I must say that as a fairly new player I was surprised by how friendly the bears are compared to smaller animals (the minks WILL kill us all one day, remember my words). I don't think we should make all the bears hostile creatures that charge you as soon as they see you but i think that it could be interesting to maybe have something like Rabid Bears, or bears that do charge at you for some reason, that could give a bit of diversity on the forest encounters, clearly it's not strongly needed but it could be something, having some bears that are neutral and having some others that seem neutral, but they are sick, or cursed or something and they are more likely to charge at humans, maybe theese aggressive bears could moove slower than the normal ones so to protect low level characters that try to run away. I don't know if this thing is doable but it could be interesting, I think that a "normal animal" that usually isn't aggressive turning hostile and trying to eat you, in certain situations could be scarier than a werewolf, who's a monster and you know it's going to attack you, everytime.
About the Paladin problems, i really don't see hunting for a bear as an evil act, of curse you aren't defending yourself and that means that you are actively killing a living beeing but it's not so far from butchering a cow to eat her. Yes, we don't usually eat bears but it shouldn't be different from killing a deer, that's another lifeloss that could be avoided, we could all be vegetarians. It's fair that some people seeing you killing the bear would get bothered, i'm thinking of some characters like: druids, rengers, some kind of natural worshipping cleric, elves who are strongly in contact with nature or someone who was rised by bears, for theese type of characters (and the likes) It's natural to be upset to see you killing a bear and could be reasonalbe for them to see the Paladin as evil, violent, or dangerous IC and i think it can lead to some interesting rping scenary where characters try to show others that they aren't as horrible or violent as they seem. Alignment wise bear hunting isn't enough to make someone evil or even neutral, i can figure out a character that's a full time bear hunter and who's good. Simply the fact of beeing a paladin doesn't make you also vegan.