Skip to main content

Welcome! Be sure to visit the NABC website as well.

Tasha, Weights, Kurtis - UPDATE September 4, 2016

This 8-minute video from yesterday shows Tasha learning a new way to have fun. I don’t know that she’s ever been in a pool before. I don’t know if there is water like this up in the Colleen and cubsColleen and cubsmountains of Kentucky. Once she discovered it, she got into it—big time. She got in splashed around moved around in circles, perhaps learning how it is to be in nice cool water that gives resistance to movement. Then she springs out as if learning how it is to leap out and escape, only to come back in and do it all again, leaving at a different spot. This is an action video: https://youtu.be/GOPmxxS68AE.

A Lily Fan sent the four bears’ recent weights:
Ted's weight 9/3 yesterday: 630
Holly 9/3 yesterday: 287
Lucky 9/2 Friday: 446
Tasha 9/1, Thursday: 182

Lucky up the cub treeLucky up the cub treeI was glad to hear that Lucky and Tasha are peaceable and can be let out together without a problem. Things look like they’re working out.

At WRI, we learned that the Curtis’ name is really Kurtis, so that’s how we’re spelling it now. I don’t like spearing. I think there should be a law against it. Hunting season is not about having fun trying new haphazard ways to kill bears. Mike here, who saw Kurtis try to reach and saw the full length of his wound open judged it to be 4 inches deep and 10 inches long. We think it will heal. He shouldn’t have to go through that. We hope to get more pictures and make it known. We can’t think of anything other than a spear that would make a wound like that. The fact that a nearby hunter has a spearing picture as his lead picture shows his interest. When hunters crowd in as close as they do here, we see the results of their handiwork. The picture in last night’s update shows just a fraction of the wound.

Pileated Woodpecker MalePileated woodpecker maleGame wardens are cruising nearby and frequently accompanying the hunters. Residents are getting tired of close shots. Some are calling for a safety zone or zones where they can walk on trails made by the community without worry of being shot or being charged with hunter harassment. Bear-hunting season is the time of year that is bug-free, nice temperatures, and pretty leaves (that don’t stop bullets), and residents don’t like being excluded from the woods by hunters who don’t know the area and don’t know what might be beyond the leaves.

We were glad to see Samantha and her four cubs safely up a big red pine at day’s end. Over the years, 3 cubs have mysteriously come up missing close around here in the first week of bear-hunting seasons.

Samantha and her 4 cubsSamantha and her 4 cubsAt dawn, it was nice to see Colleen and her cubs together. Colleen, identified by the notch in her ear, was watchful as the cubs ate.

A stressful time for the bears and us.

The male pileated woodpecker showed up after a long absence. He went right to a place we used to have suet, so I think it’s the male that has long been around.

Thank you for all you do.

Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center


Share this update: