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Black bear facts and tips for getting along with bears

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. -- Ursus americanus, the American black bear, is a large and exciting creature. It can swim and climb trees with ease, smell food a quarter mile away and reach a bursting speed of 30 mph when charging or fleeing.

An adult black bear can kill a hunting dog with a single swipe from one of its powerful forearms. Fortunately, bears don?t think of humans as food. Mostly people make them nervous and they shy away from humans.

But when people feed bears ? even if unintentionally, as with bird feeders ? they increase the odds of something going wrong. For this reason, a 2007 law requires that people cease feeding other animals, like birds or deer, if a bear has visited the feeding sites.

Bears don?t see that well and their hearing is just okay. It?s their powerful sense of smell that guides them, and it?s the bear?s nose that can get it in trouble. Although bears don?t like being around people, they love people food and they have a special weakness for sweets.

?Never underestimate a bear?s sense of smell,? said Mike Gappa, a retired DNR wildlife biologist and bear researcher.

An empty candy bar wrapper in a camper?s tent can attract a bear from hundreds of yards away, Gappa said.

People who regularly camp in bear country know the drill. They prepare food a good distance from their tents. They keep dishes and cooking utensils clean. All food, and anything sweet smelling, like toothpaste, is either stored in a bear-proof container far from camp, or is suspended from high tree limbs with two ropes to prevent a bear from reeling it in.

In the early 1980s, there were fewer bears in Wisconsin, around 5,000, nearly all of them north of north of State highway 64. With the advent of tightly controlled hunting their numbers have grown dramatically and their range is expanding. A recent study puts the current population at about 36,000 bears.

Bear country is moving south and folks who have never had to think about living near bears now have that opportunity. Getting along with bears, Gappa said, is primarily a matter of common sense. Here are some tips:

    * Take bird feeders down in mid April and wait until late fall to put them out again. Otherwise keep feeders at least 10 feet off the ground and five feet away from a tree trunk, suspended perhaps from a limb too thin to support a bear. If you see a bear near the feeders or evidence of a bear, remove the feeders and wait at least a month before replacing them. That?s the law.
    * Keep garbage cans tightly closed and locked inside a garage or other structure at night. Occasionally clean garbage cans with ammonia. Consider using a commercially available bear-resistant container.
    * Bring pet food inside at night.
    * Keep outdoor grills clean, and if a bear comes around, keep the grill stored inside.
    * Keep compost piles a safe distance from the home. Do not compost meat, fish or other pungent scraps.
    * If hiking in bear country, be especially alert at dawn and dusk. Keep children and pets close. Make plenty of noise. Rustle the leaves. The human voice carries far in the woods, so have a nice conversation or try singing a song. You get extra points if you sing in key.

89-Year-Old Granny Bags Buck


   Eighty-nine year old Delores Wilhelms opens the freezer in the barn adjacent to her home. Inside are neatly wrapped packages of venison.

The meat is from a 150 pound buck the game-hunting granny bagged while hunting with her neighbor, Ron Haessly.

Delores hadn’t been hunting in years. It was a pursuit she had enjoyed with her husband when he was still alive.

“It was a thrill,” she said.

She missed deer hunting. So, she and Ron hatched a plan to get her a buck using her husband’s retired crossbow.

“I set up a target twenty yards away and she shot six arrows,” Haessly said. “She had all three arrows within a three inch group.”

“Would you like to put an apple on your head?” she interrupted, looking at the reporter seated across from her at the kitchen table.

Having confirmed her ability to hit a target, Ron and Delores were soon in a blind on Ron’s 30 acre spread.

“The monitor went off,” Delores recalled as her eyes lit up. “I got my bow up and Ron said ‘don’t shake’ so I got it up and bingo!”

But, Delores Wilhelms’ is about much more than a single buck. This is an 89-year-old woman living life to the fullest. She hunts. She fishes. She makes wine out of berries. She enjoys it all, especially the great outdoors.

“Just to go north,” she said recounting what she loves so much. “Just to listen to the water running over the stones and spring, to see the first snowfall, just to go out fishing and get a bite.”

Delores has some advice for those missing out on such joys.

“Get off your butt,” she said. “And, enjoy what God gives you free.”

http://www.fdlreporter.com/article/20081022/FON0101/810220517/1985/FONent

Food Plots 101 for Wildlife
 
Do you want to improve your chances to harvest a big Whitetail Deer? Planting a Food plot may help you achieve your goal. Many hunters are doing just that, planting a food plot to increase their chances of putting that big buck on the Buck pole.

There are other reasons to plant a food plot. It can be allot of fun. If you enjoy being in the outdoors, planting a food plot is great way to get out at times of the year that you would normally be looking at your TV.
http://www.wisconsinoutdoor.com/foodplots.htm

Prions found in feces of deer asymptomatic for chronic wasting disease

Scientists have discovered that deer asymptomatic for a fatal brain condition known as chronic wasting disease excrete the infectious prions that cause the disease in their feces. The finding, they say, suggests a plausible explanation for transmission of the disease among deer and, possibly, elk and moose in the environment.

The study is reported as an advance online paper on September 9, 2009 in the journal ?Nature.?

While the study reveals that prions are shed in feces of symptomatic deer as well, the discovery that the infected deer shed prions (PREE-ons) in their feces many months before they show clinical symptoms has particularly provocative implications, according to the research team, at University of California, San Francisco and the Colorado Division of Wildlife?s Wildlife Research Center.

Deer, elk and moose inadvertently consume feces and soil in the course of their daily grazing. Given this, the team set out to determine whether the animals could develop chronic wasting disease through long-term consumption of contaminated feces. They did so by measuring the amount of prions contained in the feces of orally infected deer up until the time they became symptomatic and then calculated whether prolonged exposure to the concentrations of prions in these feces would be enough to cause the disease.
read more....
http://news.ucsf.edu/releases/prions-found-in-feces-of-deer-asymptomatic-for-chronic-wasting-disease/

Many hunters are notable conservationists, and one recently found an unexpected way to conserve bullets.

Prairie du Sac, Wis., resident TJ Hauge was hunting on opening day of the state's nine-day gun deer season. Settled into his tree stand when a buck came into his sights, TJ took careful aim and squeezed off a shot. Bull's-eye -- the buck dropped in its tracks -- and so did the unseen one standing directly behind it.

"Between the adrenaline and the rather strange outcome, my mind had a little trouble grasping what had just transpired," TJ told Outposts. "I spent the next 25 minutes with a big, uncontrollable smile and occasionally laughing to myself in disbelief of what had happened."

TJ immediately text-messaged the other members of his hunting party, "two bucks, one bullet."

"I proudly headed out of the woods into the field where my cousin Kent and his 11-year-old son, Ethan, were, where we sat until my father came down off a ridge," said TJ "After reliving the story, Dad and I headed on the four-wheeler to recover the deer."

His father, Tom, who just happens to be the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wildlife management director, said this was "an experience of a lifetime" for his son.

"Thank goodness I had two buck tags," continued TJ, as he was able to tag and legally take both deer.

"In addition to Ethan, we were fortunate to have two other opening-weekend rookies -- Brett and 11-year-old JP -- join us in camp," he added. "The excitement of having those three having great experiences and hopefully lighting a fire that keeps them coming back each year far outweighs the excitement of pulling off one hell of a lucky shot. But the shot was still pretty cool."

Word is his hunting party is wrangling over whether the 24-year-old will be allowed to add the scores from both bucks for his entry into the "buck pool." Either way, TJ has a winning tale to tell for years to come.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2009/11/two-deer-one-bullet.html

Some deer corn not tested, labeled for toxin
John McCoy of the Charleston (WV) Gazette has been keeping an eye on newly emerging news about a naturally occurring toxin caused by corn mold that may prove injurious?or even fatal?to deer, quail or other wildlife.

http://www.outdoorpressroom.com/outdoorpressroom/2010/02/texas-deer-corn-may-be-killing-states-quail.html

While USDA guidelines require bagged corn sold for deer feed to test less than 20 ppb for alfatoxin content, most of the corn McCoy found being sold at local stores in his area for that purpose did not carry testing information on the packaging. Read McCoy?s full article here.
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/johnmccoy/

Dog hanging on for life!

So this lady says that the other day she saw a man  driving down the interstate at high speed with a dog hanging on to  the tail gate for dear life..

She said if he hadn't been going  so fast in the other direction she would have tried to stop him. 

A few  weeks later her son see's the same truck at the bass pro shop!


The guy  is a  taxidermist!
Poor taste perhaps, but it is  an eye catching advertisement.