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Rusty

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In the middle of church yesterday a guy taps me on the shoulder and whispers that they need me outside. So I slip out quietly and he tells me there’s a bear by the dumpster, which is where people park, and they can’t get it to leave. There had been a reception the day before and they didn’t lock the dumpster lid so there was garbage everywhere, and lying right in the middle of it all was a pretty good size bear.

I very nicely asked the bear to leave, which it did with a lot of hissing and jaw popping. I then proceeded to clean up the garbage so that the bear wouldn’t return. About 5 minutes later the bear returns, so we repeat the process of me very politely asking it to leave and it doing so with a lot of hissing and huffing.

This repeats itself every 5 minutes or so for the next 20 minutes. Finally I get everything cleaned up and I’m locking the dumpster when I hear a noise overhead. There are 3 cubs in the tree right above me. [wallmad]


Doesn’t the first rule of bear safety have something to do with a sow and her cubs?? [hihi]

And here I spend 20 minutes between a sow and her cubs, running her off every time she tries to get to her cubs. [ko]
 
Funny story, 870. On Saturday I held my Trout Unlimited chapter's annual youth fishing derby on Weldon Youth Education Pond in Jefferson Twp. just down the road from you. For 1 1/2 hours of the 2 hour derby I spent trying to convince a sow and her 4 cubs NOT to come to the pond's edge where they kept smelling food (fishing bait including one guy that had marinated bunker chunks to catch catfish). The Jefferson police helped with loud sirens, horns, etc. but it took a full 90 minutes to get her to walk across the road with her cubs while we stopped traffic. She came as close as 40 feet from the 75 or so kids several times and never showed any fear at all, but at least she wasn't stressed about her cubs being in any danger which was my # 1 fear.

As we wrapped up the event, a 6th bear (this one was solo) came over the guardrail from a nearby swamp likely drawn by those same smells and we were able to keep that bear from coming too closely to the kids and their parents.
 
Discussion starter · #8 ·
On Saturday I held my Trout Unlimited chapter's annual youth fishing derby on Weldon Youth Education Pond in Jefferson Twp.
Very Cool!! [up][up]

Do you stock the pond for those events?


For 1 1/2 hours of the 2 hour derby I spent trying to convince a sow and her 4 cubs NOT to come to the pond's edge
These bears have so many interactions with people every day that they are extremely tolerant. We had a mother a few years back that would leave her cubs up a tree in our neighborhood and she would go back into the woods to sleep for the day.


I always thought it was run faster than the person you're with.
[hihi][hihi]
 
Do you stock the pond for those events?
The Division does for me out of the Hackettstown hatchery. We haven't stocked trout in that pond in a few years since they can't hold over in hot summers like this and I don't want the kids to arrive and find dead trout floating in the pond (which would just be more bear food [ko])

Plus the pond has natural recruitment of large mouth bass and sunfish and possibly crappies. They also stock channel cats which I don't think reproduce in that pond.
 
What’s the First Rule of Bear Safety?


I always thought it was run faster than the person you're with
In Alaska the 1st rule of bear safety is to carry bear spray... and here is a pic of the spray can (which is not always labeled as "bear spray" ) [rofl]

Image
 
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