Spirit bear with stripe of hair on back yet to be shedOn this day before hunting season, volunteers logged hours on well-used bear trails, carrying food, in this time of hyperphagia, again without a bear approaching.
Tomorrow, we’ll be doing less walking so as to avoid disturbing hunters who have again surrounded the property. The bears have become mostly nocturnal.
If hunters leave during the day, we’ll log some hours midday in addition to the non-hunting hours early morning and late evening. The pre-dawn and evening hours are when bears are most active now, so those are the hours we want to focus on to maximize our chances of recording their reactions during encounters. We’ll also focus on well used trails. Those are the same trails hunters will focus on with their baits. Consequently, we’ll likely come across some baits, but it will be when shooting is illegal, so the hunters will have already left. If they haven’t left by then, they are hunting illegally and will be reported.
We have an official table of hunting hours taken from the DNR’s Hunting Regulations Manual for 2015.
Trumpeter SwansThe community is fed up with the blatant trespassing by hunters, as we saw and reported last year—hunters walking right by no trespassing signs or driving through a row of properties ignoring many no trespassing signs. This year, we will be reporting trespassing to the sheriff, not the DNR.
We have let the DNR know our plans and asked if there is any problem. Actually, we thank the DNR for alerting us to the need for additional data as prompted by their stating that diversionary feeding trains bears to come up to people for food. We had never heard of that in the community and never thought of it as topic for quantified data. The unfounded statement by a DNR sympathizer about the danger of a person carrying food was also helpful.
After last night’s mention of the last fur to be shed by bears is the fur down the center of their backs, a Lily Fan sent a picture perfectly illustrating that and saying how it could look to some like a bear raising its hackles. The photographer pointed out that the bear he photographed was perfectly calm and had no reason to raise its hackles. We loved how the last of the old white hairs stood out against the black background.
Swans have returned to Robinson Lake after losing the entire brood again this year. We hope this is the same pair and that they try again in 2016.
What a dedicated group of Lily Fans we have working with us again this late August and September. Also, what dedicated people we have working with us on data. We have the good fortune that Shirley Starks has now retired as a Sandia Laboratories scientist analyzing national disaster data to advise the president and now can focus more on analyzing GPS data as part of our group.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center