A West Redding resident's real-life encounter with California black bears on this rural ranch. What a single Shasta County case shows about the West’s surge in human-bear conflict. On a 20-acre ranch in the Centerville area west of Redding, a family kept twenty organically fed hens — no hormones, no drugs — for eggs they could trace to their own yard. The coop was closed at night. Fences enclosed the run. For two months this summer the owners were out of state visiting family