A man in his 70s went missing last month after he went out to pick mushrooms in Iwate, Japan. What should have been a normal trip to gather food turned into a horrible tragedy that has left the local community in shock. According to Express, the man went into the woods in northern Japan’s Iwate Prefecture and never came back. When police started looking for him, they found his body in the forest. What they saw was deeply disturbing. “A man in his 70s who went missing after going into the woods to harvest mushrooms was found dead,” a police official from Iwate said. “We suspect he was attacked by a bear based on scratch marks.” TV Iwate reported that the man’s head had been torn off from the rest of his body, showing just how violent the attack was. Bears are killing more people than ever before This man’s death is not the only one. Japan has had more bear attacks this year than ever before, with at least seven people killed since April. Between April and September, over 100 people were hurt in bear attacks all over the country. In the same week this mushroom picker died, two other men were also killed by bears. A 78-year-old man was found dead in Nagano Prefecture with claw marks all over him. Another man in his 70s was also found dead in a different part of Iwate. Japan is deploying troops to a mountainous region of Akita, besieged by bears. Since April, bears have injured more than 100 and killed 13 people — the highest toll over the past decade. pic.twitter.com/0adcihApSG— DW News (@dwnews) November 8, 2025 There are several reasons why bears are attacking more people now. Japan’s environment ministry says there were not enough acorns this year, so bears had to leave their usual homes to find food. Climate change is also messing up the plants and trees that bears normally eat, which pushes them closer to where people live. Fewer people are living in rural areas of Japan now, which gives bears more space to move around. Also, there are not many hunters left to keep the bear population under control, and the hunters who are still around are getting older. Crazy dashcam footage of a bear attacking motorists in Hokkaido, Japan: bear attacks have been on the rise in recent years and hit a record high in 2023. pic.twitter.com/6OtxhHK8dv— Jeffrey J. Hall (@mrjeffu) April 29, 2024 Things have gotten so bad that officials in Akita asked Japan’s military to help deal with the bear problem. Police officers can now shoot bears in towns and neighborhoods when hunters are not available. Some places are even testing drones that make dog barking sounds and firework noises to try to scare bears away. Japan has two kinds of bears. There is the Asian black bear, which people also call the moon bear, and the bigger brown bear that lives mostly in Hokkaido. Both types are showing up more and more in neighborhoods, going into stores, and walking near schools and parks. People who live in these areas are really scared now. Some of them even make loud noises with their door handles before they leave their house, just to make sure there is no bear waiting outside.