Bears In The News

[AZLOT69]

Eight Foraging Bears Killed In Tahoe


Posted: 9:44 am PDT June 11, 2010
Updated: 10:02 am PDT June 11, 2010

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. -- The heavy snow and lingering winter conditions in the Sierra are forcing black bears into the valleys around Lake Tahoe, where an unusually large number of them have had to be put to death in recent weeks.

Nevada Department of Wildlife biologist Carl Lackey says officials already killed eight bears this spring, compared with a typical death toll of just one or two by this time.

"I attribute that to the late winter weather conditions," he said.

Unlocked food or trash lures the bears into trouble in cars and homes. Adding to the problem, Lackey said, is Washoe County has no ordinance requiring bear-proof trash receptacles.

Hot spots are centered near South Lake Tahoe, Tahoma and Highway 89 near the Squaw Valley and Alpine ski resorts.

Cristen Langner, a wildlife biologist for California Fish and Game, said the California side of the Tahoe basin has had three permitted bear deaths this year, which is not uncommon for this time. Each of the deaths was also a result of residents not locking up food trash or food, she said.

Langner echoed Lackey's words of caution and said residents should always be bear-aware and keep doors locked and food secure.

"The big thing is that every time these bears are successful (finding stored trash or food) it just reinforces that behavior," she said.

Ann Bryant, president of the Homewood-based BEAR League, said she's concerned about the death toll.

"I'm pretty shocked because it's only going to get worse as the season goes on," she said.

Bryant said based on calls, sightings and onsite observations, the BEAR League has observed more newborns this year than any other, as well as an increased number of sightings and conflicts.

Usually bears aren't spotted out of hibernation until May or June, Bryant said, but she's seen them as early as March and April this year.

[big_load]

I'm glad it worked for him. I wouldn't count on a taser designed for humans to reliably make sufficient electrical contact through all that fur.

[SkyIslandHiker]

Colo. bear toots horn, takes car on short joyride

A Colorado teen says a bear got into his empty car, honked the horn and sent it rolling into a thicket with the bear inside.

Ben Story says he and his family were asleep in their Larkspur home, 30 miles south of Denver, during the joyride early Friday.

He says the bear got into the car through an unlocked door and knocked the shifter into neutral, which sent it rolling backward 125 feet.

Story thinks the door slammed shut when the car jolted to a stop, trapping the bear inside.

Neighbors had called 911, and deputies freed the bear by opening the door with a rope from a distance.

Nobody was hurt, but Story says he needs a new car the bear shredded the interior.

http://azstarnet.com/news/us/article_6a ... 51ffb.html

[tibber]

This trail is notorious for running into and/or seeing grizzlies.

Jack Hanna wards off Glacier grizzly with pepper spray
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)

Published: Wednesday, July 28th, 2010


This undated photo shows Jack Hanna hiking at Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park in Montana. TV host and zookeeper Jack Hanna says he took his own advice and used pepper spray on a grizzly headed toward him while hiking with his wife and others in Montana's Glacier National Park on Saturday.

TV host and zookeeper Jack Hanna says he took his own advice and used pepper spray on a grizzly bear headed toward him.

The Columbus Zoo keeper and frequent David Letterman guest said he was with his wife and other hikers in Glacier National Park on Saturday when a bear cub, weighing about 125 pounds, charged them. Hanna told The Columbus Dispatch that he held up a canister of pepper spray, which he takes routinely on hikes.

"At about 30 feet, I unload my pepper spray, and the wind takes it," he told the newspaper.

But the bear kept coming.

Hanna sprayed toward the animal again, but still it kept coming.

"Then the third time I unload that pepper spray right in his face," Hanna said.

The bear turned around and fled.

Hanna said he's been carrying pepper spray on hikes for 15 years, but Saturday was the first time he's used it.

The group was returning from Grinnell Glacier by way of a narrow trail with a cliff on one side and a steep drop-off on the other. They rounded a corner and saw a mother bear and two large cubs about 30-feet away coming toward them, the newspaper reported Tuesday.

"We thought of letting them go by, but the trail was cut into the rock and was too narrow," Hanna said. "So I said, 'Everybody talk loud, and we'll back up until we can get off the trail.'" They moved slowly back up the trail to a clearing.

"I said, 'Crawl up the hill and put your backs against the wall,'" he said.

Then they stood still while the mother and one cub passed by. The other cub, instead, charged toward them.

Hanna had recently filmed a message for the National Park Service encouraging hikers to carry pepper spray

[tibber]

Woman recounts bear attack as caught grizzly ID'd
By MATTHEW BROWN and BEN NEARY, Associated Press Writers Matthew Brown And Ben Neary, Associated Press Writers
19 mins ago

COOKE CITY, Mont. – One of the survivors of a deadly grizzly bear attack said Thursday she realized her only hope was to play dead after feeling the bear's jaw clamp onto her arm in the middle of the night.

Wildlife officials were testing the DNA of a bear captured at the site of the early Wednesday mauling to confirm it was the animal that also killed a Michigan man and hurt another camper near Yellowstone National Park, but they said they were confident they had caught the right animals.

"Something woke me up, and a split second later, I felt teeth grinding into my arm," Deb Freele of London, Ontario, said from a Wyoming hospital. "I realized, at that split second, I was being attacked by a bear, but I couldn't see it.

"It was behind me and I screamed. I couldn't help it — it's kind of like somebody else was screaming," she told The Associated Press. "And then it bit me harder, and more. It got very aggressive and started to shake me."

She kept screaming but then realized that if she didn't do something, she was going to die.

"I decided at that point, the only other thing I knew to do was to play dead, and I just went totally limp, got very quiet, didn't make a sound. And a few seconds later, the bear dropped me and walked away," she said.

The bear believed to be responsible for the rampage at the Soda Butte Campground was lured into a trap fashioned from culvert pipe and pieces of the dead man's tent. Wildlife officials left the 300- to 400-pound sow in place overnight to attract her young, and by Thursday morning two of her year-old offspring were in adjacent traps.

The third could be heard nearby through much of the day, calling out to its mother and eliciting heavy groans from the sow, which periodically rattled its steel cage.

The cub returned at about 8 p.m. Thursday and nosed around the trap for about a half hour. At one point, it climbed halfway into the trap and then backed out and vanished.

"Eventually he'll get hungry and he'll come back," said Fish Wildlife and Parks spokeswoman Andrea Jones.

Montana wildlife officials identified the man killed as Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich. The bear pulled Kammer out his tent and dragged him 25 feet to where his body was found, said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim.

Messages left Thursday for Kammer's mother-in-law and brother-in-law in Michigan were not immediately returned.

Freele and the other victim, Ronald Singer, 21, of Alamosa, Colo., were hospitalized in Cody, Wyo. Singer was treated and released, and Freele was scheduled to have surgery Friday for bite wounds and a broken bone in her arm, said West Park Hospital spokesman Joel Hunt.

Singer and his mother, Luron Singer, did not immediately return e-mail messages from the AP. But Luron Singer told The Denver Post that her son, a former high school wrestler, had been camping with his girlfriend.

When he felt the bear biting his leg, he started punching the animal, she said. His girlfriend screamed, and the bear ran away.

"He is doing fine," Luron Singer told the Post. "He went fishing today."

News of the maulings set residents and tourists on edge in Cooke City, a Yellowstone gateway community tucked into the picturesque Absaroka Mountains. Many were carrying bear spray, a pepper-based deterrent more commonly seen in Yellowstone's backcountry than on the city's streets.

Pennsylvania tourist Sheila McBride said she bought a can of the spray Thursday morning after hearing news of the attacks. She and her husband had no plans to hike or camp but were driving through the park in a convertible and wanted to be prepared in case they were delayed in a remote area by any road construction.

"We've got it in the back where we can grab it real easy," McBride said, pointing to her BMW. "If we're stuck in the convertible and a bear is coming over the mountain, we want to be ready."

Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Capt. Sam Sheppard said he was confident the killer bear was the one they had captured because it came back to the site of the rampage, which started around 2 a.m. Wednesday.

Sheppard said it was a highly unusual predatory attack, with campers in three different tents mauled as they slept.

Freele said she couldn't understand why the bear attacked her, because she posed no threat.

"If it was something that I had done — if I had walked into a female with cubs, and startled her, and she attacked me — I can understand that," she said. "She was hunting us, with the intention of killing us and eating us."

Officials have said the bear will be killed if DNA evidence confirms it was the same one that attacked the victims. Aasheim said the test results were expected by Friday.

Wildlife officials said tent or sleeping bag fibers were in the captured bears' droppings, and that a tooth fragment found in a tent appears to match a chipped tooth on the sow.

"Everything points to it being the offending bear, but we are not going to do anything until we have DNA samples," Aasheim said.

State and federal wildlife officials will determine the fate of the cubs, which are feared to have learned predatory behavior from their mother.

The bear attack was the most brazen in the Yellowstone area since the 1980s, officials said.

In 2008 at the same campground, a grizzly bear bit and injured a man sleeping in a tent. A young adult female grizzly was captured in a trap four days later and taken to a bear research center in Washington state.

"The suspicion among a lot of the residents is that the bear they caught (in 2008) was not the right one," said Gary Vincelette, who has a cabin in nearby Silver Gate.

Sheppard said there was no truth to that.

About 600 grizzly bears and hundreds of less-aggressive black bears live in the Yellowstone area.

The region is pasted with hundreds of signs warning visitors to keep food out of the bruins' reach. Experts say bears who eat human food quickly become habituated to people, increasing the danger of an attack.

Yet in the case of the Wednesday's attack, all the victims had put their food into metal food canisters installed at campsite, Sheppard said.

"They were doing things right," he said. "It was random. I have no idea why this bear picked these three tents out of all the tents there."

The 10-acre Soda Butte Campground in Gallatin National Forest has 27 campsites.

Freele, who had been staying there for 13 days with her husband, Bill, said she didn't think she would stop taking long camping trips.

"I know that this is a one-in-a-million, freak event," she said. "I might think twice about camping in the same site."

[chumley]

I'm guessing that defending yourself against even a black bear with a paintball gun would serve no further purpose than making it angry!

Paintball attracts unwanted guests: Bears
BILLINGS, Mont. - A newly opened paintball course in Montana had to shut down after odor from disintegrated paintballs was luring possibly dangerous guests: bears.

Big Sky Marketing Director Dax Schieffer says the resort tried to find an environmentally friendly paintball. But it turned out that the one selected contains a vegetable oil that can attract grizzly and black bears that commonly roam the region.

A wildlife official says that some bears were even eating unexploded paintballs.

The resort is on the side of a ski hill, and opened earlier this summer. It shut down in mid-July after the bear problem arose.

Schieffer says workers are now trying to find a paintball that won't attract bears.

[BobP]

I thought this was kinda funny....who needs bear spray when you have garden vegetables

FRENCHTOWN, Mont. – Police say a Montana woman fended off a bear attack with an unlikely weapon — a zucchini.

Missoula County Sheriff's Lt. Rich Maricelli says a 200-pound black bear attacked one of the woman's dogs just after midnight Wednesday on the back porch of her home about 15 miles west of Missoula.

When the woman, whom police did not name, tried to separate the animals, the bear bit her in the leg.

Maricelli says the woman reached for the nearest object at hand on the porch's railing — a large zucchini that she had harvested from her garden.

The woman flung the vegetable at the bear, striking it and forcing it to flee.

Maricelli says the woman did not need medical attention. Wildlife officials were trying to locate the bear on Thursday.

[Alston_Neal]

I guess they grow their zucchini pretty frikin big in Missoula.

[azbackpackr]

Yeah, you know, state motto: Big Zuke Country.

[tibber]

http://missoulian.com/news/local/glacie ... 963f4.html
those of you that are familiar with the narrow rimrock section of the Highline Trail off of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park, like me have often wondered, what happens if you encounter wildlife along the way but in particular a grizzly bear? Check out the picture closely and read the caption .

and you all wonder why I'm such a chicken s..t when I don't want to hike alone or without bear spray in GNP. Altho in this case; it didn't matter either way.

[Grasshopper]

Check out the picture closely and read the caption

I didn't read the article, but did they say if he had Bear Spray?

[azbackpackr]

That reminds me of an old joke. It's very long to tell, but the punch line is that you can tell you're in grizzly bear territory from the poop. It's large, has bells in it, and smells like pepper spray!

[Grasshopper]

an old joke... the punch line is that you can tell you're in grizzly bear territory from the poop. It's large, has bells in it, and smells like pepper spray!

Better choices than only having a trekking pole for defense ;)

[tibber]

Check out the picture closely and read the caption

I didn't read the article, but did they say if he had Bear Spray?

I couldn't decipher if he had bear spray but at that point in the trail; the issue involved falling too. So if you spray the bear, providing the wind is blowing in the right direction, the bear does what? fall off the cliff? turn around?

maybe we'll get more details. I found the article on glacierchat.com so if they can add any more info, I'll bring it here.

[SuperstitionGuy]

If meeting a bear on that trail I would want a side arm, be wearing bells, have a can of bear spray in my hand and be wearing Depends! ;)

[neilends]

http://missoulian.com/news/local/glacie ... 963f4.html
those of you that are familiar with the narrow rimrock section of the Highline Trail off of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park, like me have often wondered, what happens if you encounter wildlife along the way but in particular a grizzly bear? Check out the picture closely and read the caption .

and you all wonder why I'm such a chicken s..t when I don't want to hike alone or without bear spray in GNP. Altho in this case; it didn't matter either way.

This happened to me often when I summered in Denali. I spent the night in really thick bear country one particular night, and when I hiked back to the ranger station the next morning a ranger used a telescope to show me 3 bears wandering around within a half mile radius of my camp site. How in the he** I did that several days a week for a whole summer, I have no idea. I was in my 20s, nuff said?

After surviving that without a single bad encounter, I am today totally mortified by the thought of a bear surprise while hiking solo. Bear spray is part of my day hike regular pack, right here in Arizona. And in thick vegetation I use bear bells.

[JasonCleghorn]

How often does HAZ see bears here in AZ, and where? I'm not afraid, inherently, just curious.

I'm used to black bears in the SE USA that are terrified of you anyway.

[kingsnake]

Maybe every other month someone's triplog mentions a bear sighting ...

[SpiderLegs]

I keep looking but have never seen one. Came up to a spot about 20 years ago that you could a tell a bear was at just before we arrived. It was an old tree stump and the bear had been digging around it looking for bugs to eat.

[The_Eagle]

How often does HAZ see bears here in AZ, and where?

Photos by month from HAZer's w/ Locations.
http://hikearizona.com/dexcoder=446
We saw a Mom and Cub earlier this year, south of Prescott

[kingsnake]

Bear in mind to divide those numbers by 12, as the oldest picture is from 2002 ... ;)