Bears in the Backyard

You don’t want to do this, for your own safety and for the bear’s. Yes, here’s a video with people tossing food to a bear.

The clue something was amiss? When a wildlife officer in Pennsylvania spotted a guy with a truckload of pastries.

Here’s what the wildlife officer said:

As we were about one week away from the opening of the statewide bear season, I thought that something illegal might be underway. Being that we were so close to bear season, seeing that person drive by with an unusual amount of pastries was like watching an individual go down a row of parked vehicles testing each handle to see if it were open. Something just didn’t seem right.

As it turns out, the guy killed a 707-pound bear, and it was the largest harvested in the state’s hunting season.

Two guys are driving along the highway. They see a dead bear. Roadkill.

What do they do?

They take it home to cut it into steaks.

That’s the gist of a story from the News-Journal, in Florida.

According to the story: “Two Orange City men who picked up a dead Florida black bear from Interstate 4, skinned it and cut it up into steak-sized chunks, quickly regretted their decision to butcher the threatened species, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission official said Monday.” The official noted: “It’s against the law to do that. You can’t possess bear parts in Florida. Black bears are a threatened species.”

But the men apparently realized their error after hearing a news report and turned themselves in to the authorities.

Here’s a video with details on denning behavior.

The Miami Herald website is running a story about the possibility of a black bear hunting season in Florida, “Black bear hunting proposed for Panhandle.” The “proposal,” it seems, is actually one from the vice president of the Florida Bear Hunters Association.

According to the story, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Lt. Stan Kirkland said officials “might not buy” the idea of a hunt. He said:

“Even though population has increased, we could not sustain hunting. It is not a biological decision only; there are other related factors, such as it being public-supported or not. There is a sociological issue here. Some citizens would be very angry at opening up a bear season regardless of the population number. This is because they view these animals of the wild as being cute like teddy bears and do not want to see them killed.”

Interesting language there—that is, the official’s sensitivity to the fact that deciding on a hunt isn’t just about the bear population, but about various sociological and cultural issues, such as residents’ attitudes toward bears.

Sometimes I just love the little conversational tidbits as homeowners video the bears on their property. That’s just what you’ll get in this video, with a couple talking about the bear and three cubs in their yard. You’ll also get to see some quick climbing by the cubs.

Whistler (in British Columbia, Canada) is a hotspot for bears. In this video, two bears are having a blast as they cavort in Whistler yards.

According to The Los Angeles Times, officials have charged a man with two misdemeanors for killing a bear on the shore of Lake Mary. The story says the man “had been fishing with a female companion and claimed he shot the 175-pound bear in self defense.”

According to an AP story at WDAM.com, a wildlife agent killed an aggressive Louisiana black bear.

The story says:

A news release Wednesday said the bear once tried to break into a house and later took a deer carcass from a freezer in an unoccupied shop. The statement says it was shot on Nov. 30 because the aggressive behavior and lack of fear of people—and its evasion of traps, snares and bear dogs—raised worries about public safety…. State wildlife agents needed federal approval to shoot the bear, since the Louisiana black bear was designated a threatened species in 1992.

This video shows a black bear in the Great Smoky Mountains.

There’s not a lot to it. Just the bear wandering around the forest.