Got Bears?

[beenthere]

 I ground bear poop under our bird feeder

Why do you grind bear poop? 
Never heard of doing that before.

[Old Greenhorn]

It was a typo, should have been "I FOUND bear poop"

[SwampDonkey]

I can send a few more down. 

[doc henderson]

If you grind it, there may be enough undigested grain from the bird feed, to make flour.  

[Chuck White]

The bear population is really growing in this area, we are regularly getting bear pics on two of our game cams, that are about 4 miles apart.

One cam usually gets a sow with cub, and the other usually gets singles (at least 2 different bears).

[barbender]

 Our wild berry crop (especially blueberries) was a bust this year. We had zero snow last winter, and that usually spells disaster for the berries. 

 Bear sighting usually start in May. They come out of their winter dens, and there's not a lot to eat so pretty soon they are out roaming around. Then they start getting into garbage and bird feeders. After a few weeks, natural food sources start to become available and the vast majority of bears disappear back into the forests.

 This year, with no berries the bears have become a nuisance for a lot of people. We were out west, and I'm pretty sure it was a bear that smashed through the fence and ate all of our chickens😬 It left a wild plum filled pile of poop on the edge of the yard (chicken dinner with plum cobbler desert?) further confirming my suspicions😂

 They typically aren't any bother, they have enough fear of people that they prefer to stay on the woods if they're getting enough to eat. However, if they're hungry they aren't afraid of much. This is just one of those years.

[Andries]

I've spent a bit of time up at our lake cabin near Kenora.
A bear that I've nicknamed Bobby comes by regularly at one or two in the morning, checks out the plastic can I keep outside for plastics and recycles, tips it over and gives it a sniff, and then disappears.

I'm OK with that but my red haired dog Maddie is definitely not so cool with it.
She can hear the bear and starts to grumble and fuss, but has learned not to go into a full barking frenzy. Just enough to let us know that she is doing her job, protecting her people.

Sorry to hear about the loss of your chickens bb. Bears will eat just about anything, plums or chickens.

[TreefarmerNN]

I've never seen a bear in our area but sometimes in the spring they show up.  I guess they are yearlings getting booted out of Mama's territory.  People post pix of them on their decks and some bee hives have been destroyed but so far, I've not seen one either in person or on a game camera.

[SwampDonkey]

A lot of pin cherry around where I'm now working. I have not noticed much activity of any kind around them. If the bears are around they will destroy pin cherry tops or bend the trees over for the cherries. They also destroy black cherry trees to, I have not noticed that there. There are lots of black cherry there. I have about as many black cherry as I can count on one hand at the woodlot. The bears have them all ruined. Deep claw marks and tops destroyed. I have no pin cherry at all.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well Momma generally kicks out the kids when they are between 1-1/2 to 2 years old to make room for the next crop and I find that these juvenile delinquents are the ones likely to cause trouble as they search for territory, food, and lodging of their own. It is rare for me to see a mature bear with or without cubs on my property but it does happen. Mostly they stay to the woods and get into the populated sections late at night. I do often see mature bears with cubs in certain wooded areas, such as right across the road where there is a game trail running several miles that offers good concealment.
 Back in the spring I had to stop in the road to allow 1 of the 2 small cubs following a momma finish crossing the road. He was distracted by everything and Momma was none too happy.
 When I was spending a lot of time up at the Scout camp, 1 hour north I would see them in the woods frequently and some of those were bruisers in the 300 pound class. I could see them every evening at the dumpster during summer camp season. They behaved differently and you had to be really careful. We had some close calls and one of our staffers, out late at night playing practical jokes on other staffers managed to get whacked across the back by a mad momma. He was all state track, but could not outrun that bear and she knocked him down with one swipe then turned and walked away. He was fine, but his fatigue jacket was sliced through in a few spots. He just had red claw scratches on his back.

 Every time we get a new urbanite buying a house here they go through the learning curve. First, they don't want to go to the dump with their garbage, so they hire a service and they put their trash out the night before pickup. Of course, the next morning it is spread all over. They get mad and call the police and 'want something done about it'.  The cops and other neighbors will try to educate them, but some are really slow to catch on and don't want to take out the trash in the morning on pickup days, they are in a hurry to get to work or whatever.

 Yeah, they are nice to look at, but they can do damage and make a mess. That one the other night was 3' away from me and my only protection was the screen door.

[barbender]

Andries, EVERYTHING likes chicken!😂

 In today's episode of Barbender Predator Control, my boy texted me while I was at the gas station. "There's something chasing the chickens, I yelled at it but it keeps coming back. It's not very afraid of me." He said it might be a fox, but it's more grey, not red. Hmm. Could be a coyote but I've never seen them that be bold.

 Well I get home, and as I walked through the living room right in the front lawn there's a coyote! Big one, too! So I run upstairs, grab a rifle, lift the living room window slightly open as I drop to the floor. Up to this point, I think my son was somewhat impressed that I could move and get into position that quickly. 

 Then things started to fall apart. 

Whether it us desperate or stupid, I don't understand how this 'yote got to be a big mature specimen the way it's standing around watching me. I'm getting the cross hairs settled on it when one of our dogs, Ole, sees that I'm apparently sitting on or near his tennis ball. So Ole jumps on me and starts catching trying to get the ball, while my son yells at him, and the coyote casually walks into cover🤦🤷😂

 So it is that the world's dumbest coyote lives another day. 

 I'm not very good at predator control, even if I'm on target and the dog doesn't jump on me. I've gone soft. When I was younger I was always looking for the opportunity to shoot a critter. I don't know if that's young male aggression, some latent anger, or what. But I just don't really care to kill stuff unless I really have to anymore. 

 If this coyote wouldn't come in the yard, it'd never have any trouble with me.

 I had a fox coming after the chickens this spring. I did some fox proofing, I tried to live trap it, I jumped through some hoops so I wouldn't have to shoot it. Might I add that this was the world's dumbest fox. I kept seeing it in the middle of the day, right in front of the picture window🤷 Well, after all of my effort (and a few chickens) to not shoot it, it got squished on the busy state highway🤷

[barbender]

 The shot spoiler

[Joewood]

There have been several bear sightings in Central Kentucky in the last few years. There are bear seasons in parts of Eastern KY so they seem to be moving west. My neighbor swears he has seen them at the back of our properties, I haven't, although they are probably around. 

[Old Greenhorn]

I think the breezeway between the house and garage are turning into a game trail. Last night around 10pm that motion light came on again and when I got up to look a i was face to face with a medium sized doe.  She was headed UP my driveway and into my backyard, but after a short pleasant conversation, she turned around and chose another path.

[SwampDonkey]

Skunks, cats and fox trip the motion light here. Last night was Mr Skunk, could smell'm. 

[thecfarm]

I have a dog, that if I'm on the floor, it's play time!!!!
I wonder where she learned that from?

[GAB]

BB:
Sorry to read that you have a coyote with a lead deficiency.
Maybe next time you can cure his sickness.
GAB

[thecfarm]

I am pretty sure I saw a small one running through the field the other night.
I needed some grass, hay, and went down to the field to rake some up by hand. As I was driving the tractor, I saw something running across the field. 
Now I have only seen a bear run once and that was across the road in front of me. But I never seen something like what I saw.
The bear was in the middle of a field with no cover. I been bush hogging the field for a week now.

[Peter Drouin]

Just eating some of the stuff you cut. 

[Old Greenhorn]

OK, now it's getting unbearable, as Ted said a while back. We have been in this house about 40 years and it is rare to find bear droppings on the lawn, maybe once every couple of years. Now I like being rural, I think it's a blessing to be cherished. I do not begrudge the critters their right to browse on through, I never have and sometimes have a chat with them, mostly deer who seem to respond to slow, calm gentleness.
 BUT today I had to mow the lawn, it was just way too tall. Well walking out to the shed where the lower is I nearly stepped in 3 different bear deposits, two looked like last night's work. As I mowed and uncovered the lawn beneath I lost count somewhere over 15 different bear deposits on the front and back lawn, likely it was more like 20 but I lost count. The treads on my mower tires are filled with bear poop. 
 This is just weird and I am wondering what is going on here. Yeah, I got deer poop too, but that's normal, now the bear poop clearly outweighs the deer.
 Maybe it's because it's an election year and there is more poop available?

[SwampDonkey]

I've never had one crap on the lawn here. But I'm in open fields to. I remember about 3 years ago. A place I had to drive to on farm roads to get to work. Well, on the way in off the pavement there is a house on the corner and a small grove a woods. One morning a black bear came tearing out from behind that house and through that grove and off. It's not a well kept place around there, so maybe the bear was having a look around. I don't think there was garbage, but just a bunch of junk around. If a bear finds a plastic toy, they'll chew or eat it like a dog would.    I also found a bear den last year maybe 100 yards from a house/camp on a dead end road. I encountered the bear later in the summer to, and drove him off.

Last year, with 150 acres of corn up by the woodlot, the bears were kind of thick. Tracks and bear piles on the road and trails. Found an active den to. Only seen one bear this summer up there. Might be more once we get a dusting of snow to see tracks.

[Peter Drouin]

They come by the sawmill all the time.  I just yell at them, 
I'll be with you in a minute. 

They do love sunflower seeds.

[TreefarmerNN]

I had one show up on a game camera this fall.  Typically we don't have bears except for the odd yearling exploring in the spring.  This one might indicate we now have a local population.