Back in the late 1960’s I was the FS field representative on a bear study being conducted by a wildlife student from a California college. (Representative means labor) Using a standard culvert trap we would capture California Black Bears, sedate them, weight them, record vital measurements, medicate them and on bears of special interest install a track collar. The bears we concentrated on were problem bears around human habitation, and campgrounds. For tracking purposes all bears had a large number painted on them.
While I was assisting the largest bear we captured was a 345 pound, brown color phased Boer. After handling a number of smaller bears this guy was a little more challenging. Initially in the process was transporting the bear to a good location to do our work. The second was to estimate how much medication was needed to knock the bear out. Because of our experience with lighter bears this guy required a couple of shots. Part of the problem was the needles kept bending. The syringe was on the end of a pole which was inserted through the mesh door of the trap. Three or four needles were bent in the process. The needles were about the diameter of an 8-penny nail.
One of our catch locations provided a lot of human food to the bears. It was amazing how fast a bear would return to the site after being released fifty miles away on the far side of a wilderness area.
We kept catching and releasing some smaller bears because we were targeting a large 550-600 class Boer. During my time the big guy was never caught because the little rascals would race for the goodies and the trap door would slam shut.
The bears I have been writing about are garbage bears. During the mid 1960’s my mother was fire lookout in a remote area of California. The lookout set on a peak and the area was surrounded by timber, Manzanita, and wild choke cherry brush. The decaying logs in the timber provide grubs, ants, and termites for the bear. A few weeks after the birth of my son we took him up to the tower and spent a day and a night there. Early in the morning there was twelve bear feeding below the lookout. All of these bears were black color phase.
Mom was having a few bear issues when going to the spring to refill her water cans she got crosswise with a she bear and a couple of cubs. This was a scare, but she had another one when she was using the outhouse and an adult bear blocked her exit for about an hour. When the family and I headed for home I left a rifle with mom.
I buy a California bear tag on occasion because one of my deer hunting partner’s is normally after a bear. Just in case some goes haywire I will get one to so that if I have to take a shot I am legal. The Northern California F&G office is located in Redding, CA. I had planned on stopping and buying a 2009 bear tag when in Redding but my timing was off because the office was closed due to the furlough of State employees ordered by Arnold the Great Outdoorsman. This is a very busy time of year for that office that sells deer and bear tags to hunters. In the past I have gone in there to pick up a second tag having filled my first. There is always a line waiting to be served. In will be interesting to see how the books balance this year.
It has been almost two weeks and I was hunting by myself. I had spent about two hours seated against a chunk of old cull log. I had shot my buck last year from that position. I decided to move a couple of hundred yards to where I could look across a draw. I picked up movement in the trees and brush to my right. It was a 150-200 pound bear about sixty yards away.
This was the bear I have been waiting for, it had deep chocolate hair, and the bright sun highlighted the gold tips on the hair. Before the bear went out of sight I had three good opportunities to take a shot. A favorite 270 Winchester was at my shoulder, it was loaded with 130-grain Barnes TTSX bullets, but I was not tempted because I planned on passing the information to my hunting partner.
The area was a buffet for bears with Manzanita berries, choke cherries, elder berries, and goose berries along with small rodents, and fawns for table fare.
A few days earlier we pushed a bear out of a basin we were driving out of in 4L. When we hit a paved logging road, I stopped to take my rig out of 4-wheel drive, and then proceed on pavement. About 100-yards down on pavement we encountered two fresh piles of bear scat, with fresh pools of urine running down the pavement around the scat. We pulled over in the fading light and looked for the bear but did not spot it.
On the day I was packing for home a logger’s wife stopped by and chatted. Her husband and his hunting party had spotted twelve black bear while backpack hunting for deer. They did not take one because they follow a basic rule of thumb that I practice. Do not shoot a bear far from a road, and preferable the bear is uphill from the road.
Getting a bear out of the woods is a far tougher task then getting a deer out.
P.S.
Grizzly bears disappear from California in the 1920’s. Black bear are common in California. I have seen numerous brown phase black bears in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and in Southern California.
In the late 1800’s my friend and hunting partner’s great ancestor killed a grizzly bear at the headwaters of the Shasta River and Eddy Creek. He was protecting the live stock at night from a raiding grizzly. He shot it with a double barrel, black powder, 10 gauge shotgun. The bear was shot at night and he retreated back into his cabin. In the morning light the bear was found in a nearby stream bed. The assumption was in the Shasta River. Documentation regarding this event is in the Siskiyou County Library.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klamath_MountainsI find conflicting dates regarding the last California Grizzly, but the end came in the 1920’s. One of the last was in all places Big Tujunga canyon on the Angeles National Forest.
I consider the Shasta River the dividing line between Mt. Shasta and the Eddy Mountains, what is part of the Salmon-Trinity Range. One of my earliest sightings of a black bear in the woods was near an area on the NE slope of Mt. Shasta where my dad and his friends had setup a hunting camp. It was a black phase black bear. In those days no bear tag was required, and there was not a limit on them. Nobody in the party was interested in shooting it. The old motto if you shoot it, you eat it applied.
Way to the South on the Angeles National Forest and San Bernardino National Forest there is bears that cause problems, and wonder down into the foothill communities and take a dip in swimming pools on a hot day. There are some large bears in the Southland. A black bear over 600-pounds was killed a few years back on the San Bernardino National Forest.
North and South there is bear poop all over the woods in the early fall when the Manzanita berries are ripe. During that time of the year other berries are ripe in the woods. Bears will eat just about anything, but towering piles of bear scat filled with Manzanita berries is common. I have come up close behind a number of bears at night on logging roads. They are pooping and scooting down the road, with the fat rolling on them.
