Bear-1 Birdfeeder-0

Never thought I'd see a black bear in my yard in the middle of the afternoon! Time to get rid of the birdfeeders! Fortunately, I saved the feeder before he smashed it to bits, I did my best at raising my arms up and letting out a roar of my own to scare him off...although it didn't work too well, he gave me a couple of huffs and finally went next door to my neighbors trash barrel.

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Wow! That woulda got my heart to racin' to see an animal like that in my own back yard! I think I would have let him have the feeder. :P

He had NO fear, I got within about 10 feet of him, before he finally decided to back off. The feeder was an expensive X-mas gift, one of those recycled milk jug feeders, and my girlfriend would have killed me if it got destroyed. She probably would have been more understanding if I got mauled trying to save it!:D

Next time you might want to stay back further and crash some pots and pans together or blast an air horn type thing. Time to build some bear safe enclosures for those garbage bins before your neighbour encourages a "problem" bear situation. Great pics though!

Wow that is freaking awesome

Wish I could find the video clip a friend sent me. A young bear was doing a tight rope act across a cable to steal a birdfeeder. They are persistant lil guys.

hope you know that you cant outrun a bear, i know that people can intimidate a black bear but some of them will charge and attack you, not worth it, let em have the feeder :)

I agree, I'd let him have the bird feeder. Not to mention, I'd be hard pressed to get away from the camera. I would've just kept snapping pics. :rolleyes:

That's so odd... I'd never heard about them going for bird feeders before my Dad told me that an entire family of them attacked my Aunt's street back where I grew up a few weeks ago... They used to stay as far from the main town (usually all hung out at the dump), I'd only heard of one other bear being right in town when it was unfortunately hit by a car that wasn't expecting the bear to be there!

I'll have to see if they've got any photos of it for the forum.. Unlike your brave attempt to save the feeder, my Aunt had 'city friends' up visiting who immediately started to panic and were calling everyone they could think of to try and find an acceptable escape plan!!! (I was amused by that one)

Sadly so many black bears are losing their natural habitat (like a lot of our wild friends) or are exposed so much to human garbage that they lose a lot of their natural fear of humans and become dependent on human garbage as a regular food source. Sows that teach their babies to scrounge our garbage are giving the babies a death sentence unfortunately. If you live in bear country please please build a proper bear safe garbage enclosure to encourage them to not find unnatural food sources. If you have apple trees, pick up your windfall apples, etc. You'll be saving a bear's life.

There are programs going on to teach problem bears to stay back. Special bear dogs are trained to drive them back, loud air horns are used, guns loaded with very loud but blank rounds, etc. and it is working and saving many bears from being put down. Relocation often doesn't work because the bears just come back so hopefully if humans learn to not leave garbage out and bears learn to stay back, they won't be put down in such high numbers.