Bears are making tracks
April 15, 2010 – 6:09 PM CDT
Bears are making tracks all over the forest now! What made so many bears start moving at once when it’s been nice weather for at least a month? Yesterday, June, Lily, and Braveheart made big moves. Today, Juliet and her 3-month-old cubs moved 0.3 miles away from their den, Lily and Hope moved another 0.5 miles to a new bedding spot (where Lily was seen eating hazel catkins), and June covered another 1.5 miles with her 2 yearlings. All of these mothers are in the documentary ‘Bearwalker of the Northwoods’.
Braveheart appeared incognito. You can recognize her as the female with white on her chest in several of the mating scenes. She was being followed by and was flirting with One-eyed Jack. We should be sending out the ‘Bearwalker’ DVDs in a week or so. Thank you for your patience with the manufacturing delay.
Braveheart has an interesting story. In 2008 we found her radio-collar lying beside the road among broken glass. We checked with authorities and learned that a car going 60 MPH had hit a bear. Somehow the bear had managed to drag itself into the woods. The front of the car was caved in and the insurance company considered it totaled. We expected the worst and looked for ravens or the smell of a carcass—but found nothing. Five weeks later, Braveheart arrived at the field station with a slight limp. Braveheart was fine—but looking at the picture of the car, it’s hard to believe!
Braveheart went on to produce 3 female cubs the next winter and has 2 of them with her as yearlings now. We don’t know what happened to Braveheart’s third cub. Sometimes a cub suddenly comes up missing and we have no idea why. We were very lucky in Juliet’s case to notice that her cub was sick within a day of its dying and to locate its body for testing.
17 boxes of nuts arrived today, which will be a big help. Thank you for your continuing support.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center