Black bears that appear threatening

[Odyssey]

Your heart is in the right place I'm sure memaquay, but you're not always the most helpful dude. Goats may make great bear deterrents, but the consequences of a couple loose goats turned feral are truly scary. Can you imagine having to be on the lookout for roving herds of wild boreal goats? They might not threaten to be predatory, but they'd eat just about everything on your gear list. Tarp, pack and canvas...Visions of a zombie goat apocalypse. I might feel safer with the occasional bear.

ps I've eaten goat once. It was a little tasty, but really, really tough. Musta been an old one.

 

[memaquay]

Ha, Perry, I totally missed the idea of the "pack goat". I think we're on to something here!

 

[BWCA66]

Not completely sure what this has to do with bears other than maybe a bear chased the turkeys out of the woods this morning, it at least tells me spring is coming! Just my 2 cents on Dr. Rodgers, been following his work for years and while I think there is good stuff there I too think he has gone too far. Don't know that he has published much of anything lately and to me he has crossed the line as far as inter-action goes in a "wild" animal study.

 

[ppine]

I seen most things out there like wolverine, fisher, marten, mink, otters, sheep, etc but never a lynx. That is an animal with mystical qualities. I had a friend that did a contract for the Wyoming Game and Fish Dept to figure out the range of lynx in the state. He started by contacting every professional trapper in Wyo and then did field work in the areas around the edges.

Rogers seems like a dedicated biologist, but his motivation is very suspect. He wants to gentle them and play around with them.

I do not care for the bear behavior hypothesis regarding eastern bears. All Ursines require a large food web for their existence. Black bears in particular are primarily forest dwellers. Places like coastal Alaska have really high densities of bears because of the precip in the 100-150 range, moderate winters and lots of salmon. We have low densities of bears in the Sierra Nevada mountains by comparison because it is drier. The aggressive bears in the East get shot and the rest learn to live with people. They are mostly habituated bears. In the West there are plenty of bears that have never seen people or very few of them in their life times.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

 

[Philtrum]

Rogers seems like a dedicated biologist, but his motivation is very suspect. He wants to gentle them and play around with them.

If you've been following him for any length of time, you know that it's just the opposite.

I do not care for the bear behavior hypothesis regarding eastern bears. All Ursines require a large food web for their existence. Black bears in particular are primarily forest dwellers. Places like coastal Alaska have really high densities of bears because of the precip in the 100-150 range, moderate winters and lots of salmon. We have low densities of bears in the Sierra Nevada mountains by comparison because it is drier. The aggressive bears in the East get shot and the rest learn to live with people. They are mostly habituated bears. In the West there are plenty of bears that have never seen people or very few of them in their life times.

Are you referring to what I mentioned about eastern vs western bears? If so, it appears you may have missed the point, which was that eastern bears are (typically) timid because they've evolved with a handy escape hatch, i.e., they can run away (up), while western bears of all kinds are more aggressive because they don't, i.e., they have to defend themselves. because they can't run away.

 

[red langford]

After 6 pages, this is officially the longest a bear thread has ever gone without it erupting into mayhem and mass banishments. It's been interesting.

I have hunted bear for a few years now and have had mixed success, but I always felt that the best bait for a bear was a southern canoeist. Because if they were hanging out in the woods then surely a bear would happen by.

 

[Holmes375]

I really don't think I can fit a goat in my canoe...

 

[Canotrouge]

I've been in the Yukon for now 18 years, end spend some time more than 50 days in the bush a year, and never, ever ran into an agressive bear, be a black or grizz. But I shouldn't say it won't happen ever... I have friends that spend way more time than me in the bush and of course some of them they had not so great experience, but all of them came out of it w/o harm. You have to be smart about it and know what to do. In most situation the bear will live you alone. But you always have the old skinny starving sick bear that will not let you go....

One of the place we hunt caribou, have a 8km no bear hunting corridor on either side of the road, and when the Grizzlies hear a gun shot, they are usually at the kill site in less time than you have to deal with your caribou.... But again, no bad incident have happened yet.

Cheers

 

[Holmes375]

An interesting compendium:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America

 

[Alan Gage]

An interesting compendium:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America

I'll just try to forget I saw this by the time I go tripping this summer.

Alan

 

[Canotrouge]

There is missing a few for the Yukon, at least 2 that I'm aware of... It makes it to 4 or 5 since the 90's... Not to alarming considering there is hundreds of accounter every year!!

 

[memaquay]

if you added in the number of encounters resulting in serious injuries, but not death, the list would be quite a bit longer.

 

[BWCA66]

Yeah but for those of us in the lower 48 on the east side of the rockies, this list is pretty small.

 

[ppine]

Thanks to Holmes for showing the link.

 

[ppine]

Philtrum,
I did not miss your point. Black bears are forest dwellers. They commonly use trees for escape everywhere they exist.
Grizzly bears are different. Their original range in North America included the prairies and open country. They do not climb that well.

 

[Canoeyak]

I've had many hundreds of bear encounters over the years with only the two I previously mentioned not ending with good results. I have witnessed many more like mine that also ended in the same or similar way. The common thread in all of them is that they all happened near homes, dumps, or very well used campsites etc. I've seen more bears in the time I've been in my present home then the rest of my life. I have got to the point that I'm able to tell which ones could become problems. If the bear sees me and runs away (which is the majority) I know they are still afraid of humans. If I open the door and the bear comes towards me, I know that this could be a problem bear that's looking for an easy handout. There is no doubt in my mind that nearly all bear problems are caused by human contact and humans carelessness with food, garbage etc.

A good example is we had a neighbor (they have now moved) that looked forward to his fall cleaning of the barbecue. He always left it out and every fall a bear would open the lid and lick the lid and grill until they were spotless. People would ask him if he was not concerned about germs and he would say that the bear did the hard part and he would finish by it by putting the burners on for 10 minutes.

Last year towards Nopiming PP, a bear entered a cottage, through an open window, and went straight for the oven to give it a cleaning. While standing on the oven door it broke it, which woke the people up, before it left by the way it came.

There are starting to be more animal problems on the really busy canoe routes which are caused by careless humans and too much contact. In most cases nature does a fine job of looking after itself, but unfortunately human contact, intervention and actions are the cause of most animal problems. We are all guilty of being careless to some degree.

Here is a good story for anyone who has ever sat in an outhouse (hopefully the link works).

Perry

 

[Mihun09]

There are starting to be more animal problems on the really busy canoe routes which are caused by careless humans and too much contact. In most cases nature does a fine job of looking after itself, but unfortunately human contact, intervention and actions are the cause of most animal problems. We are all guilty of being careless to some degree.

Perry

This is one reason we tend to stay away from the popular routes like the Rabbit River and Bird River. They are over run with people on any given weekend and especially long weekends with coolers full of food and no respect for the environment into which they are entering or the wildlife who live there. On our one Bird River trip in September of 2012, after Labour Day weekend we encountered a couple of families coming in who, once set up on Elbow Lake, used firecrackers for 5 minutes to scare anything and everything away from them.

Karin

 

[ppine]

A really good post by Canoeyak. I agree with everything he said. Leaving a bbq out for cleaning, leaving out dog food, bird seed, unprotected trash etc all cause the same thing, habituated bears. They are the first ones to cause problems and the first ones to get shot.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I've made a firm decision not to retire to Manitoba.