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Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the best places to visit in the United States if you want to spot a bear in the wild. However, they have a reputation for causing their fair share of trouble in the areas surrounding it, which was the case with one that had no trouble popping open the door of a car before she and her cubs raided it for a meal.
I devote a solid chunk of my time to keeping tabs on the Bear Beat at BroBible, and there’s been no shortage of content to cover this year as those animals have managed to cause plenty of chaos around the country.
As things currently stand, no state has spawned more noteworthy stories than Colorado, as its estimated 20,000 black bears have ended up at the center of a spike of encounters linked to an ongoing drought that’s led to an unprecedented number of attacks and sightings.
The ones in Tennessee have also been able to hold their own, and a disproportionate number of those incidents have unfolded in and around the town of Gatlinburg, which serves as a gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Now, we can add another one to the pile thanks to an enterprising mama bear and the cubs who followed her into a car she had no problem invading.
A bear casually opened the door of a car in Tennessee before her cubs climbed inside with her
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an 819-square-mile expanse that straddles the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, and the approximately 1,900 black bears that roam the region are responsible for the densest population of that species in the United States.
Most people who visit the park arrive after making their way through one of two tourist towns in the Volunteer State: Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.
The latter seems to have a bit of a monopoly on bear encounters; one wandered through the middle of its annual Christmas parade last year, and another sent visitors scattering after strolling through a parking lot in July.
Gatlinburg was also the site of an incident involving a bear that broke the window of a car outside a cabin to get its paws on some leftover Burger King over the summer, a strategy that caused a bit more damage than the one that was recently deployed by another one of those mammals.
According to KTVU, a woman named Kathrie Gentry arrived in Gatlinburg for a church retreat on Friday, September 25th and captured footage of a bear that seemed to know its way around car doors based on the ease with which it gained access to what appears to be a Toyota Camry.
A bear family piled into a parked car in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on Friday, after the adult bear skillfully opened one of the vehicle’s doors.
The bears snatched items from the car which they later discarded in the parking lot. https://t.co/w8UAUB5zwp pic.twitter.com/I7ZumHCKOu
— ABC News (@ABC) September 28, 2026
A honking horn wasn’t enough to scare the bear away—nor the trio of cubs that also made their way inside the vehicle (and one more that attempted to) before their mom emerged with a bag that presumably contained some grub.
That scene unfolded as the members of that quintet get closer to the start of hibernation season, and bears are known for being a bit more aggressive in their quest for food around this time of year due to the hyperphagia that motivates them to bulk up for their long rest in the winter.