Second visit in just under a week and a half of a decent sized black bear in the middle of the night, not afraid of my dogs and certainly not afraid of the one that was a foot away snarling and the crazy lady telling him to drag his butt out of there. Estimate his size around 300 pounds and around 5 ft tall on his hind legs. Yup he stood up to look at me better.
Nuisance when they destroy your property more than once or harm your family or dogs. otherwise, live and let live. However, bite me or tear up my stuff more than once......
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When I lived in bear country, a bear was considered a nuisance by me if he decided to enter anything other then a burn barrel. If a bear does not loose interest when ALL the food sources are taken away , you may have a problem. If you continue to feed animals of any kind or leave trash around he will continue to visit. Just because he is not afraid of a dog or stands up to see you better does not necessarily mean he is dangerous or even destructive. He may just be curious or knows there are goodies around and is trying to locate them by smell. That being said , I never really had any one bear be much hassle. We had one get on back porch and paw at screen window ,he was bigger and I scared him off and was never a problem again.
We had a small black bear steal our lunch meat when on a hunting trip in Alaska. I had a black bear tag as well. We just decided to chase him away pretty far from camp.
It was comical to watch him run away with a family pack of ham in his mouth. It wasnt funny to be out of lunch meat for the rest of the trip.
I prefer to try to discipline them. But if they get too comfortable after discipline, you have to elevate the punishment. Hopefully it doesnt involve letting the air out of them. But if it was near my house with my young boys around, I would probably be more inclined to put some bird shot on his rear end on the first go around. After that, time to get the tractor out.
"...aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one." - Paul to the church in Thessalonica.
Black bears are typically afraid of people. If you come out the door banging pans and he walks away, you have a bear who either lost his fear of humans, or a bear who is moving toward being a predatory bear. They typically aren't fearful of dogs on chains and unless the dogs are coming after the bear they aren't going to be concerned frequently. I'd certainly have a rifle on hand, you have a problem bear, best case scenario. You may have a bear that is sizing things up to determine how easy a dinner there is there, hard to tell if he sees the dogs as dinner or possibly you. If you come out banging the pans and he doesn't take off, shoot him. Especially if you are in fear of him coming after you, or going after your dog. The last part is the law. Hard to prove you aren't in fear if the bear is in your yard. If you have a license and a bear tag, you get to keep everything and have a choice of meals for you (or the dogs).
NRA LIFE MEMBER GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS ESPECIALLY THE SNIPERS! "Suppose you were an idiot And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself." -Mark Twain
We had a small black bear steal our lunch meat when on a hunting trip in Alaska. I had a black bear tag as well. We just decided to chase him away pretty far from camp.
It was comical to watch him run away with a family pack of ham in his mouth. It wasnt funny to be out of lunch meat for the rest of the trip.
I prefer to try to discipline them. But if they get too comfortable after discipline, you have to elevate the punishment. Hopefully it doesnt involve letting the air out of them. But if it was near my house with my young boys around, I would probably be more inclined to put some bird shot on his rear end on the first go around. After that, time to get the tractor out.
Second visit in just under a week and a half of a decent sized black bear in the middle of the night, not afraid of my dogs and certainly not afraid of the one that was a foot away snarling and the crazy lady telling him to drag his butt out of there. Estimate his size around 300 pounds and around 5 ft tall on his hind legs. Yup he stood up to look at me better.
Ignore him or lay in wait?
When they start listening to Justin Bieber...time to put him down.
If it comes back again it's probably associated people with food rewards. We had a crazy old lady feeding a few black bears a couple miles away, one decided it wanted more and broke into her house and killed her. Once they loose their fear of people, they need to be dead.
"Life is tough, even tougher if your stupid" John Wayne
Maybe time to let the dog off the leash. Dogs are WAY quicker than bears, it's really rare that a bear actually gets a lick in on a medium to large size dog.
My grandfather and I hunted bear with dogs for just over a decade and he had been doing it for 40 years before that. In all that time, he had one dog get injured from a bear (and the dog did get pretty tore up). It was a very unlucky thing, one dog was squaring off and the other dog Blue actually stepped right into a claw strike. But I had seen Blue take on blackies several times before. Once it ran right up between a bears legs, inverted and latched onto the bears neck...that was quite spectacular (what an awesome dog Blue was).
Before I killed it, I'd be calling game wardens to see if there's a chance of relocation. Just don't like seeing animals killed unless it's really necessary. I'm a big lover of bears...but people always come first.
Look at the bright side. When I moved into my freshly built house in Arkansas, I had been there for just under 2 months when a Sheriff's deputy swings by to warn me there's a 600lb tiger on the loose...WTF???
Much better option there than my bird shot claim. It will hurt him but probably not injure him. Probably be hauling a$$ after a few of those rounds.
"...aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one." - Paul to the church in Thessalonica.