Letter from Transylvania:The hide has thick walls and windows and we cannot be heard in the clearing outside, but as light drains from the forest our conversation dwindles to brief whispers, writes Daniel McLaughlin.
Then, a slab of darkness detaches itself from the surrounding gloom and noses out into the dusk - is startled by a swooping jay and plunges back into the shadows - before coming more boldly to feed only 10 metres from where we sit, silenced.
As the brown bear perches on a decapitated tree trunk to get at the maize and chocolate mix that the forester has scattered, another bear barrels out of the dark and plunges his head into a scooped-out log that has been filled with the same food.
One by one, six bears, some timid and cautious, some reckless and ravenous, enter the clearing over the course of half an hour, sniffing out the food and devouring it from dead logs and trees that they grip with long, curved claws that glint dully in the fading light.
Occasionally, a smaller bear dashes off when a bigger one approaches, but they do not come to blows, and only watch each other with beady eyes as their noses probe the forest air. Flies buzz around their heavy haunches and their claws dig deeper into the deadwood.
When the food is finished, they lumber off into forest that is now thick with night, and inside the hide we sit in wide-eyed silence. For our guide, Dan Marin, this was a good but not exceptional evening, and our dozing forester must be nudged awake to take up his double-barrel shotgun and lead us back out through the woods.
Romanians can be a little blase about the wildlife that thrives in Transylvania.
About half of all the wolves, bears and lynx that live in Europe reside here in the Carpathian mountains, and nowhere on the Continent do they live in such close proximity to so many people.
It is not only alpine shepherds who must be alert for large predators, but villagers with a few sheep or pigs in backyard pens and people tending orchards and allotments, especially when hungry bears are feeding up for winter.
Wolves have even been spotted in Brasov, a Transylvanian city of 280,000 people, where a special police patrol has been formed to prevent locals getting too close to bears that regularly come to feed from their rubbish bins.
On forest and mountain trails with Marin, who swapped a job in an ammunition factory for life as a wildlife guide, bear tracks are relatively common, as is evidence of roe deer and wildcat. Wolves and lynx are also out there, but remain extremely elusive. Seeing a bear's paw print in the wet mud, knowing it has passed this way not long before, is a rare privilege in modern Europe.
But it also tugs at a deep-rooted strand of the psyche that queries the wisdom of following this particular path, along which a predator has prowled on hefty paws only recently. Perhaps it was just minutes ago, the shrill voice of self-preservation suggests, and no, it insists, the beast will not be appeased by the offer of your packed lunch.
Marin's calmness (or fatalism) is reassuring and you continue, and of course the tracks soon disappear and there is no sign of the bear.
Last month, however, a group of six American tourists on a trail to the south of here were not so fortunate.
A 31-year-old woman died and two of her companions were injured when a bear attacked them as they made for a mountain cabin in the late evening.
Forest rangers said the animal was probably scared by nearby guard dogs, the flashes of the tourists' cameras and the stones they threw at it when it came nearer, and they reminded reporters - and potential visitors - that such encounters were extremely rare.
Rare, but perhaps inevitable in Transylvania, where wolves, bears and lynx are still so numerous that they are hunted according to annual quotas to keep their numbers under control. The bear hide in the Piatra Craiului national park - which has just won an EU award for its conservation programme - brings in funds from visitors that would otherwise be sought from hunters, and eco-tourism is now becoming a key part of the region's economy.
That is good news for these bears and for the guide Marin, as they watch each other in the forest: now the bears don't have to fear a bullet, and he no longer has to make them in the old munitions factory at the foot of the mountain.