Great minds from the Rhode Island media tell you what to do if you run into a black bear. Note that the bear you are going to run into is already labeled as merely “curious.” He couldn’t possibly be “ravenous,” “aggressive,” or “predatory.”

1:49 video

(I got rid of the embedded version, because there was no way to shut off Autoplay. Shockwave Flash scripts can be that way sometimes.)

“I’m going into training. Next time, I’ll run faster.”

Poor Vermont!

The old Green Mountain State, once home to rugged individualists and real outdoorsmen, has become a favored residence of affluent fashionistas. Politically, the ‘chucks (as newcomers derisively refer to native Vermonters) are reliably outvoted by treehuggers, goat milkers, and aging Trustafarian hippies.

In the old days, the Vermont state character was typified by drinkers and brawlers like Ethan Allen and by thrifty and laconic Yankees like Calvin Coolidge. Today, it has socialist Bernie Saunders representing it in the US Senate and a governor who champions gay marriage and everyone’s “right to health care” at somebody else’s expense.

Vermont’s wimp democrat Governor Peter Shumlin was recently frightened by some of the local wildlife.

Politico:

Shumlin says he was in bed in his rented Montpelier home late Wednesday night when he heard what turned out to be four bears in the backyard.

He says he looked out and saw the bears, including two cubs. He tried to chase the bears away, but they kept coming back.

Shumlin says he ran out barefoot in an attempt to rescue his birdfeeders. He says one of the bears charged him on the porch.

Shumlin tells the Valley News editorial board that Vermont “almost lost the governor.” He says he was within “three feet of getting ‘arrrh.'”

Black bears are rough on bird feeders. They typically totally demolish them to get at their contents more conveniently.

Some years back, at my farm in Central Pennsylvania, my father was making his morning coffee, when he looked out and saw a group of bears taking apart his bird feeders. My father stepped outside the cabin door, right on top of the offending bruins, pointed his .44 Magnum revolver in the air and touched off a couple of rounds. He then phoned me and reported with delight the comedy that ensued, noting with surprise just how fast properly motivated bears can run and describing exactly how funny they looked running for their lives up the mountain side.

Governor Shumlin went out and doubtless tried to influence them by making a speech.

All this proves that bears pay no attention to democrats, but understand the language spoken by Smith & Wesson extremely well.

Look to the right.

On today’s BBC radio’s Women’s Hour, in an 11:09 episode, correspondent Anna Kostalas encounters 9 female hunters taking the Quebec Hunting and Fishing Federation training course for hunting black bear.

The background commentary by Georges Dupras of the Animal Alliance of Canada is notable for its errors, intolerance, and authoritarianism. Dupras grudgingly concedes that hunting for material economic motives, for subsistence, is acceptable (big of him to give native hunters and back country survivalists his permission), but opposes passionately hunting for spiritual sustenance and aesthetic experience, hunting for sport. To a self-appointed “expert” like Dupras, sport hunting is simply taking pleasure in killing.

The 9 Québécoises ignore the prig Dupras, and enjoy and defend hunting.

Hat tip to Rafal Heydel-Mankoo.

Donna Munson

Since I have black bear walking regularly through my yard at my home atop the Blue Ridge, stories like today’s do make me reflect upon our current complacency about sharing our neighborhoods with potentially lethal large predators.

Mrs. Munson’s case was different from most of ours. She was living in a remote wilderness location. In California and the Eastern US, though, bears or mountain lions commonly reside in the midst of residential suburbs.

We rely on our belief that a long tradition of hunting (now very much in desuetude as far as our large predator neighbors are concerned) suffices to assure their fear of man as the better-armed and more dangerous predator.

Our reliance on that established status has worked well enough in the Eastern US so far, but, of course, the bear have only returned to most places very recently. The mountain lion, here in the East, is mostly just a rumor.

Denver News:

An autopsy showed a 74-year-old Ouray County (Colorado) woman whose body was found being eaten by a bear (Black bear – Ursus americanus) was attacked and killed by that same bear after she attempted to help a smaller bear that had been hurt in a fight.

The son-in-law of Donna Munson told 7NEWS that Munson was trying to help a smaller bear that had gotten into a fight with an older bear on Aug 7. The smaller bear suffered broken teeth in the brawl, Munson told her family.

Munson told her brother by telephone that she was putting out hard-boiled eggs and milk for the younger bear to eat, said the victim’s son-in-law, Bruce Milne.

Munson told her brother Thursday night that the older bear was back and said, “I’m going to chase it off with a broom.”

According to the county coroner, Munson was grabbed by the bear and it slashed her head and neck with such penetrating force that Munson would have bled out in 90 seconds.

Sheriff’s investigators said that the bear “clubbed” her through the wire fence that she had built around her porch, rendering her unconscious. It then grabbed her, pulled her underneath the fence to the back yard and then slashed her to death, the sheriff’s office said.

Later that day, a witness found a large bear feeding on Munson’s body as it lay outside her home.

We live on top of the Blue Ridge, a narrow 1500′ (457.2m.) high mountain separating the Virginia Piedmont from the Shenandoah Valley, at the very northern end of Virginia.

This morning, around 7:30 AM EDT, I happened to look out of the rear window of our second floor hallway, and saw walking purposefully from north to south across our backyard directly behind the house a fully-grown black bear (Ursus americanus).

That was as close as I’ve ever seen a bear outside captivity.

Yesterday, in the afternoon, I saw in the same yard two hen turkeys supervising either end of a long line of very small turkey poults. There were more than a dozen baby turkeys. Apparently, two mothers were walking their offspring together, keeping them under close control like a pair of elementary school teachers on a science tour.

Is there any sight more ridiculous than some aging baby boomer peddling away in his spandex outfit and insectoid helmet on a bicycle? Bicycles are alright for small boys to use on paper routes or to get to the park to play baseball, but their use as a fitness tool by aging hippies is unseemly and undignified and only results in inconvenience to motorists and unnecessary accidents.

Not even the bears in the Rocky Mountain West are safe these days.

Last Thursday, UPI reports:

A 57-year-old man in Missoula, Mont., says he is lucky to be alive after accidentally crashing his bicycle into the side of a wild bear.

Middle school teacher Jim Litz said while he is no stranger to seeing bears during his daily commute along an area dirt road, this week he didn’t’ have time to avoid one of the wild animals that had wandered into his way, The (Missoula, Mont.) Missoulian said Thursday.

“I didn’t have time to respond. I never even hit my brakes,” Litz said of Monday’s accident.

The teacher said after the impact flipped him off his bike, the bear began clawing at him apparently in confusion and anger. That attack left Litz with scratches and bruises along most of his body.

While Litz admits to being sore and a bit clawed up following the unexpected crash, he says he is lucky to have survived the incident and holds no ill will toward the animal.

“I was lucky. I was truly lucky, because I accosted the bear and he let me live,” he told the Missoulian. “I truly respect them. They’re beautiful creatures.”

That bear may be “a beautiful creature,” but a spindle-shanked, potbellied goofball in day-glo spandex certainly is not.

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Last June, there was another incident of the same kind in Colorado, as the Rocky Mountain News reports:

A cyclist in Boulder County was injured after a run-in, literally, with a bear.

Tim Egan, 53, was riding on Old Stage Road Tuesday afternoon when suddenly a bear appeared in front of him. Egan hit the bear and ended up skidding across the road.

“This bear looked at me with a look of terror on his face and sort of made a noise,” said Egan. “I looked at him with a look of terror and we went, ‘aaaahhhhh.'”

He cracked some ribs, suffered cuts on his head and had road rash. Egan said he and the bike flipped and flew over the bear, hitting the pavement hard.

The bear ran away after the accident when a deer appeared.

Egan’s nephew ran to help the injured cyclist.

“When I tell people, they say ‘Right, are you kidding me, who hits a bear?'”

Egan estimated he was going about 45 miles per hour at impact. He said the bear was about 6 feet tall and probably weighed 500 pounds.

When are these bears going to wise up? A fully-digested bicyclist is a safe bicyclist, I always say.

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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Apple, a heifer resident of Hygiene, Colorado, discovered an intruder in her pasture. She touched noses investigatively, doubtless reaching the correct conclusion that the visitor was a black bear cub, and promptly proceeded to run him off.

TheDenverChannel.com

slideshow

AP:

The way the warden sees it, the more than 400-pound black bear living in the middle of the sprawling Louisiana State Penitentiary is an extra layer of security.

“I love that bear being right where it is,” Warden Burl Cain said Monday. “I tell you what, none of our inmates are going to try to get out after dark and wander around when they might run into a big old bear. It’s like having another guard at no cost to the taxpayer.”

The bear was first seen by an inmate crossing a road in the prison on Friday. It was taking a stroll near the center of the state’s only maximum security prison, which is about 115 miles northwest of New Orleans. Most of the roughly 28-square-mile prison is run as a farm, but about 5 1/2 square miles is mostly untouched piney woods.

Prison workers measured the bear’s footprints, which were six inches in diameter, Cain said.

“Every inch equals 75 pounds, so that would make it about 450 pounds,” Cain said.

Renowned hunter, frontiersman, Indian fighter, and Congressman David Crockett of Tennessee, who died fighting for the Liberty of Texas at the Alamo in 1836, was reputed to have begun his hunting exploits by killing a bear at the age of 3.

Davy Crockett’s hunting prowess as a toddler is usually thought to have been only a legend, but as ABC7 News reports:

Dewitt, Ark. A 5-year-old Arkansas County boy killed a black bear Sunday weighing more than 400 pounds.

Tre Merritt, a descendant of Davy Crockett, was hunting with his grandfather Mike Merritt when a black bear happened upon their stand.

“His 10th great-grandfather was Davy Crockett,” Mike Merritt said. “And Davy supposedly killed him a bear when he was three. And Tre is five and really killed a bear. I really doubt if Davy killed one when he was three.”

Mike Merritt was in the stand at the time but said Tre did it all by himself.

“He came in about 40 to 50 yards,” Mike Merritt said of the black bear, “and when he got in the open, I whistled at him and he stopped and I said, ‘Shoot Tre.'”

Tre confirmed his grandfather’s account.

“I was up in the stand and I seen the bear,” Tre Merritt said. “It came from the thicket and it was beside the road and I shot it.”

At first, Mike Merritt didn’t think Tre had hit the bear with his youth rifle.

“I said, ‘Tre, you missed the bear,’ ” Mike Merritt said. “He said, ‘Paw-paw I squeezed the trigger and I didn’t close my eyes. I killed him.”‘

The bear turned out to be 445 pounds; 12 times the weight of Tre. Mike Merritt said tears rolled down his cheeks when he found out his grandson killed the enormous bear.

Tre Merritt’s father said he began teaching his son to shoot when he was just 2 .5 years old, and said Tre killed three deer last year.

The family plans to get a life-sized mount of the bear, but where they will put has yet to be determined.

DeWitt is in rural eastern Arkansas, close to the Mississippi River bottoms and near Stuttgart, the Duck Hunting Capitol of the World.

2:15 KATV video

Let’s hope the kid runs for Congress someday.