Crazy Day Afield

[sixshot]

When you live in the western US & go out hunting for a day you just never know what you will see or what will happen, today was one of those days. One of my sons' showed up along with his oldest son (12 years old) & we went on a Rock Chuck & Ground Squirrel Safari. Here's a list of what we spotted today. Several Rock Chucks, they killed 10 between them, also about that many Ground Squirrels. Now here's where it gets kind of crazy. We also spotted a Weasel, several hawks, a badger, some deer, some Carp (got one) and last but not least, a bear! To top it all off the bear was right here in town, in the middle of town & he wasn't happy with all the attention.
We were resting up at the house, getting ready for the afternoon hunt when one of my daughter in laws called from the public library & said the kids saw a bear running down main street! We drove down & there was quite a crowd on hand, 2 guys with hounds had showed up & they were keeping the bear up the tree. A call was made to the Idaho Fish & Game department for a tranquilizer gun. Pocatello is 60 miles away & it took 2 hours to get everything ready for the darting, by then the whole town had turned out to take photo's of the event. I got some great photo's by going up stairs at a Bed & Breakfast & standing in the tub while took photo's out the window!
The said the office with the dart gun was from Idaho but I'm guessing he was from Utah because he gut shot it! After 15-20 minutes the bear fell out of the tree into a net that 8 of them were holding & the bear was wrestled into a cage they had on the truck. Fun day, yowee!
Here's a pretty good photo of the bear, looked to be about a 3-4 yr old, nice chocolate phase Black Bear.


You can see the hounds keeping him up the tree.


This is right after they dropped him into a net, he was still awake enough that he wanted to fight a bit.





Dick

[Ken O'Neill]

Around here, when bears come into town, they are usually relatively young ones, out in the early spring looking for something to eat. You should have sent callshot up the tree with a camera to get some close-up shots, Dick!

[bulasteve]

Now that's purty cool ! Fun was had by all. Well, you and the hounds had fun. Wife and I rolled into Tionesta Penn., yrs ago to what we thought was a parade. Street lined with everybody from town. Turned out a bear came down the mtn to get to the river but paniced on the street and run up and down, chased by the constable who was firing off his revolver into the air.

[stevewhr]

Dick, sounds like Marty Stouffer wouldn't of had anything on you! Every time I see or hear of wild animals and LEO of any sort, I tend to scratch my head. The only good to come of critters is town is folks get to see something they don't usually get to. Hopefully animals in general benefit from the experience. Helps justify the bidding at a RMEF banquet for instance. Thanks for the pictures. Steve

[Fowler]

We have had a few do that in our area, typically Sows with cubs. They hang out all day with momma napping and the kids wrestling around on limbs small enough you would think a squirrel would think twice about going out on it. Typically if you leave them be they wander off a few minutes after dusk.

Some towns such as Aspen have real issues with town bears, especially in dry years as they dont have enough forage to keep them happy out of town. When one goes up a tree they just put a crime scene tape around the tree and leave them be, too many bear to trap and relocate all of them. I know a cop from there said he had day where there was over 10 different bears up tree around town on certain days.

Fun times

[2 Dogs]

Dick! You should have "tranquilized" him with a 32 Sixgun Sledgehammer! Purely in the interest of sixgun science of course.....