. Not what you'd have wanted to hear then... just like chattering/clapping teeth, which are an aggression sound)

  • Boars live in groups (even though old males live solitary outside mating season in winter) and they "chat" with each other when unconcerned, and tell each other where they are by those grunting noises. They also make considerable noise stepping around (scavenger rather than predator). In many regions they are habituated to humans closeby - it may have been unconcerned and curious about you. Clapping (or "technical") sounds are often less concerning to wild animals than you talking even at normal level.

  • Bears are solitary animals. They are habitually rather silent.

• 2nd "track" photo may be boar or deer or just a matter of the lighting and thus anything or nothing. And as you say, it may have been left by someone else than your nightly visitor.

  But if it's a footprint of either boar or bear, IMHO boar is again more likely: boars being cloven-hoofed, the photo may show the front part of the print with the dewclaws missing/in the grass. On hard soil, the hooves will be tightly together, which fits in size compared to the fingers.

  Even though southern European brown bears are small compared to brown bears in general, IMHO the mud patches on the photos are too small to hold more than a partial bear footprint. They'd have a paw print of comparable size to human hand/footprints (I guess somewhat wider, but shorter). And they have claws that are at least the size of a child's fingers that would leave marks.

  (A cub wouldn't have been allowed to get close to you by its mother - in a fashion that you'd not have noticed since you were stationary.)

  Keep in mind that boars also dig. While one frequently finds a whole part of a meadow thoroughly messed up, of course they may also turn around only a little patch of soil and then continue somewhere else.

• Location: the spot it in the outer western Carpahians, Upper Tatras where according to OP's research wild boars have medium population density (likely meaning: high in the lower parts, not on the upper mountains - but the spot is at only 650 m above sea level), and bears are marked as sporadic.

  This means wild boar is a priori much more likely than bear (also compared to e.g. the Romanian part of the Carpathians).

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*Everyone from North America, please keep in mind that Europe doesn't have black bears. So if we're talking bear, it's a brown bear. Still, since this is about Southern Europe, it would be a rather small brown bear with an expected weight of maybe 70 kg (see above).