bear sighting during logging

[lynde37avery]

was going for my second hitch on the skidder today. when i saw a mother bear with her 2 cubs running away from the direction I was going. kinda scared to say but i kept working. this is the second time this has happened in 3 years. bear with cubs. anyone had seen this before? 3 years ago it happened I left the woods in a hurry lol. could say I'm getting use to it now.

[coxy]

i was looking at a job one time and came up on a mom a 2 cubs mom was not happy she got up on her hind legs and made some funny sounds and started snapping her jaws together will never forget that sound

[HiTech]

Last summer two cubs came sliding down a tree behind me and momma was right there. She was making all kinds of sounds. All three took off when the cubs hit the ground. Made me a little nervous...naw scared the s@#t out of me is more like it. lol I have bears around my house and I am the first house outside the village limits. They seem to be everywhere today. More and more people are seeing them.

[Corley5]

As long as the cubs and momma are running away it's all good ;D

[John Mc]

As long as the cubs and momma are running away it's all good ;D

Yeah, you don't want to get between a mother and her cubs, or otherwise have her get the impression you are a threat to them.

[colincb183]

One day last September while taking a break from cutting and had a sao and 3 cubs wander by at about 15 yards. Mom and 2 of the cubs kept going through but one decided to circle around behind me, leaving me between the cub and his mom. I'm sure they knew I was there but they didn't seem to be bothered by me. Definitely not  comfortable place to be.

[Ken]

i was looking at a job one time and came up on a mom a 2 cubs mom was not happy she got up on her hind legs and made some funny sounds and started snapping her jaws together will never forget that sound

Had the same thing happen to me in deer season one time.  Only animal I know that makes that sound.  The bear population in our province has been increasing for some time.  Seems like I see more every year but I don't feel threatened by them (yet) while walking in the woods. 

[Spartan]

good thing between a skidder and a bear, skidder always wins.

I have been charged, and seen dozens of bears within 100 feet.  Never when logging.
I have not seen a bear in our job area for 3 years.  I know they are around, just have enough sense to stay away.
could have something to do with loud equipment.....  just possibly.

[lynde37avery]

I think they are becoming more tame. because it was on my second hitch I seen them.  i figure they heard me but could have run off earlier. makes me wonder if the bears ain't too scared of us anymore.
that snapping of the jaws sound would have right on made me fill my britches up.

[Spartan]

are they hunted there?

Has a big bearing on how tame or freaked out animals are around here.

[Corley5]

Here's a good read on black bear attacks.

http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/lone-predatory-black-bears-responsible-most-human-attacks/2011/05/11/

[terry f]

The bears that have seen me left as fast as they could. The few that I saw without being seen, were fairly easy to back away from. 14 deaths in 110 years doesn't seem like much to worry about, I guess its just the next one you have to worry about. I would have thought sows with cubs would have been the main culprit, but not so.

[starmac]

If you want some interesting reading concerning bear attacks, pick up aa copy of bear tales and bear tales # 2. They pretty much document and detail every documented bear attack in Alaska, most are grizzly, but a few are blackies.

[BargeMonkey]

I do everything I can to make sure my posts are "appropriate", this picture came to mind when I read this post, I unfortunately can't edit out the 1 word at the bottom. Don't want to be thrown under a bus  ;)   

   I think it's beyond funny, and fits the topic.

[ehp]

Up where I am from you seen bears pretty much everyday logging in the summer time , some days 5 to 10 bears . Bears are not to bad to work around and never really hard any trouble , yes been charged and all that other stuff but their just showing you to leave them alone . NOW the big one , a big mature bull moose in rutting time , now that's a problem you have to deal with . You may think your to fat or old to climb a tree but when he is charging you can do things you never thought you could

[motohed]

I have seen bears on jobs , as long as you stand your ground with in reason and always face them , they move on , don't make the mistake and run , I've had them run upto me with in 20 feet and I didn't move and they left . They look for flight mostly , just don't scare them from a quiet position and you should be good . They will always know ,your there before , before you will ever see them . If they feel threated most generally they will move off . That being said , I make no guarenty of your safety . Bears will smell fear , and that can add to a bad situation , Stay calm and make noise , so they know your human .

[enigmaT120]

There are supposedly over 20,000 bears in Oregon.  I don't know where they hide, I've seen more mountain lions.

[red]

I was working on a jeep and heard some noise.  When I turned around 3 cubs were close to me .  I stood my ground and they moved on .  A few minutes later momma came by she was nasty and made noise but also moved on.  I have often wondered if things could have gone Bad that day .  Just give them space.

[starmac]

I took a load up north yesterday where they were setting up a temporary camp for a fiber optics crew. The super had a video on his phone he took the day before of a large (for interior) grissly that was walking right down the middle of the road. Walked right past his pickup as he had stopped in the road to video it, within 2 to 3 feet of the drivers side, the bears shoulders were close to the height of the bottom of the windows, and it did not even acknowledge they were even there.

[rjwoelk]

While guiding in Alberta  had 10 guys on horse back had a little black bear look at us from behind a tree then he left. No issues with the horses.  Then 600 yards down the trail a grizzly sow and 2 Cubs showed up. Those horses  were out of there as she came on a dead run towards us. She broke off after 100 yard charge.we had turned and I yelled at the guys to run which we did for a about 200 yards at which point she turned and went off to the Bush. My heart was just a pounding pretty scary stuff. The only thing that raised the hair on my neck just as bad was the screaming  of a cougar.  4 legged kind.  :D

[lynde37avery]

Omg I would be terrified getting chased on horse back. I been seeing bear poop all over this area stove I has the sighting.  I just carry my .380 and I'm not worried anymore. I'm too superstitious of a logger I guess.

[loggah]

We have had a couple hanging around or house,this one was here a few hours ago,hung around for 15 minutes or so.



  

 

[Ron Scott]

Great pictures!

[lynde37avery]

saw another black bear while logging today again.  not from the same family.  I don't know what they are eating up there but it must be good enough to keep them around.

[loggah]

Been seen three times in the last 4 days, 2 went thru this afternoon at 4:00 about 250 and 350 lbs. they keep running around here.

[redprospector]

Does it count if you see them on the way home?
If it does, then one ran across the road in front of my wife and I on our way home from the job the other day.

[coxy]

We have had a couple hanging around or house,this one was here a few hours ago,hung around for 15 minutes or so.



  

 

I see that bear has a tag in it ear you can see the dot in the right ear looking at the pic you can also see it in the other pic of it walking

[enigmaT120]

It's just a piercing.  Bears can be cool, too.

[rjwoelk]

Saw a black bear yesterday somewere between Sault St Marie and Thunderbay.

[Ken]

Surprised a sow and 2 cubs while cruising a block earlier this week.  As per the usual they disappeared into the brush as soon as they realized I was in the area.  They can disappear some fast.

[treestump]

I almost fell a tree on a bear years ago, the bear was more scared than I was, he really tore up the brush heading for taller timber

[Oliver05262]

 coxy, I wonder if that isn't a tick in his ear. We're loaded with them around here. I shot a rabbit in my wife's garden the other day, and when I picked him up with a hay fork to wing him over the stone wall, I saw that he had 10 or 12 swollen up ticks between his shoulder blades.

[coxy]

if that's a tick ill never come up your way  :D :D I would be dead in seconds with a blood sucker that big 

[loggah]

Im thinking its a tick also,they swell up to the size of a grape around here ! :-[

[ppine]

I have never seen a bear while logging, but I had a job in SE Alaska doing monitoring before a mine, and we saw bears every day.  Sometimes 4 at a time and always at close range in the thick western hemlock and Sitka spruce. The salmon streams attracted lots of black bears and the coastal browns.

[Ed_K]

 Lynde37avery, can you come get your log dog  ;D .


  .

[DDW_OR]

 

  

 

[ppine]

We were packing some elk hunters in Colorado back in the 1980s and had a nice bull down. After we butchered the elk and got him loaded on two mules, the group headed out. I came out last with the two mules and was looking behind me a lot because the country was rough with a lot of wind thrown trees. There was a bear working on the gut pile. He had been waiting for us to leave.

[DDW_OR]

yep, i have heard of bears shadowing hunters waiting for the hunter to make a kill.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/11/24/gps-study-tracks-grizzlies-as-follow-hunters.html

[red]

ABC news has new video of Pedals the Upright Bear spotted again in NJ . The bear has injured front legs and walks like a human .

[coxy]

ABC news has new video of Pedals the Upright Bear spotted again in NJ . The bear has injured front legs and walks like a human .

saw that this am to   my buddy lives there and said last year at holloween they thought it was a person with a bear suit on it was going up and down the street with all the people    they are raising  some stupid amount of money to put the bear in some kind of a wild life park here in ny  : : ??? :-\ >:( >:(  most of the people there think like me SSS     we/they have starving kids  there and people raise money for a garbage eating over grown black rat

[red]

His arms were crushed in an auto accident.

[red]

There were 510 black bears killed in last years NJ Bear Hunt . Oak Ridge NJ is in Morris County the 6th richest county in the USA no one is starving.

[ppine]

 I have run into bears several times riding horses and mules. They deal with them better than mountain lions. Mules in particular will let you know when bears are around. They smell them often before you see their sign.  When bears are close, mules start to look around a lot. They get snorty, and do not really want to go forward very much especially if the woods are thick and they can't see very far. They start to look around corners.  It is handy to get all of that notice.  Trust your mule.

I ran into a mountain lion in eastern OR a long way from help and my mule over reacted and broke my femur in the saddle.  That was a tough one that took several years to heal.

[BargeMonkey]

 No bear today but had a beautiful 50lb coyote within 25ft of the running skidder at about 1pm. Didn't phase him a bit. Landowner has a fuzzy picture of a cat on his game camera. Not a bobcat.  :D woman up in Albany was attacked yesterday by a bobcat in her yard, lots of critters around.

[DDW_OR]

 

  

  

 

[coxy]

No bear today but had a beautiful 50lb coyote within 25ft of the running skidder at about 1pm. Didn't phase him a bit. Landowner has a fuzzy picture of a cat on his game camera. Not a bobcat.  :D woman up in Albany was attacked yesterday by a bobcat in her yard, lots of critters around.

it was a bobcat with a longer tail than normal  if you don't believe  me just ask the NY DEC :D :D  they are rebuilding an old covered bridge about a mile from where I'm working and 2 of the guys have pics of a lynx standing in the road

[ppine]

Mtn lion 100% chance.

[lynde37avery]

another bear sighting.  plus i saw a moose cross the rd witch is rare in western MA. and coyotes everywhere. kinda neat seeing this stuff logging. 

[red]

www.dailyrecord.com  Bear shot near home gets away in Denville  .At the end of this article are Fish and Wildlife tips to minimize conflicts with bears.  Ten common sense tips for anyone camping or living in bear areas. This bear incident Monday used conditioning shots with rubber bullets fired by local police. While some believe bears should be shot on sight it just can not be done in neighborhoods . This bear was just chased away .

[gimpy]

There are supposedly over 20,000 bears in Oregon.  I don't know where they hide, I've seen more mountain lions.

Live in northern Klamath County. Very rural. We have inquisitive visits by local transient bears often enough. But what we see mostly are the "none in the area" wolves. We have a local pack of them. We have mountain lions, bobcats, another cat I can't think of, deer, elk, bear, wolf, coyotes, badgers and I'm sure I missed a few more. But the only predator we are worried about are the badgers when we are out walking the property. The rest of them have been surprisingly respectful.

[gimpy]

Omg I would be terrified getting chased on horse back. I been seeing bear poop all over this area stove I has the sighting.  I just carry my .380 and I'm not worried anymore. I'm too superstitious of a logger I guess.

I hope the 380 is for noise. It would be most useful to scare the bear away. Just don't shoot it, it'll pith'm off.

[gimpy]

This bear incident Monday used conditioning shots with rubber bullets fired by local police. While some believe bears should be shot on sight it just can not be done in neighborhoods . This bear was just chased away .

Rubber bullets are a regular and proper weapon in neighborhoods. If the bear learns that it is painful to go into neighborhoods, most will stay away. However, the repeat offender needs to be culled. IMHO

[starmac]

A friend just came through coming back from a job up north. He had one of the windows duct taped up on his camp trailer.  He was sleeping (or trying to) when he thought one of the other crew members started messing with him, when the window broke he finally got up and looked out to see a bear trying to get in. lol

[ppine]

Gimpy,
I spent last week on the Klamath River.  Plenty of deer, otter, bald eagles, osprey, herons, and wild turkeys.  I saw no bear sign in a week which is unusual.  I have always had bears in camp in that country in the past.  Do you think the drought has affected the local bear population?

[Fokke]

This guy got a VERY close sight of a bear

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22694609

[florida]

We accidentally trapped a tiny, like 3 pounds or so, cub in a coon trap.  Momma drug the trap and cub 200 yards through thick woods where we found it hard up against a stand of thick palmettos. I knew Momma was there but had to get the cub out. I ran over and pulled the rap over to where my buddy was standing then tried to open the trap. He had used baling wire to close it and I didn't think I'd ever get it off.
finally dumped the cub out and it ran off into the palmettos. Got about half way back to the truck and my knees gave out. Momma could have eaten my lunch!

[Dave Shepard]

I'm going to be doing a small mast tree release on the lot next to my mill soon, and the forester saw a bear there last week. I'm not too worried. They don't seem to bother anybody. Saw a mother and three cubs cross the road this evening a couple of towns over. Moving slow, and not too worried about cars.

[lynde37avery]

I had one on the porch yesterday morning.  80lb or so. my little jack russell terrier dog chased him up a tree. he didn't seem scared of us. came back an hr later. I only saw a porky pine in the woods logging lately.

[red]

NJ has started a best hunt this week for bow season . It is met with the usual conflicts of hunting bears .

[kensfarm]

I took a picture of this guy while he was taking a nap. 



 

[longtime lurker]

Every time I read this post I get this urge, and gotta tell myself " don't do it"



 

All the time! :D

[Ianab]

Could be a Drop Bear  :D

[longtime lurker]

Main thing with drop bears is to really look at the bole of the tree on approach. They tend to be quite territorial, and mostly will have a few hunt trees in their range. Because of the claws they leave a fair bit of scarring of the bark from repeatedly climbing of the hunt tree. They're mean, but Have poor eyesight so they jump and miss a lot.

If it looks like an active hunt tree the best thing to do is just leave it, stay out from under the branches and walk on by. If the tree has to go then the best option is to shoot the bear... They're protected and it is an offense but because they mostly live in remote forest who's going to know right. Shoot, shovel and shut up.

The only other real option is try and bait them out or wait them out. Mostly it's best to wait. You hear stories every so often about guys ignoring the bear and sawing the tree, or chewed up chainsaws and bits of torn clothing found in the bush but I think thats mostly urban legend stuff.  Dropbears  will leave you alone if you leave them alone and I've never had any trouble with them.

[teakwood]

whats a dropbear?

[longtime lurker]

A Dropbear is a carnivorous marsupial Thylarctos plummetus

Related to the Koala but bigger: usually 80-100 pounds when adult. A mottled yellow colour.  Teeth and claws like a Tasmanian Devil, and an attitude to match: mean, just mean.

They live in trees like koalas but eat meat, and they hunt by basically falling out of the tree straight down onto their prey as it goes under their tree - smaller kangaroo species are their mainstay but anything else is fair game. They love sheep, probably because it's the only animal dumber then they are so easy hunting.

Rather like a mountain lion they don't really want to eat humans but they're dangerous when cornered, or *pithed because you're cutting their tree down. And their eyesight isn't great so they've been known to attack humans by mistake: imagine a 100lb badger falling on your head from 40' up and... you get the picture. Death is by broken neck from the impact. Then they eat ya, dragging the carcass away into the bush so the blood smell doesn't hang around their favorite hunting tree.

The usual safeguard if walking in the bush is to  be alert and look for them, but they hate the smell of Vegemite. A dab of Vegemite behind each ear is enough to keep them away.

Leastwise, that's what we tell the tourists.... and I got such perfectly deadpan delivery too.
Took me two years to get Mary out logging with me after she got here from Texas... everyone had warned her about Dropbears and I never thought she hadn't figured out that it's up there with the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster.

[longtime lurker]

AND a big thank you to Ian for the opening and Teakwood for being the fall guy. Don't feel bad mate, someone was sure to ask.

'straya... 10 out of 12 of the worlds deadliest snakes and another that will eat your a$$ whole, shark attack every month, jellyfish that small you can barely see them that'll kill ya, spiders, and a giant turkey that will disembowel you with a single kick... and we invent an animal to scare the tourists

[Skidder Kev]

never seen a bear logging and want to keep it that way.  If we did see one in our area it would be news worthy haha.   Did see bear sign on a job we did 2hrs north of us but no bears.   

[teakwood]

Thanks for that info on the dropbear, really interesting.

AND a big thank you to Ian for the opening and Teakwood for being the fall guy. Don't feel bad mate, someone was sure to ask.

'straya... 10 out of 12 of the worlds deadliest snakes and another that will eat your a$$ whole, shark attack every month, jellyfish that small you can barely see them that'll kill ya, spiders, and a giant turkey that will disembowel you with a single kick... and we invent an animal to scare the tourists

I know, was visiting the aussies back in 2000 for 3 month. Fraser Island, great barrier reef, the outback,.... beautifull country! not much women though! Or maybe i was just too jung

[WV Sawmiller]

LL,

   Thanks for educating us on the vicious Australian Drop bears. Never heard of them before. They sound a lot like the Wampus cats and Gollywhoppers that inhabited the river swamps of the southern USA where I grew up. We never had vegemite to protect ourselves but I'd bet it would work just as well against them as against drop bears.

[Riwaka]

What are the other Australian nasties? Wild camel herds, herds of wild horses, packs of dingoes & wild dogs, mouse plagues, locusts, spiders, crocodiles (salt and fresh water), big river fish - the river monster guy caught, etc
There are some nasty plants too e.g gympie-gympie. 'Forestry workers drinking themselves silly to escape the pain of the sting'
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2009/06/gympie-gympie-once-stung,-never-forgotten/

[coxy]

how come mick dunde never said anything about these pests  :D

[Ianab]

how come mick dunde never said anything about these pests  :D

But now you know why he carries a real knife...  :D

[longtime lurker]

What are the other Australian nasties? Wild camel herds, herds of wild horses, packs of dingoes & wild dogs, mouse plagues, locusts, spiders, crocodiles (salt and fresh water), big river fish - the river monster guy caught, etc
There are some nasty plants too e.g gympie-gympie. 'Forestry workers drinking themselves silly to escape the pain of the sting'
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2009/06/gympie-gympie-once-stung,-never-forgotten/

Yah, that's us...if you go fishing there's sharks but mostly ( in season) you worry about jellyfish. Or rays if you're Steve Irwin.Or stonefish.
If you go swimming you swim where the water is cold or you can see ALL the bottom. Freshwater crocs are harmless but the salties.... you just don't get in dark warm water, and you watch the bank behind you when you're fishing down the river.
If the water is clear you don't stand in patches of leaves because of bullrout- afreshwater stonefish.

In grassy timberlands this is Taipan season. Most leathal snake in the world. It's breeding season and unlike most snakes that get out the way they are territorial and aggressive and get in their space and they come hunting you. I've had one striking atthe top of the skidder types as I drove past, 'cause know it could. We also get King Browns and a sleepy little fella named the Death Adder, all among the most dangerous in the world.

In the rainforest there's cassowaries, and a pin head sized tick, and the stinging tree. Tick is accumulative, my last tick put me in hospital with anaphylactic shock and I got to carry an epi pen now. Stinging tree is worse then you can possibly imagine but at least being plant it won't chase you through the bushes. Occupational hazards and all that, I've had a lot of small stings over the years around the hands and forearms from leaves on the forest floor when hooking up chokes, and a bad one when I got a lung full of dust pushing a track open with an open cab dozer. Never had a real bad sting but I've seen big hard men screaming in agony from it. They got a " cure" now:  they bathe the stung area in a 10% solution of hydrochloric acid to burn the plant hairs out from under your skin. That being considered a cure tells you everything you'd ever need to know about just how bad it hurts.

Tropical North Queensland... beautiful one day, perfect the next. :D

[ppine]

I live in Nevada.  We have bears in the neighborhood for the first time.  It is the Sagebrush Ocean but I can see forests from the house.  The recent fires and drought have driven the wildlife into people's yards.  We have bears in business parks and in the alfalfa fields. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

I see bears on a fairly regular basis.   I get them in my yard, on my porch where they knock over my grill and raid my bird feeders.    March and April is always the worst for that.  So far the record is 5 different bears in one day.  I see bears in the woods at work now and then as well.   

Except for the damage they occasionally do we enjoy them and they are harmless.   My grandmother once went after one with a broom. But then she was nobody to mess with.

But these are black bears.   Not browns or grizzlies.   Ive no experience with those kinds and I don't want any.   

[barbender]

 Yeah you can usually run a black bear off with just a shout, or just making yourself visible. I'd never try that with a grizzly😬

 My Grandma wasn't to be trifled with either, she killed a badger with a broom when it made the mistake of getting into her precious chickens😳😂

 Unfortunately, sometimes when we are cutting blowdown in the winter, we inadvertently roll a bear out that has set up quarters under a blowdown. It about gives the harvester operator a heart attack (not to mention the poor bear) when they grab on to the stem of the tree and a bear comes blowing out through the snow! 

 It is surprising, a lot of the dens we've found the bears aren't even fully covered, just a little hollow under a tree. Not at all a "den" like a small cave that I would expect.

 I love bears, they remind me of a big dopey black lab🤷

[ppine]

Lots of people seem to discount black bears.  I would not do that.  They have equipment and they are really smart.  A small percentage of them are predatory on humans. 

I worked on a project in SE Alaska for two years.  We were on salmon streams a lot of the time.  We saw bears every day, sometimes all day.  The enormous coastal brown bears never gave me any problems.  I gave them room.  They were well fed.  

The black bears were a different story.  Most of them had never seen humans before.  They were very curious.  Some of them followed us around for hours.  They would always show up behind us. It was unnerving because we were working on gauging streams and collecting water quality data a lot of the time.  We had our heads down but had to look up and maintain situational awareness.  The country was thick with 150 inches.  A lot of the encounters were at around 40-50 yards sometimes less.  I always carried a rifle but it could be leaning against a tree.  Take all bears seriously even 200 pound black bears. 

[peakbagger]

When I worked for a mill owned by the remnants of Fraser Papers as it got stripped by Brookfield, the corporate dictate was any major injury that happened in the company had to be brought up in safety meetings around the company so that everyone could discuss and learn what to do to prevent it from happening again. One week the topic was an employee up in Canada that had been cruising timber in a remote area and killed and partially eaten by a black bear. It wasn't really applicable to us in the mills in Maine, but our facility had a large landfill used to dispose of mostly pulp and paper sludge with small mix of local municipal waste. The person in charge of the landfill was worried that someone might get hit by a bullet, so he banned hunting from the large piece of property. The bears displaced by a nearby local landfill that closed when the new landfill went into operation found their way to the new one and with no hunting started to work the piles. They would hang out in the woods and when they saw a regular trash truck they would run out and tear into the trash but left the sludge alone. Off hours they would take over the pile digging it up. The operators at the landfill who moved stuff around with various equipment got very careful about getting into an out of the equipment. There were a couple of close calls. They then started leaving a hole in the sludge piles and when the municipal trucks dumped the load they would quickly cover it with sludge. The bears did not like that and they started to climb trying to get in the cabs at the operators on the equipment while the operators were covering the piles. They eventually bought the operators all bear spray for the cabs and invited hunters to set up bait stations around the landfill. 

A few years later the mill shut down for several months due to the owner going bankrupt. They still were accepting municipal at the landfill as there was no other place to take it. The salary folks who were out of work if they wanted to, could do guard duty during the shutdown of the mills which entailed driving around the mills every hour stopping at various locations and turning watchman keys installed at those locations in a watchclock. One of those stops was the landfill that was near the top of nearby mountain on a mile long dead end road. When we drove up the road to the landfill especially at night, there were bears everywhere and zero lighting. It was creepy and at the time no cell coverage. In general, it was creepy driving around 100 plus acres of shutdown buildings and I finally decided to go find something else to do. They did eventually reopen under a new owner for a couple of years but the mills are now long gone but the landfill remains and from what I hear the bears are still major issue as its now mostly municipal with some construction debris mixed in. 

[barbender]

I don't mean to suggest that black bears aren't dangerous. But in my area, they are hunted pretty heavily and every time I've ever had an encounter with them, they are hightailing it out of there.

[peakbagger]

They get hunted in NH and Maine and the ones in the woods usually run when they see someone. The dangerous ones are the human habituated ones that are being actively fed of fed from folks who do not keep food sources protected. Those bears go right through neighborhoods and train their cubs and many of the local welcome it. Some eventually just start ignoring people and start breaking into places if they are hungry. Most of the time its traced to someone in the area was actively feeding them because they were "so cute" and then the person who feeds them stops when they move or go in a nursing home. Then the bears start hitting other food sources that may not be ready for bears on the porch. I also steer clear of bait stations out in the woods, the hunters are supposed to put up warning signs but some do not and once a bear gets hooked on bait nothing is going to get between them and the bait. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Spot on.

 Take all bears seriously even 200 pound black bears.

Yes. 200lbs. ? Around here that's a cub.  Still a bear. To be taken seriously for certain, but a cub.   The year before last a guy shot one a few hundred yards from  my house that weighed 690something lbs.    700lb bears are common and the state record is well over 800lbs.

[beenthere]

Last year, in north central WI, a female black bear busted through a home window and attacked a woman. 
Behind the story, seems the woman saw the female black bear in her yard and opened the window to yell and scare the bear away. Apparently there were two cubs nearby and the thought is that the female may have interpreted the woman's voice to be her cubs in danger. Thus the reason for the attack as the bear ran to the house and busted through the window. Was a bit of a scuffle with the husband first beating on the bear to release his wife and then going to his locked gun cabinet to retrieve a gun, load it, and shoot the bear in the hallway of their home. The lady survived with injuries and the husband with scratches. Turns out he was the local police chief.

[ppine]

Lake Tahoe is 1/2 hour from my house.  Some people are dumb enough to feed bears.  There are lots of recreational properties that are only occupied a few weeks a year.  Bears hibernate under decks and in crawl spaces.  They follow the trash schedule.  Some are dependent on garbage for food and do not hibernate at all.  Some of them are enormous with names like "Minivan".  The don't go over fences they go through them.  Some have been weighed at 600 pounds which seem impossible. 

These habituated bears have learned to break into vehicles.  Some of them specialize in breaking into houses.  They peel back the sheathing and push in the drywall.  The typical scenario is, they break into a house in the morning after the occupants are gone.  They pull everything out of the refrigerator and the pantry and spill it on the floor.  Then they eat until they can't eat anymore and take a nap on the floor someplace clean like the living room.  Then the occupants come home. 

Those bears get air lifted to the mountain range behind my house. So these are the ultra-habituated bears and they are put in a drier mountain range with marginal bear habitat.  Then they start to travel and go back where they came from.  We have reports of bears air lifted to Elko 275 miles away and having the same tagged bears return to Lake Tahoe. 

[sawguy21]

We have seen that as well, a habituated bear is a dead bear. I heard a noise behind me, turned around to see a juvenile black with his nose pressed against the living room window. Then the commotion started, the lady upstairs spotted it and started banging pots, yelling and carrying on but he wasn't the least bit concerned. CO said to wait a half hour, if it didn't move on to call back and they would deal with it.
Bears are very territorial, if relocated they will generally find their way back and have to be put down. The animal lovers get wound up but that is just how it is.

[peakbagger]

Years ago we visited an uncle way up in Northern Quebec Smooth Rock Falls. He had house and what looked like brand new mobile home, the bears broke in the mobile home twice by just clawing through the outside walls. He built the house soon after. He had galvanized hardware cloth under the siding. Apparently, the bears claw through the siding but the hardware cloth catches their claws. 

There is book titled a Libertarian Walks Into a Bear about the attempted take over of New Hampshire by Libertarians. It definitely did not go well. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: Author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling on the Free State Project - Vox