bears

[cheepo]

so lucky did check out byc wow 1462 pages each with 10 posted topics...definately not the only one!!
rhonda...thought we had built a secure fort. too.with nothing getting in..what was racoon like...?
anderson...very good to know bear tastes good...
deb..will look into that...I know there is a pollicy in this area..to move and tag, but if a bear returns more than twice they shoot...
a bit better than other areas where it is straight to the kill...I tend to feel we should remember it is us that moved into there territory.
and not always the other way arround...
WOW TERRY that sounds amazing...must have been something to see...
joel thanks 4 the bear info...we had wondered earlier in the year, when we saw a brown an black bear together
my mom thought that they were all the same species...but then s friend from the area..said..she had stumbled on some snagged
lighter tan bear fir and wondered if we had a spirit bear, but probably is all Ursus americanus will take your advice on the electric fence..
the same friend suggest fixing some noisy makers around the coop..to maybe startle them away...which I thought was a great idea..

 

[me&thegals]

I had them in my beehives 2 years ago, so we put up an electric fence on a battery around the hives and haven't had a problem since. Good luck!

 

[Emerald]

Around here there had not been bear in probably 60 years.. Only if you go to the upper part of lower Michigan or the UP in Michigan. there is where I saw my first bears.
But in the last 7 years they have been spotted more and more in our area. One not more than a couple hundred yards up the road and across the street.. If I didn't know the neighbor very well I would have asked what he had been drinking for breakfast!
Then this spring and summer they have been seeing them not only in our rural area but in the cities near us.. raiding bird feeders. I now take my walking staff when I have to be out in the yard after dark just to be on the safe side.. From what the DNR says they are probably last years cubs being ousted by mom to be on their own and being driven into our area.
On one hand I am excited by the return of the animals. The turkey the bald eagles, coyotes and even the bear. On the other hand.. I worry that my chicken shed is not strong enuf to withstand a bear assult. Holy Moly.. it still falls victim to raccoon raids..

 

[Bettacreek]

Well, we had a bear in our front yard. I had been gone for half an hour and he decided to pop in for a visit. He was chasing my chickens around, but fortunately, my little 5 month old leghorn roosters attacked him and he left! I called the Game Commission, for my boys' safety, and he told me to fill up balloons with ammonia, smear them with peanut butter and hang them around where the bear entered the yard. He said that they'll pop the balloon trying to eat the peanut butter, get a snoot full of ammonia and then they shouldn't return. In PA, shooting a bear or an elk is actually a bigger offense than shooting an endangered animal. A thousand dollar fine and up to three months in jail. FORTUNATELY, he said that if I'm protecting my family, then the law provides for our safety and I wouldn't get in trouble if I shot the bear. He told me that if he comes onto the porch or anything scary, call him back and he'll come set traps and haul his fat arse away.

 

[Denim Deb]

I so wish you could have gotten the rooster chasing him away on video! That would have been funny to see!

 

[Bettacreek]

I know! The game commission officer even said that it was a shame I didn't get video, because it probably would've gone viral, lol.

 

[Emerald]

thanks for the great info on how to maybe booby trap those balloons and maybe scare them away.. I wonder if it would work on raccoons?
I too wish you had caught it on tape.. that would have been a hoot!

 

[Bettacreek]

It might. Maybe try water balloons for coons? You can get like 100 of them at the Dollar Tree here, so check your Dollar Tree (if you have one) and you can probably even find a small bottle of ammonia there too.

 

[Joel_BC]

Deer were such a problem for people's food and decorative gardens that most people have refenced in the last five years. We did that on our own place four years ago (six-and-a-half-foot fencing wire), and it's worked completely for the deer. But for a few days last year and the year before, a bear was climbing over. So we're going to electric fencing.

What's recommended is a good strong fence charger and two strands of wire a couple inches outside of your existing fence - one at 14" or so above the ground, one at about 36". You can then bait the wire strands to attract the bear, so that s/he gets a good shock on the nose and learns not to challenge your fenceline.

Well, we did the fencing, and put in a really strong charger. But, we did it with slight alteration to what I mentioned previously. After consulting with a guy in the community who does fencing professionally, including for good-size apple & pear orchards, we went with one strand of wire. At five feet. The expert believes in allowing the bear to climb, as that is its nature - and get the zap when snout or paw meets wire, at five feet. We've also run a retractable rope, with wire strands woven into it, across our truck gate and pedestrian gate (since we found evidence that a bear found it attractive to climb over the sturdy tuck gate last year).

I have to say that we're not sure if this five-foot level or the other two-strand approach is best. The other opinion was also from some experts who do this sort of work.