Burnt Ranch Couple Hurt in Bear Attack; Little Dog Who Stepped in Dies Days Later – Redheaded Blackbelt

Redheaded Blackbelt
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Jeff & Mallory with Cassie [Photo courtesy of GoFundMe]

A Burnt Ranch couple is healing from bites, broken bones, and claw wounds, and grieving their French bulldog, after a bear attacked them in their backyard on September 19.
Jeff & Mallory with Cassie [Photo courtesy of GoFundMe]
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is investigating, and wardens are trying to trap the bear, Mallory and Jeff told Redheaded Blackbelt in an interview earlier today. The couple said CDFW staff from Weed, Redding, and Eureka have responded to help. “We’ve had such a wonderful experience with them and commend them for their help,” Mallory said.
Jeff said their dog, Cassie, barked once in the night. He got up, turned on the outside light, and checked through the window before opening the door. Cassie stepped off the deck first, and a bear came around from behind a piece of patio furniture.
The couple believes the bear was cornered between the house’s small fence and its open gate, and panicked.
“I think you know the bear was startled by us just as much as we were startled [by it],” Jeff said.
When Jeff yelled at it, the bear charged him and knocked him backward. He broke two ribs in the fall. The bear bit him below the knee and clawed his other leg. He hit it with a potted plant in an effort to stop the attack.
That’s when Cassie charged in, growling and snarling. The bear turned, grabbed her in its mouth, and started to run, Jeff said.
Mallory woke to the screams with no idea what was going on outside. Once outside, she threw a chair at the bear, which then dropped Cassie and swiped at her. Jeff then shoved a patio heater into the bear, and it finally ran off.
“It happened so fast; it was only a moment or two,” Jeff said.
Cassie escaped and hid. The couple rushed her to an emergency veterinarian for surgery that night. She had cuts down her spine and many bite wounds, but by the second day she was walking and drinking water on her own. Jeff and Mallory were hopeful she’d recover however, by the next morning, she had died.
Cassie was 7.5 years old.
“She was never meant to be a hero, she was not our guard dog. She was just our sweet indoor lap baby,” Mallory said.
Jeff needed staples in his leg. Mallory suffered serious injuries to her head and face, a broken hand, and bite and puncture wounds, according to a GoFundMe started by longtime friend Rachel Moscon to help with medical bills, emergency vet costs, and lost income.
The couple is self-employed and does physical work, so they have had to cancel jobs while they heal, Mallory said.
Jeff has lived in the area since 2008 and Mallory since 2020. They said they are careful with food and garbage and love living alongside wildlife, which makes the attack all the harder to take in.
Bear attacks like this are rare, according to CDFW spokesperson Peter Tira.
California has between 49,000 and 71,000 black bears, and about half live in the North Coast and Cascade regions, according to CDFW. Black bears come in many colors, including cinnamon, which the couple believes this bear was.
A CDFW list of human-black bear incidents shows about 100 nonfatal attacks statewide from 1986 through 2015, roughly three a year. Only one is listed in Trinity County, a 1986 attack on a camper in the Trinity Alps Wilderness. The state’s first documented deadly black bear attack happened in 2023 in Downieville, CBS News reported.
If a bear attacks, CDFW advises fighting back rather than playing dead and calling 911 right away, according to the agency’s bear safety sheet.
The fundraiser to help Mallory and Jeff as they recover can be found here: https://gofund.me/c98021810
 
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As far as I’m concerned, the 2013 death of Rainbow Mountain was caused by a bear that then ate a large portion of his body over several days. The coroner’s conclusion I don’t think was well supported.The DFW’s decision to not trap and euthanize the bear was in direct contradiction of National Park Service policy. Most bears I have encounted run away. Some don’t.
I remember that incident. If memory serves, the conclusion of all the experts was that Rainbow Mountain died of natural causes, probably a cardiac event, in his backyard. Bears are natural scavengers and are drawn to dead bodies. Yes, they are also predators, but this was a simple clean-up. DFG wisely declined to kill the bear, and every friend of Rainbow said Mountain would never kill the bear and would be pleased to know that his own natural death aided the survival of a fellow creature in magnificent Humboldt County.
it’s tragic what happened to this family. But it’s a false equivalence trying to conflate these two events.
his dog barks once at 4am and he decides to go outside and investigate. there is more to this story. maybe these glamper managers should not have attacked the bear at 4am.
That statement is spurious bullshit without some EVIDENCE to refute their story.
I took it as the dog had to relieve itself, barking once. Jeff said he checked out the window before opening the door to their fenced, albeit, remote yard. We have bear in our yard on the edge of Garberville all the time, (more so when we had less dogs), but all the time just the same. We let them out if they whine or bark unless they’re frantic, ie, barking at something.
Our bears, skunks, raccoons, fox, and deer generally run when they hear us nearby. The mountain lion, though caught on game cam regularly, keeps to the shadows and we rarely spot it.
Let’s see your trailcam video! 🙂
I understand that part better with your explanation. I don’t understand how Mallory incurred those injuries without brawling with the bear. The only danger a black bear is to a human is if you are between point A and B and you get ran over.
My understanding when she came outside and saw the bear with Cassie in its mouth, she threw a patio chair at it. The bear dropped Cassie and swiped at her, and that’s how she said she was hurt.
witness to black cat meditating at point A as bear walked close by to point B. minutes later black cat was seen leaping 6′ into the air when the bear saw me, spooked and retreated. never seen hundreds of pounds scram so fast.
Animals are active right now and have strong appetites. The one feral cat that has visited me over the years has doubled its food intake. I’m near Eureka High and I expect to see bears, foxes, raccoons, mountain lions, coyotes, skunks, deer, and squirrels. I am also getting large flocks of robins feeding on Huckleberry bushes.
Last year we were living near Heartwood & had the largest flock of robins Ive ever seen, estimated 200! All over the madrone berries.
The bears are ready to get fattened up for winter. If all the critters are ravenous, theres either/both not enough of their natural food source available or accessible & a decent sign of a cold winter to come.
For the bears sake lets hope so, in Japan its warmed so much that majority bears do not go into “winter slumber” anymore as their food sources also shrink& humans move in closer.Japans killed 14,000 bears so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/27/bears-killed-13-people-japan-14000-bears
The average human eats about 2000 Calories a day to stay healthy. Black bears will eat up to 20000 Calories a day in the fall to get fat before hibernation.
Stop feeding feral cats – it isn’t as kind as y’all seem to believe.
It ignores birds. Stick with politics please.
When I take my dogs out after dark, I go with a 44 magnum and super powerful flashlight!
The bears seem to be extra aggressive this year. I had to spend a few nights guarding my chicken coop after a bear killed quite a few of the flock. That’s the first time I’ve had bears going after the chickens instead of the chicken feed.
And since it got some chickens, it will be back.
Though, it might not be until next year at a similar point in the season.
Yup. Bears habituate really quickly… and then teach their young the same habits. In 27 years of keeping chickens this was the first time I’ve had a bear go after the birds. It killed 8 and only ate 2.
I agree we’re having a ton of problems in the Jacoby Creek area. The bear even broke into someone’s home and got into the refrigerator. I ran into the bear on trash day eating someone else’s trash and the bear definitely did not run away. I even had a super loud airhorn and blasted it at the bear. It didn’t move.
I think black bear numbers are increasing State-wide. More pressure on the same or less range. Warmer winters discourage hibernation, demanding more food. Deer numbers are way down. Rainfall and snowpack increasingly erratic. Your chickens represent concentrated protein and fat.
If there was even a Remote possibility of wildlife in my yard, I would not go out at night to investigate anything without a good sized weapon, be it a large hand gun or rifle or shotgun and like afore mentioned Bright Light!
I wish those folks a safe and quick recovery, and sorry to hear about their brave pet!!! Bless its heart ❤️
A pet dog in the woods is a source of risk. Advice ranchers give to carry a gun isn’t to protect the hiker, it’s to save the pet dog. Pet dogs are sized to be possible prey, and will charge when they see a predator; risky combo for an unprotected dog. If your pet dog is not with you that automatic charge doesn’t happen and the bear can just run away. I see bears out here weekly. We see each other and both switch directions! Incidentally ranch dogs know better; they bark from a distance while backing up, again letting the bear go on his way. No harm no foul.
I grew up fishing. The trinity river has spring run salmon that die after spawning and the bears gorge on the body’s laying in the river. It draws all the bears to the river. We had to leave grays falls fishing one time because we kept bumping into bears.
Have seen a lot of bears up in the woods this year… pretty much one bear sighting per trip across FH1 and other F/S roads. (Which is an extraordinary number for somebody just passing through.)
But, not many does and zero bucks. Most of the deer were around lower residences… probably where they were (sort of) protected from catamounts.
Worst bear incident I’d seen was at the Salmon River Campground… (trailhead for Caribou Lakes). Big pickup camper had the rear end torn off. VW Bus demolished like a hand grenade had been tossed in. On the third night the bear ripped open a tent with people inside. (They got out). Amazingly… I (and my dog) slept through that incident.
That morning I was hiking to the lakes… a smaller chopper (like MASH) came in and flew up the Salmon River… had a guy holding a rifle in the doorway. A few minutes later… bang.
Few days later when I came out of the lakes… I found out that the Bear was a known ‘trouble bear’ that had been transplanted out of Yosemite.
As someone who has made a living catching bears either as a hunting guide, private trapper or federal trapper, and was caught over 300÷ bears .black bear behavior have changed in the last decade. The state of California outlawed hounhunting of bears, bears used to fear people and dogs. I personally would take people out hound hounding, and we would only harvest maybe a third of the bears that we ran Many bears got away climbed. cliffs, swam rivers fought all day in the brush with the dogs. Sows with cubs, we would pull the dogs off and only harvest about a third of what we ever ran, but bears learned to fear people. And fear dogs.We told people you outlaw, hounds, hunting ,bears will lose the fear of people. And dogs.And they have .In the 1970s, there was about 10000 black bears in the state. Now there’s probably way over 70000 The bears have no fear of people. on top of that ,california, fish and wildlife. has made it impossible to get a bear permit on depredation. They make people jump through so many hopes to get a bear permit. It’s almost impossible to get one when I was a federal trapper. I sometimes was working on 3 or 4 different bears at a time that had depredation. Permits, now I still have people calling me all the time on bear problems, everything from livestock and poultry being killed the houses being broken into and more? I’m not talking little petty problems, like garbage cans or a couple fruit trees.And in the last 3 years I’ve only had 2 lethal permits issued. They now issue a non-lethal permit, which basically gives you permission to scare it away. It’s become a big joke. Most ranchers don’t even call fish and wildlife anymore They use the 3S systems or a few other methods which are not as humane as me.Setting a trap or running my dogs i had a neighbor eaten in the nineteen nineties , who was the only true hippie I ever knew her name was lorna.⁰She definitely got eaten by the Bear. There was bear scat everywhere, with chunks of her hippie velvet dress. The Bear knocked her front door in at her.
little one room, cabin . Dry blood splattered all over the walls and as bears normally do, and I’ve seen this more times than I can count when they break into a building, they go out another way. They’ll take a whole window out with them.And they never get cut.My dogs found skin of my neighbors back and a collarbone, another neighbor found a bone, and her scalp search and rescue came up the CC C kids county sheriff but no fish and game There was a 2 paragraph story in the press, Democrat and that was, it woman eaten by bear, she was eaten by a bear. We don’t know if she was eaten alive or if a bear ate her body there was blood splatter all over the inside of the house.So she was pumping blood before she died. I think this will become commonplace now that the bears have no fear and problem bears are protected to the point that you can’t get a depredation permit. Typical California, when California changed the name of fish and game to fish and wildlife That’s when that department went woke. And now fish and wildlife is trying to tell us we have Wolves in Mendocino.Mendocino never had wolves. But what mendocino county has had is a huge problem with wolf dog hybrids. I have personally killed over 100 plus Wolf dog hybrids almost every rancher, I know, has dealt with Wolf dog hybrids. You can kill them under the Dog laws that are applied to dogs harassing killing or injuring livestock or poultry. For a Wolf to be a wild Wolf, it has to be 99% Wolf that’s under the federal fish and wildlife rules. So a Wolf that is, 98%. Wolf is considered a Wolf dog. And can be shot under food and ag laws in California, we no longer manage black bears or any predators with common sense.
!
Mountain Lions are the same thing. Losing their fear of people etc.
Did Bear Jones ever tell you about him getting bit by the bear early 70’s I believe. Good story.
No friggin way!! I knew Lorna and have wondered about her for years like whatever happened to her is she still around? Is this the same Lorna?! Dark hair, kinda babbling at times-we knew folks in common up on Cow Mt/4 Corners. There’s a crazy story from her childhood about finding her dad and explaining why she babbled and was a little off sometimes but she was always sweet and kind. BTW- nobody likes you because you shot Rich Gravier’s dog and other narc reasons. So not sure I trust you on this story but boy- I woulda thought I’d hear it from somebody else. Where did Lorna get eaten- where was her cabin did you say?
I was a witness to the 1986 bear attack of a backpacker at Mumford Meadows. Two bears had been in a fight and either the winner or the loser proceeded to this fellow‘s campsite and bit him in the head while he was in his sleeping bag. He walked out the next morning covered in blood.
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