Mum having a look around...
And bears, Oh My!!
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mdcrossbow
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They have managed to keep out of sight here for 36 years at least. hmmmmmm....mdcrossbow wrote:Way up there and you don't think you have bears, Heck we got bears just outside Washington DC , That is a Bear !
Laura
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Laura, the bears do seem to be expanding their territory. I live west of Chesaning, out in the Marion Springs area and bear have been spotted here. The last I have heard was a sow and cub came in to our neighbors while they were turkey hunting! That was right across the road from our place. Sadly I could find no sign of them on our place but they would be welcome.
As for the Evart and Mt Pleasant area, I have heard of bear around both places but that has been quite some time ago when I was doing some work in those areas.
EDIT: Not only have bear been sighted here but a few years ago there was a 6 x 6 bull elk hanging around. Word has it that the DNR caught it and took it north.
We also did not used to have coyote but now this area is crawling with them, but then when I was a little boy we rarely saw any deer. I think I was about 10 years old when I saw my first deer and it was about 3 or 4 years later before I saw another. Now you might say they are a bit thicker.
Eagles are another thing. And how about those wolverines?! No, not the ones at Ann Arbor.
As for the Evart and Mt Pleasant area, I have heard of bear around both places but that has been quite some time ago when I was doing some work in those areas.
EDIT: Not only have bear been sighted here but a few years ago there was a 6 x 6 bull elk hanging around. Word has it that the DNR caught it and took it north.
We also did not used to have coyote but now this area is crawling with them, but then when I was a little boy we rarely saw any deer. I think I was about 10 years old when I saw my first deer and it was about 3 or 4 years later before I saw another. Now you might say they are a bit thicker.
Eagles are another thing. And how about those wolverines?! No, not the ones at Ann Arbor.
Keep smiling!
Dennis
Dennis
There was a good article(think I posted a link a few weeks ago on Grizz's bear thread) about how much the bear range and population is increasing in the eastern US. Even surprised me!
We saw our first one of the season yesterday while watching tv. Looked out the front window and saw black moving down the road. Got up and sure enough a nice size bear (200-250) crossed into our property and then down over the bank into the woods. Beautyful coat- very black. We usually see a few every year.
Amamzing critters!
We saw our first one of the season yesterday while watching tv. Looked out the front window and saw black moving down the road. Got up and sure enough a nice size bear (200-250) crossed into our property and then down over the bank into the woods. Beautyful coat- very black. We usually see a few every year.
Amamzing critters!
There's a place for all of God's Creatures...............right next to the mashed potatos! :)
Survey: Number of bears on rise
Herald staff and wire report
Bobby Koger was deer hunting on a Kentucky hillside when a black bear gave him the fright of his life.
A 300-pound animal, apparently unhappy that an intruder was on his turf, came charging and didn't stop until Koger raised his .50 caliber muzzleloading rifle and fired from point-blank range. A hunting companion who witnessed the attack from a distance also shot the bruin, which wheeled, ran a short distance and collapsed.
Conservation officers concluded they fired in self-defense at a bear that had lost its natural fear of humans.
With black bear populations rising, run-ins have become almost commonplace -- more than 15,000 in the past year in states east of the Mississippi River, according to a survey of state wildlife agencies.
Canadian bear researcher Hank Hristienko, who conducted the survey in January, found that 18 Eastern states were seeing more encounters with bears.
In Sussex County, bear sightings and incidents have become more and more frequent throughout the majority of the county. That's in part because Gov. Jon Corzine's administration has refused to approve a bear hunt, which advocates said would control the number of bears.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has declined to release its estimate on the number of bears in New Jersey, but in 2008, the state's Division of Fish and Wildlife logged twice as many bear calls as it did for 2007.
In a recent poll of Sussex County residents, 81 percent of respondents said they had seen a bear in the county within the past year and 97 percent reported seeing a bear in the county at some time. In a 2004 poll, 68 percent reported seeing a bear in the previous year, about the same level as in 1999.
On the oft-debated question of should there be a bear hunt in Sussex County, nearly 56 percent of the respondents said yes, up dramatically from the 1999 survey, when just 34 percent answered yes and 58 percent were opposed.
In 2004, the two sides were almost evenly split, with 45.3 percent in favor of and 40.5 percent opposed to a hunt.
Most encounters involve hungry bears raiding backyard bird feeders or toppling garbage bins, but sometimes they're harrowing. In a 2006 attack, a 210-pound male bear killed a 6-year-old girl and mauled her 2-year-old brother as well as her mother who tried to fend off the animal. The attack occurred during a family outing in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest.
Some bears have become brazen, dining beneath backyard fruit trees, raiding pet food bowls, even chasing campers. At a park near Prestonsburg, Ky., last year, a bear held tourists at bay inside a cabin until rangers arrived to chase it away.
They have also become road hazards. Wildlife agencies reported more than 1,300 struck by automobiles in 2008.
The U.S. bear population more than doubled between 1989 and 2006, rising from 165,000 to over 350,000, according to The International Association of Bear Research and Management, a bear conservation nonprofit that takes a periodic census of the animals.
Biologists with the same group found nearly 20,000 reported conflicts between bears and humans in 37 states in a 2006 survey of state wildlife agencies.
More recently, in the Eastern region alone, 18 states reported an increase in bear-human conflicts over the past year, Hristienko found in his survey of wildlife agencies.
Tennessee reported the largest increase, up from 300 to 1,000 over the past 10 years. That was followed by New York, which went from 587 to 1,127, and New Jersey, which jumped from 691 encounters to 1,117.
Frank van Manen, a U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist and president of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, said it's not that the bears are becoming more aggressive. Instead, he said, bear populations are skyrocketing under state bans or limits on bear hunting.
"What we have seen throughout the eastern United States is quite a phenomenal range expansion of the black bear," van Manen said. "With the range expansion, the likelihood of the encounters is increasing."
Black bears are the most common bear species in the U.S. with measurable populations in most states. Their larger cousin, the grizzly, is limited to the northwestern states and Alaska. They eat just about anything, including meat, but tend to subsist mostly on insects, nuts, berries, acorns and other vegetation.
Stephanie Boyles, a wildlife scientist for the Humane Society of the United States, said 14 people have been killed in attacks by black bears in North America since 2000, including two in Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Cherokee National Forest. Boyles said another 10 people were killed by grizzlies during the period, mostly in Alaska and Canada.
Boyles said people can prevent unwanted bear encounters by doing simple things like putting bird feeders out of reach of the animals, putting trash out only on the day it is to be picked up, and keeping pet food indoors.
Herald staff and wire report
Bobby Koger was deer hunting on a Kentucky hillside when a black bear gave him the fright of his life.
A 300-pound animal, apparently unhappy that an intruder was on his turf, came charging and didn't stop until Koger raised his .50 caliber muzzleloading rifle and fired from point-blank range. A hunting companion who witnessed the attack from a distance also shot the bruin, which wheeled, ran a short distance and collapsed.
Conservation officers concluded they fired in self-defense at a bear that had lost its natural fear of humans.
With black bear populations rising, run-ins have become almost commonplace -- more than 15,000 in the past year in states east of the Mississippi River, according to a survey of state wildlife agencies.
Canadian bear researcher Hank Hristienko, who conducted the survey in January, found that 18 Eastern states were seeing more encounters with bears.
In Sussex County, bear sightings and incidents have become more and more frequent throughout the majority of the county. That's in part because Gov. Jon Corzine's administration has refused to approve a bear hunt, which advocates said would control the number of bears.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has declined to release its estimate on the number of bears in New Jersey, but in 2008, the state's Division of Fish and Wildlife logged twice as many bear calls as it did for 2007.
In a recent poll of Sussex County residents, 81 percent of respondents said they had seen a bear in the county within the past year and 97 percent reported seeing a bear in the county at some time. In a 2004 poll, 68 percent reported seeing a bear in the previous year, about the same level as in 1999.
On the oft-debated question of should there be a bear hunt in Sussex County, nearly 56 percent of the respondents said yes, up dramatically from the 1999 survey, when just 34 percent answered yes and 58 percent were opposed.
In 2004, the two sides were almost evenly split, with 45.3 percent in favor of and 40.5 percent opposed to a hunt.
Most encounters involve hungry bears raiding backyard bird feeders or toppling garbage bins, but sometimes they're harrowing. In a 2006 attack, a 210-pound male bear killed a 6-year-old girl and mauled her 2-year-old brother as well as her mother who tried to fend off the animal. The attack occurred during a family outing in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest.
Some bears have become brazen, dining beneath backyard fruit trees, raiding pet food bowls, even chasing campers. At a park near Prestonsburg, Ky., last year, a bear held tourists at bay inside a cabin until rangers arrived to chase it away.
They have also become road hazards. Wildlife agencies reported more than 1,300 struck by automobiles in 2008.
The U.S. bear population more than doubled between 1989 and 2006, rising from 165,000 to over 350,000, according to The International Association of Bear Research and Management, a bear conservation nonprofit that takes a periodic census of the animals.
Biologists with the same group found nearly 20,000 reported conflicts between bears and humans in 37 states in a 2006 survey of state wildlife agencies.
More recently, in the Eastern region alone, 18 states reported an increase in bear-human conflicts over the past year, Hristienko found in his survey of wildlife agencies.
Tennessee reported the largest increase, up from 300 to 1,000 over the past 10 years. That was followed by New York, which went from 587 to 1,127, and New Jersey, which jumped from 691 encounters to 1,117.
Frank van Manen, a U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist and president of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, said it's not that the bears are becoming more aggressive. Instead, he said, bear populations are skyrocketing under state bans or limits on bear hunting.
"What we have seen throughout the eastern United States is quite a phenomenal range expansion of the black bear," van Manen said. "With the range expansion, the likelihood of the encounters is increasing."
Black bears are the most common bear species in the U.S. with measurable populations in most states. Their larger cousin, the grizzly, is limited to the northwestern states and Alaska. They eat just about anything, including meat, but tend to subsist mostly on insects, nuts, berries, acorns and other vegetation.
Stephanie Boyles, a wildlife scientist for the Humane Society of the United States, said 14 people have been killed in attacks by black bears in North America since 2000, including two in Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Cherokee National Forest. Boyles said another 10 people were killed by grizzlies during the period, mostly in Alaska and Canada.
Boyles said people can prevent unwanted bear encounters by doing simple things like putting bird feeders out of reach of the animals, putting trash out only on the day it is to be picked up, and keeping pet food indoors.
There's a place for all of God's Creatures...............right next to the mashed potatos! :)
Yes indeed , that is a bear... looks identical to the pair of S.O.B.S that I have to chase on a nightly basis away from my home... I plan on harvesting them come fall, when their coats are in the prime. My sister who lives just 4 kilometeres up the road has about 8 bears on a night .
She feeds the wild turkeys, and so the bears come to eat the corn.. I have warned her she had better stop putting feed out for the birds.. so the bears will move on.. having said that I do not put feed out and the bears are coming to close here . I may have to take one early
She feeds the wild turkeys, and so the bears come to eat the corn.. I have warned her she had better stop putting feed out for the birds.. so the bears will move on.. having said that I do not put feed out and the bears are coming to close here . I may have to take one early
******** Melissa *********
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Equinox
Lumizone
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"Learn from the Turtles, They only Make Progress when They Stick Their Necks Out"
************************
"Team Curves with Recurves"
Equinox
Lumizone
Excalibur Stabilizer
"Learn from the Turtles, They only Make Progress when They Stick Their Necks Out"
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Grizzly Adam
- Posts: 5701
- Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:36 pm
- Location: Decatur County, Indiana
A bear climbed onto the back of my Dodge truck Sunday night, collapsing the tonneau cover and badly bending one of the channeled aluminum ribs that held it taut. 
Anybody who thinks it's cool to have bears close by needs to start saving some money, so they can replace everything they destroy.
Bears have caused me a lot of grief over the years.
Anybody who thinks it's cool to have bears close by needs to start saving some money, so they can replace everything they destroy.
Bears have caused me a lot of grief over the years.
Grizz
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Grizzly Adam
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With all due respect to your opinion and experiences, Maple, I would say this about size:maple wrote:Given the distance from the camera and size of it, I'd say it's a BIG bear. Maple
When it comes to bears, "big" is a very relative term. Many people, hunters included, have never really seen a truly big bear ... alive or dead. Judging size in bears is very tricky, unless you see lots of them of all sizes, in the open where you can observe them at leisure and learn what you're looking at ... and you must have really big ones in the area, or you it's very difficult to know what you're looking at.
Some judging points generally remain true. Consider these two pictures, one of a small boar about three years old and one of a big boar of around five years or more, both taken with the same camera from about 150 yards.
Small bears have big, round-looking rumps in comparison to the rest of their bodies ... lots of daylight between their belly and the ground ... longish-looking necks with small mass ... skinny legs ... narrow shoulders ... and their butt looks higher than their shoulder when standing flat:
Big bears are much flatter looking along the back-line, with much more "belly", much more neck and shoulder mass, and often, the characteristic "hump" of a whopper ... just much more bullish in appearance:
I'd say the boar in the first pic was no more than 200 pounds, but the one in the second was pushing 500 (check out the height of the nearly-mature soybeans in comparison to the bear!).
As I said, it's all about what's big in your area and what's big to you.
All things considered, I guess the first bear captured on your trail-cam is a "big" bear, regardless of it's relative size!
Grizz
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Limbs and Sticks
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post sub
If it has teeth it's big.
WES
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1.75x5 Burris scope
Boo string
STS
Feathered easton 2020's
Magnus stingers