Seems to me the record black bear was around 800#, in NC. They can get big, though 300# seems more typical.
My dad had an encounter in the Maine woods, once. His parents had a cabin off Flagstaff lake, and during one of his summer breaks from Boston University, my dad was up at the cabin. My grandparents had a hammock slung between a couple tamarack trees, and my dad decided to sleep in the hammock one night, in his sleeping bag.
He woke up to hot, bad breath in his face. Opening his eyes, he looked into the eyes of an apparently curious black bear. Being confined in a sleeping bag, on a hammock, with a bear in his face, my dad did the only reasonable thing in such a situation - he screamed like a schoolgirl, rolled to the side away from the bear, and sack-hopped the sleeping bag toward the cabin.
At the same time, the bear was startled by the high-pitched shriek, and according to my dad, the bear reared up on its hind legs, raised its front paws in front of its face in an almost "Oh no!" gesture, and fell over backwards. The bear then ran the opposite direction from my dad.
So my dad made it into the cabin, where his parents asked what the heck all the noise was about.
So far, so good, with regard to black bears being capable of feeling fear, but...
... come morning, when my dad and grandparents went outside, they found that the bear had come back, apparently angry at whatever had scared it, and had shredded the hammock and torn up one of the tamaracks.
So black bears may also be capable of feeling vengeful.
