BearBio
Member
There's ANOTHER post on bear loads in the "ammo" room. Lobo Gun Leather asked for more bear stories, so here goes==a few from my experiences as a Wildlife Biologist:
Years ago, I responded to a post with a comment on a bear eating a guy. This occurred on the North Cascades Highway, about 60 miles away from here. The passes (Early Winters and Rainy) get snowed over in early winter (sometimes Labor Day) and get cleared in Spring, sometimes not until July 4th. Seems a young man was charged with rape=he was something like 19 and she was like 16. He stole his grandpa's truck and disappeared. They found him and the truck the next Spring/Summer and a bear had eaten him. They found a noose in a nearby tree. To me, it was obvious: He committed suicide, body froze, thawed and got ripe. Bear came along and "Meat's Meat". Turns out, a fellow forum member was a relative and misinterpreted my comments in the negative. I explained I was not condemning the kid for doing something I maybe did while in college during the 70's.
The second bear I tranquilized was a VERY old male. We had tranked a small female we thought at first was a cub. While we worked on her (collar, antibiotics, pulled a tooth for DNA, etc.) a larger bear was walking in the brush about 25 yards away. We saw the sow had scars on her teats (from nursing cubs) and four teats were scarred meaning 2 litters over 2 years. We tranked the larger bear the next night (a story in itself=passed out on a family's carport and didn't wake up until way after daylight). It was an old, battle-scarred male. A few weeks later, we got a mortality signal indicating no movement of the bear. We tracked it to a berry patch in a gated neighborhood. Between thorns and rattlesnakes, we were really cautious about going in. We figured he had been poached and someone threw the collar into the thicket. About 2 weeks later, my assistant called and told me she had found the collar. After playing 20 Questions for a while, she told me she found it hanging from a telephone pole. Seems the bear climbed up the pole and was scratching his back=hooked it on a rebar step/hook and pulled it off. We caught him twice more and were afraid he'd have cardiac arrest, so we let him go the thirds time.
Last one for now: I was hunting elk in Idaho (Bitterroots) and talking to a local bio. He was excited that they had found grizzly droppings in a new area. I asked what he had found and he answered: "black bear claws!"
Seems a hunter left a gut pile, the griz came along and ate on it and went to sleep. Black bear came along, griz woke up, killed the black bear and, as I said before: "Meat's meat!"
Next?
Years ago, I responded to a post with a comment on a bear eating a guy. This occurred on the North Cascades Highway, about 60 miles away from here. The passes (Early Winters and Rainy) get snowed over in early winter (sometimes Labor Day) and get cleared in Spring, sometimes not until July 4th. Seems a young man was charged with rape=he was something like 19 and she was like 16. He stole his grandpa's truck and disappeared. They found him and the truck the next Spring/Summer and a bear had eaten him. They found a noose in a nearby tree. To me, it was obvious: He committed suicide, body froze, thawed and got ripe. Bear came along and "Meat's Meat". Turns out, a fellow forum member was a relative and misinterpreted my comments in the negative. I explained I was not condemning the kid for doing something I maybe did while in college during the 70's.
The second bear I tranquilized was a VERY old male. We had tranked a small female we thought at first was a cub. While we worked on her (collar, antibiotics, pulled a tooth for DNA, etc.) a larger bear was walking in the brush about 25 yards away. We saw the sow had scars on her teats (from nursing cubs) and four teats were scarred meaning 2 litters over 2 years. We tranked the larger bear the next night (a story in itself=passed out on a family's carport and didn't wake up until way after daylight). It was an old, battle-scarred male. A few weeks later, we got a mortality signal indicating no movement of the bear. We tracked it to a berry patch in a gated neighborhood. Between thorns and rattlesnakes, we were really cautious about going in. We figured he had been poached and someone threw the collar into the thicket. About 2 weeks later, my assistant called and told me she had found the collar. After playing 20 Questions for a while, she told me she found it hanging from a telephone pole. Seems the bear climbed up the pole and was scratching his back=hooked it on a rebar step/hook and pulled it off. We caught him twice more and were afraid he'd have cardiac arrest, so we let him go the thirds time.
Last one for now: I was hunting elk in Idaho (Bitterroots) and talking to a local bio. He was excited that they had found grizzly droppings in a new area. I asked what he had found and he answered: "black bear claws!"
Seems a hunter left a gut pile, the griz came along and ate on it and went to sleep. Black bear came along, griz woke up, killed the black bear and, as I said before: "Meat's meat!"
Next?
