Absolutely. I was mostly responding because we see so much junk advice from people who seem to have only seen a couple of Disney movies.
I think bears are no different than horses and dogs. Some are shy. Some are curious. Some are boring. And some are just plain ornery. The only way to tell what you stumbled onto is to see what they do. That's the part where I'd sure like to have something with a big hole in the end of the barrel. Of course, that breaks down in a story like this 'cause there's no way I'm going to take a shotgun into the crapper. Not if anybody can see me, anyway.
In my own experience, my ears have probably been more useful more often than my eyes for things that are close.