DAM BEAR!

[Jeff]

Camera alarm woke me up to a Dam bear A bear on da yooper Dike eating clover, then tooling on.

[thecfarm]

A good size bear.

[Jeff]

Chunky! Easy winter nap.

[thecfarm]

I guess your bear beats the whippoorwill I heard last night.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well when you open a restaurant you really can't pick the customers that come through the door.

[YellowHammer]

To a southerner, that is amazing.  We don't have bears, I've never seen one outside of a zoo.

[Magicman]

What a nice Good Morning!! 

[Resonator]

Look for the bear necessities, the simple bear necessities...

[Jeff]

Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities

Forget about your worries and your strife

I mean the bare necessities, old mother nature's recipes
That bring the bare necessities of life

Wherever I wander, wherever I roam
I couldn't be fonder of my big home

The bees are buzzin' in the tree
To make some honey just for me

When you look under the rocks and plants
And take a glance at the fancy ants, then maybe try a few
The bare necessities of life will come to you

They'll come to you!
Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities

That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life
Now when you pick a paw-paw or a prickly pear
And you prick a raw paw, well, next time beware
Don't pick the prickly pear by the paw
When you pick a pear try to use the claw
But you don't need to use the claw
When you pick a pear of the big paw-paw
Have I given you a clue?

The bare necessities of life will come to you
They'll come to you!
Oh man, that's really livin'
So just try and relax, yeah, cool it
Fall apart in my backyard
'Cause let me tell you something little britches

If you act like that bee acts, uh uh
You're working too hard
And don't spend your time lookin' around
For something you want that can't be found
When you find out you can live without it
And go along not thinkin' about it
I'll tell you something true


The bare necessities of life will come to you
Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife (yeah man!)
I mean the bare necessities
That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life
Yeah, with just the bare necessities of life (yeah man!)

[Southside]

Where is the picinic basket Boo Boo? 

[woodroe]

Whooaaa, healthy looking Bruin ! Not too bashful either. 

[Jeff]

Yea, he'd of been in view from the cabin window. It's about 450ft to the pond

[Jeff]

Here is a highlight compilation from that computer from the last month or so

[woodroe]

Looks like you've created an attractive sanctuary for wildlife Jeff. 
  

[Peter Drouin]

I get them in my yard from time to time too.

[JD Guy]

To a southerner, that is amazing.  We don't have bears, I've never seen one outside of a zoo.

We live a little ways south from the mountains but the black bears are known to drop down into the upstate area SC occasionally and there are a few sightings almost every year. We have never to my knowledge had any in our part of the county.

[Magicman]

A good friend and customer of mine saw a Black Bear this past week and he only lives about 10 miles from me.  The Wildlife Bear guy says that the males are roaming and searching for females.

I would love to see one on my property but the odds against that are astronomical. 

[rusticretreater]

I live just outside of a National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains and we get young bears passing through to find their own areas.  One popped a plastic trash can like it was a balloon and sometimes bird feeders just disappear.  I move around slow outside at night.

[Nebraska]

Occasional Mountain Lion but no bears here. 

[barbender]

 We have lots of black bears here. They have a tendency to get in trouble any time that natural forage isn't abundant. Right now they are coming in people's yards, bird feeders and garbages are the usual targets. As things green up and natural food becomes more abundant, you hear fewer nuisance bear complaints. 

 I've stumbled into them quite a few times when afield. They have always been as startled as me, and we went opposite directions!😂

 The time I was actually scared, a buddy and I were walking a trail back to the Mississippi to fish for walleyes. We kept hearing something making noise in the freshly bloomed spring foliage. We didn't think much of it until all of the sudden bear cubs started going up trees around us! There must've been at least 3 of them...that's the fastest I think I've ever ran!

 

[Old Greenhorn]

Bear stories? OK, I got a ton, they are all over up here. There is a game trail about 100 yards east of my house and they are around it all the time, along with the coyotes and others. I used to have a camera down there, bears pretty much every other day or night. It got boring, so I pulled the camera and moved it to my garden so I might figure out what was raiding it at night and chewing up my plants. I caught a black bear taking a nap in the middle of my mowed lawn in my fenced in yard at 3am about 25' from the bed I was sleeping in at the time.
My favorite bear story was a decade or so ago, as an active Scoutmaster and having my Troop at camp for a week. We had bi bear issues there all the time (we kept a shotgun in the campsite and used bear bags). I had one very young scout with a heart condition and since we stuck by a strict buddy system, I made myself his buddy for the week to keep an eye on his condition and remind him to sit and rest when he needed it, he still had corrective surgeries coming up. Well, little Kenny made a good friend on his own, so I buddied up with both of them and walked with them to different merit badge classes and activities. Now both these young men were maybe 11 years old and we were walking to the rifle range which was a longer walk than most. I had noticed this very large bear plodding along parallel to our path and these 2 boys were chattering away without a care and including all the sharp sounds and laughter that youngsters will produce. As I watched and we walked, I saw the bear's path begin to come closer to our path and I finally stepped ahead and put a hand on each boy's shoulder and told them to stop walking in a low voice. I asked them to hush up, and when they asked why, I pointed at the bear. They hushed up. Now I am standing there in a half crouched position to speak quietly into their ears and I had time to look this bear over and realized it might be the largest Black I had ever seen. I would guess well over 350 pounds getting close to 400. The boys of course, had the same opportunity to study our subject. Kenny's new BFFE grabbed my leg and said 'hold me'. I thought to myself as clear as if I had said it out loud "hold YOU?!, who the hell is gonna hold ME?!" But I didn't say it out loud. We let the bear move on, we waited, then we moved on. But I won't forget that one, more because it was funny than anything.
 I've had bears throw things at me at that camp too. We had one of our staffers get run down and whacked by a momma bear (and he was an all state track star). (Make a note, trying to outrun a black bear is a losing proposition.) Yeah, we see a lot of black bears around here.

[Southside]

We have bears here, have seen a couple around and a decent amount of sign on the farm.  They have never bothered anything, trash, hives, feed.  They fear us a lot more than we fear them.  When I was up north and worked in the woods it took a lot of luck to see bears for more than a few seconds and get a photo of one.  It's amazing how quiet they can be when walking through the woods. 

[SawyerTed]

There are some black ears  around here. It is unusual to see one but game cameras catch them occasionally.  I can't put deer feeders up anymore because the bears turn them over or tear them down.  

These bears apparently have come out of Virginia as their population has increased.  

[thecfarm]

The only bear story I have was about 10 feet from the house.
I got up to go to work, probably just about this time of year and there was a bear at the feeder. Woke up the wife so she could see it too. It was eating the seeds out of the feeder. Then the bear decided to give that feeder a good whack. I told the wife, that's about enough of that, I don't need the feeder destroyed. I went to open the door and barely got that door open an inch and that bear was gone!!!! But every time that bear hit the ground, we could feel it in the house. Wife and me looked at each other and said WOW!!
I have never been scared of a wild animal until then.

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Most people are ignorant of their actual position on the food chain, until it's too late. This goes for travels in the country, and the city.