Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
MRBB was talking about bears in his thread about " apple tree help - or ? ", and I thought I'd relate some of our incidents at camp with bears.
My camp is an OLD farmstead on top of a mountain in the middle of other mountains. There are some other camps on our mountain, most with food plots / apple trees. The bears aren't new to people or people to the bears. The woods here are mainly oaks, so in good acorn years, bears are filling up on those in the woods. Apple tree damage is minimal or none at all. But in a bad acorn year, look out !! In the fall, bears are feeding up for winter and if no good supply of acorns, they'll eat just about anything. They'll go to any length to get food. A camp up the road had a bear tear the lid off a locked, outdoor chest freezer ( non-working ) because it had an empty hot dog package ( plastic wrapper ) in it. The bear smelled the " hot dogs " thru the locked lid !!
Bear claw marks are all over our outbuildings, & we've had our patio hoses and underground, gravity water lines dug up and chewed. Juvenile delinquent bears have broken apple tree limbs in spring ( no apples ) just to do it. They've run off with poly tarps that covered the tops of wood piles and drug them hundreds of yards away. They've knocked wood piles down and scattered the wood - I think just for play - no insects in the wood. They've chewed our empty water barrels and put holes in them.
I've had bears right under my tree stands, some rubbing the ladder and one putting a foot on a rung. I had a big boar follow me in from archery hunting one evening about 20 yds. behind me until he stopped at some hickory trees behind our shooting bench. He was after the hickory nuts, but was content to follow me like a dog until he got to the hickory trees. He laid down and ate the nuts for about an hour !! A few falls ago, 4 of us were there archery hunting when 2 bears approached our oldest, biggest apple tree. One bear climbed up, the other stayed on the ground. The climber went so far out a limb it cracked, and the bear fell to the ground with a loud thud. It ran, but the other one stayed to eat the fallen apples. It's usually the younger, smaller bears that climb. The big old ones just eat the drops, or reach up to what they can get on low limbs. Too much work climbing for a bigger bear. Smarter maybe ??
With so many apples and crabs at 6 or 7 camps in our area, the bears just make the rounds. The years with scarce / no acorns are when the fruit trees get hammered. Several camps - including ours - have planted pear trees. It remains to be seen if THEY can survive once they start to produce pears. They're cool to watch, but I'd rather they hibernated in early September or moved out. We'd rather have the apples, crabs, pears and deer around.
My camp is an OLD farmstead on top of a mountain in the middle of other mountains. There are some other camps on our mountain, most with food plots / apple trees. The bears aren't new to people or people to the bears. The woods here are mainly oaks, so in good acorn years, bears are filling up on those in the woods. Apple tree damage is minimal or none at all. But in a bad acorn year, look out !! In the fall, bears are feeding up for winter and if no good supply of acorns, they'll eat just about anything. They'll go to any length to get food. A camp up the road had a bear tear the lid off a locked, outdoor chest freezer ( non-working ) because it had an empty hot dog package ( plastic wrapper ) in it. The bear smelled the " hot dogs " thru the locked lid !!
Bear claw marks are all over our outbuildings, & we've had our patio hoses and underground, gravity water lines dug up and chewed. Juvenile delinquent bears have broken apple tree limbs in spring ( no apples ) just to do it. They've run off with poly tarps that covered the tops of wood piles and drug them hundreds of yards away. They've knocked wood piles down and scattered the wood - I think just for play - no insects in the wood. They've chewed our empty water barrels and put holes in them.
I've had bears right under my tree stands, some rubbing the ladder and one putting a foot on a rung. I had a big boar follow me in from archery hunting one evening about 20 yds. behind me until he stopped at some hickory trees behind our shooting bench. He was after the hickory nuts, but was content to follow me like a dog until he got to the hickory trees. He laid down and ate the nuts for about an hour !! A few falls ago, 4 of us were there archery hunting when 2 bears approached our oldest, biggest apple tree. One bear climbed up, the other stayed on the ground. The climber went so far out a limb it cracked, and the bear fell to the ground with a loud thud. It ran, but the other one stayed to eat the fallen apples. It's usually the younger, smaller bears that climb. The big old ones just eat the drops, or reach up to what they can get on low limbs. Too much work climbing for a bigger bear. Smarter maybe ??
With so many apples and crabs at 6 or 7 camps in our area, the bears just make the rounds. The years with scarce / no acorns are when the fruit trees get hammered. Several camps - including ours - have planted pear trees. It remains to be seen if THEY can survive once they start to produce pears. They're cool to watch, but I'd rather they hibernated in early September or moved out. We'd rather have the apples, crabs, pears and deer around.
