DAM BEAR!

[Peter Drouin]

Ann and I had a mom and cub come in one day to get to our honey bees. I went out and yelled at them, they went back in the woods. Had a guy down the street tell us a bear got hit on I93, A big one. @ days later the cub was in the yard. Ann was like [the pore thing] One look at her face said it all. So I got same grain and we fead the cub all summer. He got big
Funny you would think I get used to the bear running to me when I would shake the grain bucket. But my hair would stand up on mt neck every time. I would dump the grain on the ground and back off. I bet if I had push it I bet I could have pet him.
After bear hunting season that fall he never came back.
Too bad.

[Southside]

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

Yankee bears moving south eh? 

[SawyerTed]

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

Yankee bears moving south eh? 

Somebody else said DAM(n)Bear!  

[aigheadish]

After a trip to Gatlinburg a couple years ago I became curious/surprised that we don't have black bears here in Southwest Ohio. There's lots of forest land even with the greater Cincinnati and Dayton areas. I'm kind of fine not needing to chase any off or anything like that, but I've heard they are essentially harmless like 99% of the time, at least to humans, maybe not our stuff...

[SawyerTed]

Usually it's garbage cans, compost, bee hives, grills, bird feeders and deer feeders. 

A black bear found its way into Portsmouth Village on the Outer Banks while Emily and were volunteering there.   

I left an UTV out overnight and the bear "tasted" the seat cushion.  People on the mainland side of the sound said the bears regularly ruin equipment seat cushions if left in the fields or woods.  

We later found where it tried to get into one of the houses. It clawed wood siding off, tried some of the windows and tried to climb porch posts.    

Turned out contractors had left food trash in the house. 

[SwampDonkey]

The woodlot is running away with bears, especially years they plant 150 acres of corn up there.  The tracks last fall crisscrossing the road up there was unreal. Almost like rabbits. There were at least 4 bears. I know Clark (local bear hunter) used to tag 4 to 6 bears a year out of there. Doesn't seem to diminish the bear population none. I don't think he has had sports for 3 years now. Has some health issues. I always take a ride up around the far northern field as soon as it is dry enough, to find the first bear tracks of spring. Found a bear den last fall, a beat down path to it. It was just on the other side of the property line on my cousin's land. I've never found any on my land before, and I guess this one don't count as on me, technically. But his path was across me.

As some of you guys have discovered, don't leave nothing behind that you can't do without.

[Old Greenhorn]

The dumpster is the ultimate 'pininic basket' for bears, no doubt. We used to bring small groups of Scouts down the the dumpsters to watch the bears from a safe distance because they have never (hopefully) seen one in camp. We tried for years to figure out a way to discourage the bears until we finally came up with "the dumpster compound" It was a 6x6 posted enclosure surrounded by an electric wirer fence. That did it pretty well. But the bears still came sometimes to 'give it the old (bear) college try' to get in there. But before we did that...
I was up at camp helping run a JLTC weeklong course. Standard tent camping and cooking in campsite with nobody else in camp at all, except the range and our staff and crew. This was a week before we opened for the summer season. SO the protocol was that after dinner all would be cleaned up , bears bags hung and all trash collected in bags and put by my truck. (I had the only 4WD truck that could get up that goat trail to our 2 campsites, so we kept it up in the woods in case of emergency and for trash transport.) Each time they started the evening classes, I would throw the bags up on the hood and roof of my truck and roll down to the dumpsters and unload them. I pulled up the the dumpsters one evening and grabbed two bags off the hood and half turned and threw them 6' into the dumpster and before they landed I turned to grab two more, when I swung back, I saw one of the bags on the ground. I thought it was weird that I missed form such a short heave, but shrugged and threw the next two bags in and reached to pick up my 'miss' but before I could straighten back up with it, another back came flying out of the dumpster and landed on my feet. OKAAAAY. My pea brain put it all together, I put the bags back on the truck hood, got in and backed up a bit as I saw first one, then two bear heads pop up out of the dumpster, then another. I didn't have a lot of options. Carrying firearms in camp is bad form (forbidden) for any reason except for a very specific purpose with all kinds of papers and signatures. So I backed off a bit, got out and started hollering at them and making noise with stuff I found laying at the maintenance yard there. (scrub bucket and a wooden latrine brush) After a while they gave up and slowly moved on, I could finish my chore and head back up the hill. When I got back one of the others adults laughingly asked if I had gotten lost getting back to camp because I was gone a long time. "No, I got involved in a battle of wits with a superior force." "WHAT? Nobody is in camp but us?" "OK well a bear threw a garbage bag at me and we had it out." "Oh, OK, I get that."

That summer turned out to be the worst year we ever had for bears during the camping season and we had bears walking right through campsites occupied with noisy kids right in the middle of the day. That was unsafe and we had the DEC come in and review it. They gave us some rubber 12 ga. slugs and some instruction and we kept a shotgun in the campsite and had to use it twice during mid-day hours. After that, we figured out the electric fence and had a fall project weekend to build it up right. Worked like a charm.
I (try to) make it sound humorous, and it is, but the truth is, every few years we have some frightening story popping up about a bear grabbing an infant from a stroller, or a family attacked while hiking. And more frequently we have break in incidents of them coming right into a town and tearing doors off to get at a food odor. That same summer I mentioned above we had one destroy a door on a compact car to get at a (cold) cup of coffee on the console that had cream and sugar in it. (That vehicle owner (a staff member, our medic) came back to camp during bear season and filled his tag. ) These bears are nothing you should  mess with unless you are appropriately equipped. When I was in NM (Philmont) it was even more of an issue. I nearly lost a friend out there in an attack, but I think that was a Brown. Doc, do you recall if they have Brown's at Philmont? I know one thing they sure grow big out there.

[doc henderson]

We saw only one bear, and it was black.  the moto is a fed bear is a dead bear.  If you feed them and they start coming into camps, it will be destroyed.  they recounted one attack and the staff member survived.  the deaths there I heard about were drowning in a tent during a flood and a fall from a cliff.

[WV Sawmiller]

  I won't deliberately feed or leave food for a bear as a habituated bear is very likely to get killed by DNR if not by someone else. They pose too great a risk to others. I like to see them but its like feeding an alligator and not a good idea.

[Jeff]

We never cook outside at the cabin. Even back when the cabin was pretty much a bear camp. We did have a couple feeders for them and have lots of old vhf tape of them taken from the cabin door. 
Those days are over. If I do happen to bear hunt,, I'll set up a station at the far corner of the property. The blind we call the bear blind is actually the closet blind to the cabin and actually overlooks where that bear walked past the pond.

[NE Woodburner]

We see bear from time to time at our home and we have a camp in the NY Adirondack mts. Lots of bear up there. I (almost) always make sure the trash at camp is put in a container in a locked shed. I was cleaning up the kitchen one night and put the trash on the porch to take care of later. I forgot and went to bed. A bear broke through the screens on the porch and had a field day. I spent quite a while the next morning cleaning up trash all over the yard. The thought of the bear that close to my family with only an old door between him and the inside of the camp made me a lot more careful about trash after that.

We love to see bear at our home and up to the camp from a distance and often do, but I don't need to see them close up in my living space.

[Jeff]

Well, I now think we know what the glimpse of the unknown critter was that was crossing the dike.

[WV Sawmiller]

  Several years ago we went to visit my BIL in Alaska. We were waiting for a nice restaurant to open and my BIL said "Look, there's a bear."

    A mid-sized black bear walked out of the woods behind the cafe and circled the dumpster staged at the back of the parking lot. My wife jumped out and started taking pictures. The bear circled the dumpster but could not get in then he climbed on top. At one point he began to bounce the cover up and down with his front paws. When that did not open the securely locked dumpster he took a crap on top of the container, climbed down and walked disgustedly back into the woods.

[Magicman]

unknown critter was

Good, this is exciting that it will grow up knowing where you live. 

[thecfarm]

Now ain't that a cute little fellow!!

[newoodguy78]

Man I was feeling a bit foolish for suggesting that little glimpse was a bear after seeing this thread. That sure is a cute little bugger.
The way she came walking along the dam munching on grass reminded me of a cow

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, down at the lakes where there are lots of cottages, and some folks live in them year around, the bears dumpster dive all the time. They have those large carrier dumpsters with lids on them. Them lids ain't nothing for a bear. If you can open them up, a bear can.