More Bear Stories

The photo above was taken from the cab of our pickup truck with my husband’s cell phone camera last week, while he was attempting not-so bravely to scare this ~300-pound she-bear away from our trash bin. Obviously, she wasn’t impressed. The next morning he left for work and found her not 8 feet away, in the drive right next to the house between him and the truck. She ignored him when he waved his arms and told her to leave (using his ‘gruff voice’), so he reached back for the shotgun we keep handy these days and let off some birdshot with appropriately loud bang into the air. She retreated about 10 yards up the hill, then stopped, turned around, growled grumpily and came right on back.

The first time I saw her was just a couple of weeks after our sweet old dog died, leaving us without the good bear-protection barking dogs have always offered. I’d just gotten my first cup of coffee and started out to the back deck when I realized that very large furry thing at the bottom of the deck steps (maybe 15 feet from the door) was NOT a dog, but an escapee from the wildlife sanctuary of the National Forest just across the railroad tracks. Yikes! Now she thinks she owns the place, and has lodged her complaints that we aren’t feeding her well enough.

While this bear is beautiful in her ursine way, she is a dangerous wild animal. We don’t want to kill her, and it would be illegal for us to do so anyway – it’s not bear season. So we’ve called a friend who hunts, some animal control people, a wildlife biologist at a local university, and even talked with a federal game warden about our “nuisance bear” and how to get her to move on. We’ve received some contradictory information.

• We’ve stopped putting out trash, which she loves to shred even though we don’t toss food – I compost kitchen scraps and we don’t eat meat in any case. That means we have to do dumpster runs more often, but that can be accommodated.

• We’ve been warned not to use the shotgun on her even just with rock salt, as it may blind or wound her and turn a bad situation worse.

• We’ve been told to ’sting’ her with a pellet gun instead. It won’t break the skin but will smart and that may at least keep her away from the immediate house and yard.

• We’ve been told she’ll move on when the blackberries ripen, but there are more than enough blackberries here on the property to fatten her up just fine. I doubt she’ll cross the tracks, since once the berries are gone the apples and pears right here will be ripening. She’s counting on it, I’m sure.

• We’ve been told she might be pregnant, and has chosen our place to den-in because it’s safe and abundant. Great.

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Big Tom: Legend and Reality

When my brother and I were children, we got to spend a couple of weeks every summer visiting our grandparents and aunt in Eastern Kentucky. They lived in town, but our aunt was a social worker who often traveled into the hollows and onto mountaintops to check on her clients, many of whom lived so far back in the woods there wasn’t an actual road into the homestead. Instead, there was often a mule path we’d follow, sometimes with fine limestone cliffs she’d let us climb just for fun. We learned about the plants, the animals, and had great fun helping at harvest, then got to sit at the crude picnic tables in these homestead yards and listen to the stories of the old folks.

A frequent topic for those old men was a legendary mountain man named Big Tom Wilson. He became a hero to my brother and I, and we often played in the woods pretending we were Big Tom-like mountain folk, seeking deer trails or following bear hollows through the rhododendrons to the mountain peaks, blazing trails and knowing everything about everything these abundant mountains have to offer.

Decades later my own family moved here to Western North Carolina where Big Tom is more than just a legend – he was a real man who played a significant role in the history of this region. He’s still got descendants here, I taught one of them in junior high a few years ago.

Big Tom was born Thomas David Wilson in 1825. He got his nickname by being a lanky six foot two in a time when most men were much smaller in stature. They say he killed 114 bears in his lifetime, and he knew the Black Mountains (the Seven Black Brothers) better than anyone alive. He married Niagra (Polly) Ray in 1852 and they lived in a 2-room cabin on the upper Cane River while he earned a living as a gameskeeper for a hunting preserve, as a farmer, hunter, fisherman and a mountain guide. It was as a guide that he played his strongest role in the history of the region.

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More Bear Stories: Facts and Tall Tales

Continuing with the theme of North Carolina’s Black Bear Population, it’s time for some tales tall and small about bears. Because these magnificent creatures are a considerable presence in much of North Carolina, there’s quite a few such tales. Seems like everyone you meet here has at least one tale to tell, whether in the rugged mountains or on the fertile piedmont, in the countryside, towns, cities and suburbs.

People who choose to live in the countryside are bound to encounter bears, and most are no worse for the experience. Yet as the countryside becomes ever more populated, the number of bear encounters in more urban settings rises as well. The last installment provided some good links to information about the habits and habitats of NC’s considerable bear population, good to keep in mind whether you’re living in North Carolina or just visiting.

Bears are smart critters. They can become expert at cracking “bearproof” latches on coolers, cars and trucks door handles, garbage bins and dumpster lids to avail themselves of food. They readily learn to beg, pretty much like dogs do. They can put up some impressively aggressive bluffing in order to gain access to golf carts, campsites and your dog’s food. They’ve been known to walk right into cabins, garages, pubs, restaurants and even resort hotels, making themselves right at home.

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Bear Stories: NC’s Black Bears

Black bears inhabit the North Carolina highlands, rather famously. Even though by census the state has fewer bears [11,000] than Pennsylvania [15,000] or Minnesota [30,000], frequent encounters with campers in the parks and forests are reported, and people who live in the mountains are often familiar with the bears for whom their trash, fruit trees and berry thickets have been claimed as territory.

The Washington Post reported on November 14th that researchers at the Smithsonian Institute in D.C. have used motion-sensitive cameras to photograph wildlife along a segment of the Appalachian Trail in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. The 1,900 pictures showed wild horses, domestic dogs, deer and bear cubs wandering the trail at night when no one was watching. This project didn’t include the North Carolina sections of the trail, but the researchers were surprised by the number of bears recorded nonetheless. I’d suspect that if they had put cameras along North Carolina sections, there would have been a lot more bear sightings.

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