Geneva - Braveheart's cubLily and cubs have not been seen for 4 days and are likely hanging out at a den, but not the den they have been visiting. Ember has continued to spend time there. She arrived there again this morning at 4:26 AM and was still there when staff downloaded the trail cam card this afternoon at 3 PM.
Braveheart and her cubs Geneva, Stratton, and Porter are still bulking up at feeding stations. Except for hunters’ baits, food is practically non-existent in the woods. The picture of Geneva still shows some blue in the eyes.
A good article on http://www.nationalgeographic.com about pepper spray brought back good memories. http://news.nationalgeographic.com /2015/09/150925-grizzly-bears-attacks- science-animals-bear-spray/# .VgVlgD5ivho.facebook. It reminded me of a discussion at a bear conference back in 1980 or 1981 about what caliber rifle a person would need to defend against bears. I suggested that we think instead about non-lethal deterrents. 
GenevaI mentioned the pepper spray I had used on dogs as a mailman in the mid to late 1960’s. The pepper spray of that time was a less potent version of today’s counter assault. The main question was whether the spray would make the bear mad. No one had tested it face to face on a wild bear. I said I didn’t think it would because none of the dogs I’d sprayed got mad, and skunks wouldn’t have evolved their spray if it got them killed.
I tested it on wild, free-ranging black bears and a polar bear and published the black bear results (Rogers, L. L. 1984. Reactions of free-ranging black bears to capsaicin spray repellent. Wildl. Soc. Bull. 12(1):59-61). By the time I published it, I learned that a master’s student had sprayed penned grizzlies in 1980 and that Carrie Hunt had lured bears to baits and remotely triggered pepper spray from distance so she could see the bears’ reactions. The National Geographic article tells the rest of the story of how it has become the recommended defense against bears—recommended over rifles. To document that pepper spray is more effective than bullets against charging grizzly mothers, Dr. Tom Smith recently compiled compelling documentation of encounters in which one or the other deterrent was used.
Thank you for your much-needed contributions to the bear food fund.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.