A few years back at my new place one of my neighbors caught two cubs in his garbage pails. He turned them over and off thay ran luckily mama wasn't nearby. This past summer we have one blackbear making his rounds from the bottom land to the upper part of the water shed area with my land inbetween. I had fresh bear droppings in my corn field. Then i hit droppings again while mowing months after. Time to time i'm still seeing droppings. My son took his dirtbike into the water shed area for one ride and found a cave which he avoided very quickly. This isn't far behing my property. The bear has been noticed wondering around at about 3:30 to 4pm lately too.
Now my problem is we feed the deer all winter with a moltre deer feeder with corn running 24/7 once the natural food gets scarce. I also put out the larger apple blocks from tractor supply too all winter as they disappear. My problem is now i don't want the bear to feed here too. He can turn into a problem really fast. I'm thinking that i can't feed the deer anymore? I did leave my corn field standing with some extra corn left on it. Bears here are know to get into houses here too. I just don't want the hassle with them.
I'm surrounded by horse farms, farms with crops and woods/forests, we have every critter you can think of now from yotes/foxes to deer/bear and bobcats, lynx's and mountainlion's too.