Black bears that appear threatening

[Steve in Idaho]

A few years ago I was on a solo trip in the Sawtooth wilderness and became aware of a bear sniffing around my tent in the wee hours of the morning. I felt it poke it's nose against the side of my tent, and then it bit at my arm. Then I woke up. Right away, I heard a wolf howling fairly close. That was real. I laid there and listened while the howling got closer for a while and then got farther away - then I went back to sleep. I checked for bear tracks in the morning light and found none. That's as close as I have ever come to having a bear problem.

We do see black bears in the mountains around here from time to time, but they are rarely a problem for anyone in the wild. I have yet to see one acting aggressively. Cougars are more than plentiful. It puzzles me when I hear them referred to as "endangered". I can literally drive 40 minutes from my house and be looking at fresh cougar tracks without fail. When I was an avid deer and elk hunter, it was unusual for me to get through a day on a hunt without seeing cougar sign. Experts claim that cougars tend to prefer smaller animals (and children) and have an instinct to chase things that are running. In fact - every cougar attack on humans I have ever heard or read of was either on a child or on someone jogging or riding a bicycle in cougar habitat. Usually, it's the jogger. Since I am already averse to running anyway, I don't worry about cougars.

From what I see in the regional news, it seems the cougars who are having trouble finding "approved" meals tend to wander into civilization and prey on people's pets - since fluffy is an easy target. I have had the pleasure of tracing my steps from the previous evening in the snow and seeing cougar tracks following mine all the way to camp, but I just can't get worked up about it.

Wolves, OTOH - are more of an unknown to me. They are pretty common here now, but haven't been around long enough for me to be familiar with their habits or their language. Wolf fans all claim that they never attack humans, but there seems to be historical evidence against that. Still - the worst they've done to me is interrupt my sleep (all night long, one time). In fact, I seem to be pretty good at finding animals that enjoy keeping me awake from their noise. Like elk, coyote, beaver, and various birds. The Western Grebe mating season can be a real sleep-deprivation experience if you're too close. So, the biggest danger I've noticed from any of these animals is that of causing me to doze off in mid-day.

 

[yellowcanoe]

I have had my sleep disallowed by mating Canada Geese. Never again will I do the Upper Missouri in early May..

 

[Robin]

Not a threatening bear by any means, but a good sized male that I caught on my trail camera on my property. I used a couple of attractants to get him in front of the camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlTk1U4loZQ

 

[Mihun09]

So then... it must be spring, the bears are out of hibernation.

 

[Philtrum]

Robin, that clip makes me want to reach into my screen and pet him!

 

[Robin]

I agree Phil he looks like a big baby. At the present time bears are protected here in Ct, but the population is growing by over 5% a year and the state has run out of room for areas to drop problem bears. The woods he inhabits is mostly protected land trusts and there is a very good chance he will live a quiet life and die of old age.
I will remove the attractant and consider myself lucky to have a chance to see him. I will dedicate my volunteer service to the local land trust he inhabits this spring in his honor.

 

[ppine]

Robin,
With all due respect please do not use attractants or feed bears. If that boy came out of winter with that kind of weight, it is obvious he is addicted to human food and at risk because he is habituated. We have massive bear problems at Lake Tahoe because of these types of situations. Some people have recently been convicted in court for feeding bears and springing culvert traps set by the Dept of Wildlife. Most bear problems are really people problems. Give him the best chance to survive by leaving him alone.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Not so in town, the buggers find out that scrawny bipeds can't point boomsticks at them, and that the aforesaid pale humanoids generally run away in fear, even if Mr. Bear is ransacking their garbage or BBQ. After a few encounters with the screaming, fleeing humans, Mr. Bear becomes convinced that all members of the Homo Sapien tribe are the same, and even if he encounters one that beats him with a bicycle pump, or busts a can of diet coke on his head, or even chases him with an axe, Mr. Americanus Ursus "bearly" blinks, and just resumes chomping on the BBQ. Although these brazen bears are usually fairly polite, and will even play with your dog, the odd one will sometimes discover, like the cannibals of old, that humans are an easy and tasty brunch.

I'm pretty sure these town bears are a lot like park bears, or bears used to a lot of people and their tasty treats.

This seems accurate and common-sensical.

Native populations culled bears that have the "I'll-approach-humans" gene, leaving the bear population with mostly the "I'll-run-from-humans" gene. Aside from genes, bears can become behaviorally acculturated to approaching humans and human habitats for food. Professor Herrero has even documented a small segment predatory males that silently hunt and kill people.

I believe that any bears that approach human habitats such as towns, homes and campgrounds should be culled and killed, just as the natives did. This will again flush the "I'll-approach-humans" gene out of the gene pool and also dispatch the behaviorally acculturated bears, all of which are at least a scary nuisance and at worst are predatory attackers.

Such cullings should not significantly reduce bear populations, though that may be a good idea in itself. There is no lack of black bears. The USA population has been estimated to be double that of 100 years ago, with some states experiencing "bear problems" that haven't been seen in anyone's lifetime.

 

[memaquay]

I'm in agreement Glenn. I think I might start eating bears, they're a heck of a lot easier to find than moose.

 

[Robin]

Robin,
With all due respect please do not use attractants or feed bears. If that boy came out of winter with that kind of weight, it is obvious he is addicted to human food and at risk because he is habituated. We have massive bear problems at Lake Tahoe because of these types of situations. Some people have recently been convicted in court for feeding bears and springing culvert traps set by the Dept of Wildlife. Most bear problems are really people problems. Give him the best chance to survive by leaving him alone.

Sorry PPine
Totally disagree with your stance on not using an attractant and your way off base as far as his condition. He's a full grown older male in his prime and if he was addicted to human food he would have tags in his ears and I would have seen his tracks/scat/damage around my home. Our bears do leave there dens on occasion and no doubt feast on winter die offs/kills. This wasn't his first meal since last December by any means.

I'm not in Lake Tahoe it's a lot different here in rural northwest Connecticut. A one time placing of an attractant in front of a trail camera will not alter this bear's habits and to suggest so is naive.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I'm not in Lake Tahoe it's a lot different here in rural northwest Connecticut. A one time placing of an attractant in front of a trail camera will not alter this bear's habits and to suggest so is naive.

Northwest Connecticut is a lot more populated than Lake Tahoe, and I therefore think bear intrusions would be be more dangerous or at least more of a nuisance in Connecticut.

In my exprerience, a one-time attractant with food or something else is enough to immediately "train" a lot of animals, including dogs, cats, squirrels, deer, chipmunks, mice and birds. I don't have experience with bears -- and don't want any -- but with their highly sensitive noses and prodigious appetites, I don't see why they would be less "one-time-trainable" than all those other animals. Whatever attractant is first used could attract the the bear next to some other person's property, who may be much less tolerant of bears or who may become the subject of increasingly aggressive bear food-hunting behavior.

JMO.

On edit: It also occurs to me that none of us knows whether we are the first or only-time person to attract the bear. Any of us could be the second, third or tenth person to be doing it. Certainly, such an accumulation of bear attractions to human habitats is what eventually causes "problem bears".

 

[Philtrum]

<rant>

People! Educate yourselves about black bears before you pontificate.
A male black bear that looks well-fed to our eyes could actually be rather lean.
Eastern black bears' behaviors are very different from those out west (see my previous post(s) on this subject).
Feeding (eastern) black bears actually reduces bear-human interaction problems.

Before anyone else takes the "all knowledge and wisdom" approach to black bears, please take some time to learn about them from the best source in the world on their behavior.
http://www.bearstudy.org/website/

<endrant>

 

[BWCA66]

Yep

 

[ppine]

I like Glen's post because it is close to reality. A fed bear becomes a dead bear. We can agree to disagree but the evidence is pretty clear with black bears.

 

[Philtrum]

DIsagree if you like, but the science is not in your favor.
http://www.bearstudy.org/website/up...6-lily-and-the-bill-update-march-30-2015.html

 

[Robin]

What about hunting bear over bait? Are these bears all considered fed/dead bears? My sons have harvested 3 bears in the last two years hunting over bait in Mass. Their cameras prove that most bears come after dark and never encounter a hunter. My sons also spend alot of time in the same area hunting deer, scouting and looking for sheds (fallen deer/moose antlers). once the baiting stops bears never visit the site. They go back to what bears do, move around and search for food.. If they became nuisance bears the state would put an end to baiting for good.

On my property line the state of Ct has barb wire stretched in a square around 4 trees, in the middle they have placed an attractant and when bears visit the site, they leave hair on the barb wire which gives the sate a growing DNA data base as they plan for the inevitable bear season here in Ct.

What about deer gut piles and discarded carcasses left by hunters?

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

DIsagree if you like, but the science is not in your favor.
http://www.bearstudy.org/website/up...6-lily-and-the-bill-update-march-30-2015.html

Philtrum, it's not clear to me what issue you are claiming "science" is against.

That site you have linked many times appears to be what one might call a bear advocacy site connected with two people who do perform some bear research. Researchers are often advocates for a particular point of view in many fields, and one will often find other researchers in the very same field who advocate an opposite point of view. Scientists, no less than lawyers or politicians, frequently cherry pick evidence. Indeed, today, politics and science are unfortunately intermingled much too much and shamelessly so.

The page you link does have some interesting data on "diversionary feeding", which I had never heard of before and which sounds like an (aesthetically motivated) alternative to simply killing nuisance bears. The authors are clearly disputing the official position of the state DNR regarding the feeding of nuisance bears, but they do so with equivocation and factual cherry picking. They say the following to argue against the DNR's warnings:

"And we seldom saw bears when natural foods were very abundant. Yes, they did return to community feeding sites again and again when natural foods were very scarce. Doing so kept them from going house to house looking for food like many bears did elsewhere."

The authors admit that bears go house to house looking for food when natural foods are scarce. To ameliorate this classic nuisance bear behavior, they are advocating "diversionary feeding" in what they call "community feeding sites". In other words, their personal animal treatment preference is to avoid culling nuisance bears and for each community to set up it's own Black Bear Grocery Store to divert the aggressive pests away from houses. Sure, there seems to be some "science" behind the efficacy of this technique, but it all signals to me that the authors of this site are bear protection zealots, who will advocate impractical and costly social alternatives to the simple solution of culling, which is probably emotionally distasteful to them.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

What about hunting bear over bait? Are these bears all considered fed/dead bears? My sons have harvested 3 bears in the last two years hunting over bait in Mass. Their cameras prove that most bears come after dark and never encounter a hunter. My sons also spend alot of time in the same area hunting deer, scouting and looking for sheds (fallen deer/moose antlers). once the baiting stops bears never visit the site. They go back to what bears do, move around and search for food.. If they became nuisance bears the state would put an end to baiting for good.

On my property line the state of Ct has barb wire stretched in a square around 4 trees, in the middle they have placed an attractant and when bears visit the site, they leave hair on the barb wire which gives the sate a growing DNA data base as they plan for the inevitable bear season here in Ct.

What about deer gut piles and discarded carcasses left by hunters?

Well, I've never hunted bear or any other animal. In fact, I don't recall ever intentionally killing any animal. However, I think the issue about feeding or otherwise attracting bears, intentionally or unintentionally, is that it is shouldn't be done near houses or in communities or campgrounds. Bear baiting for hunting or scientific research I assume is geographically regulated so it can only be done -- and gut piles left -- in designated places away from significant human habitats.

 

[Philtrum]

Glenn, Dr. Lynn Rogers has been conducting research on wild bears since about 1975. He has published many a peer-reviewed paper showing the results of his work. The more you read his publications and other reports of what he's done, the more you'll see that his work is as good as any university academic's (I speak with some small authority here). On the other hand, if you're more comfortable with your opinions, based on limited knowledge of the matter, I suppose you can join the ranks of the Minnesota DNR, which is driven by hook-and-bullet politics (which I spent a career observing close-up in Wisconsin).

 

[Canoeyak]

I've been following this subject with great interest and thought it was about time to comment with my 2 cents for what its worth. I am no black bear expert but because I've lived most of my life in rural or remote locations I've had a lot more experience dealing with black bears then most people would want. Up until I moved to my current location I've always dealt with bears in one way or another without having to resort to lethal force. I have noticed that over the last several years that there have been changes to the bears behaviour. I am noticing a lot more bears are losing their fear of humans. This also seems to be happening to other animals like wolves (that's another story for another time), coyotes, lynx, and cougars (and yes there are cougars in south eastern Manitoba for anyone that doesn't believe).

Where I currently live, there is a big bear "migration" that go through every early fall. There are lots of big oak trees, especially along the river, which attract the bears from all around for the acorns to fatten up before winter. For several weeks at that time of year you don't go walking alone without some form of protection. Our yard is totally fenced with 6' chain link to try and keep the big animals out. We had numerous bears come over the fence without causing a problem and immediately leave when they saw me. The year we built our house I was staying in our 5th wheel and had a bear try to come into the trailer to help himself to the steak I was eating. I manage to chase him away from the door and as I was trying to chase him out of the yard ( I first opened the big gate so he had an escape route) he charged me. I had a 12 gauge with slugs and dropped him a couple feet from me.

Two years ago at the same time of year I heard a strange noise at the back door. I looked out and a large bear was trying to hook his claws under the door and come in. Even though I knew he probably couldn't get in I was concerned about damage. He was not afraid of me or our little dog inside that was going crazy barking. I called the RCMP and NR officer and both said they were too busy to come out and do anything. Both said it sounded like a problem bear and if I felt threatened to shoot it. Their only concern was that I had "legal" guns and with other houses around they agreed that a 12 gauge and slug was the best and safest to use. I went out the other door, and as soon as he saw me he charged me at full speed. I waited to the last moment and shot him within 10 feet of me. I consider myself very experienced with firearms and yet you have no time to make a decision with a charging bear. Fortunately both times all it took was one well placed shot. After reading some previous posts it was mentioned about taking a head shot on a bear and in my opinion that is not your best target. A bear has a very hard and thick skull and without the perfect angle, bullets can and will bounce off. Both charging bears were taken with a shot just below the chin in the chest. At a 10' or less range the slug is able to not only stop him but flip him back. It wasn't how I wanted it to go but I probably wouldn't be here typing if I didn't do what I did. The joke about this incident is the NR officer was at our house within 10 minutes to pick up the bear but was too busy to do anything prior. After seeing our fence he said that any bear that would go through the trouble of getting over it is a problem bear. The NR officer did say that the bear, which was a healthy 350 pound male, had been causing a lot of problems in the area and was too smart to get caught in the trap. Since then I've added a string of barb wire just above the top and so far that has worked in keeping them out.

Part of the reason I'm telling all this is, I know a lot of people carry weapons in the backcountry. Unless you are experienced enough and mentally capable of completing the job it sometimes can be more harm then good. A "wounded" charging animal is way worse then a charging animal. A lot of people also carry bear spray but have never tried shooting it off. Bear spray can give you some false security plus burning eyes. Bear spray needs to be deployed under reasonably good to ideal conditions. I know a guy who used it on a bear but never seen where the bear went. The wind was blowing towards him and the only one that probably got sprayed was him. When you need to use it are you going to check which way the wind is blowing?

After my 2 incidents, lots of the "bear experts" that I've told the story to, have said that both bears where probably only doing a mock charge. My question to them was when does a mock charge turn to a real charge? I told them that at 10' or under I wasn't about to find out. None of them had an answer or response to that.

Right now most bears (and other animals) in the far backcountry are scared of humans, but as more people travel there, things are changing.

Sorry for the long post and stay safe!
Perry