Hey Bill, do you have any issues with Mr bear? Looks like it should be good bear habitat.
I don’t mind bears, except for their destructive potential, but the trick is keeping them away from your stuff and leery of people, otherwise there’s going to be a dead bear, and that doesn’t seem right if you have moved into their territory.
Fortunately bears here will be hibernating soon, another good thing about cold weather.
We have avid bear hunters just down the road. I think they keep the population in check here. Yes we have Black Bear but haven’t seen any too close. The end of our driveway was the closest they came.
That’s good. Mind you, I hadn’t had any indication of bears for the last 3 years. Black bears tend to cover a lot of territory, and don’t like people, if you see one at all it’s usually running away. But… If they ever get accustomed to people around, then they can behave like a very destructive wild dog / wild boar, food is their prime motivator, or anything remotely resembling food, they love eating seats off ATV’s, old paint rollers and hydraulic oil are all worth a go, can be an issue. I have an old Coleman canoe with a bite mark in the bow, some bear just had to test if it was edible when it was laying in the bush.
Fields and gardens look like buffets to an animal that will eat a wasp nest. High energy electric fencing is effective, and the only thing that will keep them out of beehives. A good dog should also put the run on a bear.
I have a neighbor who feed bears. He buys bakery frosting in 55 gal. barrels. He sits at the pick nick table and doles out frosting on paper plates and they climb up on the table and eat. He often has mother bears come in with a couple of cubs. But he has been known to have 5 come in at one time. The cubs usually go up a tree and wait, while the grown bears have their pecking order and get their goodies accordingly. TomC
Tom, does this guy go by the name of Grissley Adams? And has a pet bear by the name of Ben?
When I see a bear , I go the other way.
Bob
Oh my God! That sounds like such a bad idea. Probably also violates local fish and game regulations. It does illustrate that black bears generally aren’t aggressive, but that’s depending on the time of year, and the individual bear.
One of these days the bears might just roll that fellow in frosting and have a snack.
Seriously though, the other major concern with doing something like that is those bears will lose respect for people generally, and associate them and their properties with food.
Bill, wildlife researchers say that hunting bears can actually lead to an increase in bear population, as it’s generally the boars that are hunted, which reduces the number of cubs they would otherwise kill. I suppose it depends on what’s getting shot, and how great the hunting pressure.
What this guy ( and his wife ) are doing concerns me a lot, but it has been going on for several years. I do not have the confidence he has that the bears are his friends — and that HE understands them. Yes you are correct that the Dept. of Natural Resources would through him in the poky for what he is doing if they every found out. My only feelings on this is, we allow the bears to be hunted WITH DOGS. The dogs have radio collars that the owners use to track the dogs while they drive on the back roads. When a bear is treed, the “great white hunters” go up and shoot the bear out of the tree. I don’t see that as hunting.TomC
I agree, the guy is playing with fire, and making a potentially dangerous situation for anyone else in the district. Playing with bears with cubs seems very dicey. It is a testament to how intelligent bears are, and how timid they generally are.
However, not every black bear thinks it’s subordinate… http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Bear-pulls-camper-from-outhouse-before-being-shot-152716705.html
I also agree with your assessment of the sportsmanship of hunting bears as you describe. Here the typical approach is to bait them in the spring. I don’t respect the idea of baiting in hungry animals out of the den that you had no quarrel with. Bears have their right to the land, same for wolves and coyotes, they actually do us and all the ecosystem important service. I feel the first effort to manage conflicts with such creatures is to use our supposedly bigger brains, keep the death toll down.