My wife and I saw a small black bear in a national forest this morning crossing a road. First time I've seen a bear in the wild East of the Mississippi. They are becoming more common as population concentrates in cities and other areas lose population.
I've read stories where they said so many people have avoided parks that the animals are all coming out of the woodswork.
They are fairly common in my neck of the woods (northern Virginia) though I've only actually laid eyes on one once. My late next door neighbor told me he once spotted one right near his garage.
Many years ago I did see something run across my back yard along a fence. Was not a bear, nor any domestic-type animal. I'd almost swear it was a bobcat, but they are not common in my area. Might have been a chupacabra ^-^
Quote from: steve58 on June 13, 2020, 03:56:17 PM
They are fairly common in my neck of the woods (northern Virginia) though I've only actually laid eyes on one once. My late next door neighbor told me he once spotted one right near his garage.
Many years ago I did see something run across my back yard along a fence. Was not a bear, nor any domestic-type animal. I'd almost swear it was a bobcat, but they are not common in my area. Might have been a chupacabra ^-^
I've seen bobcats in Alabama. They are nocturnal and hard to spot.
We have a family of one mama bear and three cubs that lives about 1000 feet from our house. Cubs are beautiful, mama is huge...must be pushing 400-500 pounds.
Quote from: Gusington on June 13, 2020, 04:52:19 PM
We have a family of one mama bear and three cubs that lives about 1000 feet from our house. Cubs are beautiful, mama is huge...must be pushing 400-500 pounds.
Neat. Bet y'all don't take walks or the trash out after dark! :))
The mama has come very close to my wife while she has been out with the dog early in the morning. She always takes a bear horn since spray is not legal here. My older daughter has also been very close - within 25 feet. Mama makes herself known and has never threatened any of us or our one family of neighbors. Matter of fact I don't know of anyone around here who has ever been mauled...not even the stupid day trippers from city. The bears are very well behaved, for now. About a year ago I was leaving for work around 6am and mama was at the end of my driveway...she saw the car and just turned around and left.
Bears can be well behaved; black bear attacks are especially rare, but you still wouldn't want to push them. Also, blacks can get inside houses rather easily, so...
Supposedly, there's at least one bear, and maybe a legitimate wolfpack, in the Land Between the Lakes now (which together no doubt help foster the notion of a dogman pack in there. ^-^ ) That's western KY just north of West TN.
Here in West TN, no bear tales (or tails!) yet, even unofficially, but we've had cougar back for at least ten years, maybe fifteen -- officially a dead cougar on the road doesn't count (thus the delay), but then officially some gamecam footage was acknowledged about ten miles north of where I'm sitting, a couple of years ago. (The guy who owns the local eatery also vouches for one that lived in his woodpile for a while some more years ago, but he never got any direct evidence.)
If the cougars are back, it's only a matter of time before the bears expand over, too.
We have some kind of wild cats here too...my in laws and their Rottie were stalked by one (mountain cat? Not sure what to call it) on some trails a few miles from my deck. They are extra creepy because they make no noise, they just watch and wait. We have coyotes too. My neighbor took a super super creepy pic a few weeks ago - he was hiking literally about 1000 feet from our house when his dog got spooked. They didn't see anything at the time but when they looked at their pictures later one showed a lone coyote about 200 feet from them, with a really evil sneer/grin on its face. It may have been rabid.
I know for a visual fact, confirmed by some other close friend and family eyewitnesses, that the coyotes around here have basically leveled up to wolves now. 200 lbs easily, feet as big as mine (comparing if I'm standing on my front 'pads'.)
200 pounds??
I'm 200+ lbs in full winter garb, and they make more of a press into 1/4" of hard ice than I do. Granting that my feet spread the weight out more than theirs do, that suggests equivalent mass effects. Visual sightings of them (at least twice by me, not counting others) confirm they look like dang mastiffs, big heavy shoulders, not too far from Great Dane size but denser looking. King Shepherd size and density at least.
This is probably due to interbreeding for decades around here, with local dog packs, so they're coydogs.
Admittedly, I was super-surprised to see such heavy prints in ice. I fully allow I could be overestimating their weight. But I would not be slightly surprised if some shot (or captured) specimens weighed in around 200.
I was going to say, they have to be hybrids of some kind. The coyotes around here are typically 50-60 pounds.
Quote from: Gusington on June 14, 2020, 02:08:38 PM
I was going to say, they have to be hybrids of some kind. The coyotes around here are typically 50-60 pounds.
For that matter, Grey Wolves (the archetypal canis lupus lupus) tend to average 90 lbs, but that depends on a bunch of factors of course.
Never seen a wolf around here - as far as I know there haven't been any east of the Mississippi in over 100 years.
Black bears and deer are like bloody pigeons around here. They're bloody everywhere. We had two black bears in the yard last autumn. There were still a few pears left on one of the trees so they blasted through the fence to get to them. First time I'd ever seen bears work as a team. One climbed up the trunk and then bent the branches down and then the other would bat the fruit off. Once they'd finished with the pears, they battered the garbage can around and managed to get the city-approved bear-proof lid off with a few whacks. They lazed around for a bit then then the neighbour's dog sparked up and spooked them and they blasted a hole through another part of the fence and buggered off.
They're often on the hiking trail just outside my place as well as both sides of the trail are covered with blackberry bushes. Here's one of my fave photos featuring one of the hairy buggers getting some cardio in after chowing down on berries.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1kc6192wfbuqzt2py3il3781-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F08%2F18043449_web1_black-bear.jpg&hash=a7ab0e716451c68e6148e17fded3b077e90baf7d)
The people up ahead - they had no idea or were they making themselves scarce?
No idea it was there.
Bwahaha unreal!
Is that a black bear or Jarhead with his shirt off? And pants too.... no, wait. OK. it's a bear. I know a guy who lives outside of town and raises goats. I asked him once if he had problems with coyotes trying to kill his livestock and he said no, not coyotes but there were a lot of feral dogs that routinely tried to kill his goats. Lots of different breeds, some former pets and some raised wild. Usually lead by an alpha-male type and they were quite dangerous he told me. I had no idea. :o
Many years ago I worked with a guy who told me how he'd been out hiking and got treed by a pack of feral dogs. They spotted him from the distance and immediately started closing in. He ran for a tree and climbed up but couldn't get a secure perch. He was hanging and close to falling when a hunter started shooting at the dogs and scared them away. Probably happened in Pennsylvania I'm guessing.
Ah, coincidentally reminds me, the blackberry bushes outside the shop are ripe-ing up now!
(Other reminder: birds defiling my car with blackberry waste products.)
The Purple Martins have left for the Great North, the Martin House is empty-- except for the shitty Sparrows-- and I am sad. :'( Better have a drink later to compensate.
Quote from: JasonPratt on June 15, 2020, 09:53:02 AM
Ah, coincidentally reminds me, the blackberry bushes outside the shop are ripe-ing up now!
(Other reminder: birds defiling my car with blackberry waste products.)
Beware chiggers if you pick them.
Chiggers? Better 'scratch' that idea Jason. :2funny:
We've had a lot more bear sightings than normal this year. I wonder if it's due to a change in people's patterns due to the lockdowns. The bears are more aggressive than normal too. A 10 year old was bitten by a black bear near my workplace about a month ago and this fella showed up on my hiking trail a week ago to cop a feel.
Top of the trail is still closed down as the conservation officers try to trap it. I suspect that it's been fed by people and is now associating humans with food. This area has a lot of recent immigrants from Korea, China, and Iran. They aren't used to being so close to nature and a lot of them get excited and try to approach the animals to take videos or worse, try to feed them. There are signs warning against this behaviour but a lot of people just ignore them.
Just yesterday, I was taking a stroll through the neighbourhood and saw a group of people milling about with their phones out, filming someone's driveway. When I got closer, one of them excitedly yelled "Gom! Gom!" at me. Having taught in Korea, I knew this was the Korean word for "bear". Sure enough, there was a big fella just lying there on the cement, chowing down on some garbage he'd retrieved from a city-approved not-so-bear-proof garbage cans. Then one of the idiot women filming went into her car, pulled out some sort of rice-bun looking things and tossed it towards the bear. It does no good to habituate them like this. Sooner or later it'll have a run-in with someone or someone's dog and the conservation officers will have to put it down and then get raked over the coals for it by the ever-offended Karens who infest this city.
We have a family of three cubs and one mother living in a den about 1000 feet from my house, along with 'fishers' which look like black bear cubs except they have tails. A local nature lab has placed hunting cameras just off our property because the fishers are very rare. Until this summer I had never even heard of a fisher. Hopefully those hunting cameras will not pick up anything...else...back there. :o
Such as a Gus Bear or maybe a bare Gus? ::)
Quote from: Sir Slash on June 14, 2020, 09:43:03 PM
Is that a black bear or Jarhead with his shirt off? And pants too.... no, wait. OK. it's a bear. I know a guy who lives outside of town and raises goats. I asked him once if he had problems with coyotes trying to kill his livestock and he said no, not coyotes but there were a lot of feral dogs that routinely tried to kill his goats. Lots of different breeds, some former pets and some raised wild. Usually lead by an alpha-male type and they were quite dangerous he told me. I had no idea. :o
Around here none of the country folk go for a walk without weapon(s). After all, supper might run right by you.
The Wife has almost been supper 2-3 times in the last year.
Sounds dangerous. If only there were somewhere where we could get Best 6.5 Creedmore Ammo around here.
It's ok we have a bear horn!
:/
Bear spray solves lots of problems. Though sometimes only temporarily.
Jeez, I wouldn't want a mama bear only a thousand feet away from my house with her cubs. That's a recipe for feeling her cubs are being threatened.
Well it's been a few years now and they have only ever threatened our garbage. I wanted to get bear spray but like pepper spray it is not legal here.
Phttt... Just tell the cops the bear dropped it when he ran away. And, was wearing gloves so it's prints weren't on the can. Cops will buy anything bear-related. :-X
You could get bear-bangers. I'm not really a fan of them personally though. We had to use them when I was doing a surveying job for a gas company. The guy I was with fired the banger too far and it landed behind the bear and went off. The bear ran away from the sound which meant it ran straight towards us.
^Did you die?
I got better...
Nah, just made sure the truck was between us and it. It just kept running.
I'm having a hard time processing that BEAR SPRAY is not legal somewhere. :o That seems like environmentalism running amuck.
Are high powered full metal jacket rounds legal? ::)
^You'll have to ask my lawyer, JH.
Not a Black Bear thing but this week the Hummingbirds are due back at my feeder. Can't wait! :bd:
^We've had tons up here after we built a special feeder for them. When I'm on my deck they literally buzz about a foot in front of me. Love the hummingbirds. Some cool colored ones here too.
Lol. Moved from WNC where bears were common enough and, to me, easily avoided, but had to call 5.0 on a rabid raccoon in my new home's backyard two weeks ago as per regs, you can't use a firearm in city limits.
-Cops were cool and said that I could have popped the critter, but better safe than sorry as I can always just go inside.