Just how smart are black bears

TomSeller · Jul 23, 2013

I have a combination 8' deer netting plus electric fence around where I don't want wildlife. Has worked good so far. Deer, bear, cougar, elk and bobcat so far have stayed away. I wasn't expecting the bear to feel it through his fur but he must have got his nose on it the way he sounded when he took off for the woods.

Larro Darro · Jul 24, 2013

My cousin's husband down in Wewa is one of the biggest tupelo honey producers in the country. [Ulee's Gold was filmed in their swamp] To get the bees to the tupelo blooms they have to put their hives out along the Apalachicola and Chipola Rivers down by the Dead Lakes. Each hive of bees cost about $200, and a bear can destroy 200 hives a night. One or two nights of that, and your year just went into the red. They use really hot electric fence chargers powered by solar power.

They do have a few bear rugs too. If you kill them in the fall, the fat is the best stuff you will ever find to fry fish. It doesn't even taste like grease.

IkeRoberts · Jul 24, 2013

Out at Cub Scout Camp we had a mama and three bear cubs. One night the cubs climbed into a dumpster and got stuck(too high to climb out). The mother was smart enough to walk down the road about 100 yards and get the rangers attention by attacking his truck in the driveway. It took three tries before the ranger decided to follow the mother down to the dumpster. He got out the bobcat and pushed the dumpster over. Mama and the three young ones went their merry way unharmed(unlike the ranger's truck).

Dr_Zinj · Jul 24, 2013

teejk said:
Bear is good eating but they need to be opened and cooled very quickly. With that hide and body fat the meat goes rancid in a hurry.

Heh. Reminds me of the first bear meat we ever "tried" to eat. Friend of ours got it and obviously failed to cool it fast, and to add insult to injury, tried to hang it like a deer. Didn't smell quite right cooking it, but since we weren't familiar with bear at the time we didn't know better. Tasted worse than it smelled, totally inedible.

So we fed it to the dog.

Our poor dog had the worse flatulence for the next two days. Our eyes would water, we'd gag, and I swear we could see the silver tarnish and the wallpaper peel off. Had to open the doors and windows to air the house out.

teejk · Jul 24, 2013

Dr_Zinj said:
Heh. Reminds me of the first bear meat we ever "tried" to eat. Friend of ours got it and obviously failed to cool it fast, and to add insult to injury, tried to hang it like a deer. Didn't smell quite right cooking it, but since we weren't familiar with bear at the time we didn't know better. Tasted worse than it smelled, totally inedible.

So we fed it to the dog.

Our poor dog had the worse flatulence for the next two days. Our eyes would water, we'd gag, and I swear we could see the silver tarnish and the wallpaper peel off. Had to open the doors and windows to air the house out.

We used to have a fund raising game feed at our shooting club. The DNR would sell confiscated game for such functions from their evidence freezer. We got a frozen bear from them one year and brought it into the clubhouse to begin prep. We had one member that was assigned the task of cutting up celery and carrots but he thought some of us were having too much fun working on the bear so he jumped in. He came out with bear "doo-doo" up to his elbows. To this day he still is known by the nickname he earned.

Turns out that when an animal is taken illegally, the wardens don't bother finishing the field dressing. It was a big bear and we probably had 80 lbs or so in the mesh cooking nets. Then it started to thaw out. The smell was beyond horrible and it started to turn a very pretty green. We salvaged about 20 pounds. I walked into the house, stripped off my clothes at the door and took a hot shower. I dried off, took a whiff, then got back in the shower. I repeated that about 5 times. It must have gotten into my sinuses because for a month every once and a while I would get a reminder.

A few years ago I helped drag out a legal killed bear and it was opened up immediately and taken to the taxidermist cooler as soon as we could get it there. Luckily the temp dropped a lot otherwise I was ready to head to town to get bags of ice to stuff into the cavity. We got to share some very good meat from that bear.