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HOPATCONG, N.J. (AP) — A cable TV repairman got quite a surprise when he walked into the basement of a New Jersey home. There was a 500-pound bear sound asleep on the floor.

Lon Feia didn't know how big a black bear he had until he saw the carcass. He knew there were bears on his property, which borders Willow River State Park in the town of Hudson, Wis., and started setting out bait in July. Soon he began getting "hits." "Then, finally, on Aug. 24, he started coming in," Feia said. "And in pretty short order he claimed the bait, so (all the other bears) went away." It was the evening of Oct. 9 when Feia took a shot that brought down the bear - an animal that measured 7 feet, 2...

LEADVILLE, Colo. -- A black bear went into a tent in a central-Colorado campground and bit or scratched a sleeping teenage boy's arm. State wildlife officials say the boy was camping out with his family in the mountains near Leadville when the bear grabbed him early Friday. Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton tells KMGH-TV the boy needed medical care, but his wounds didn't appear to be life-threatening.

A Panama City man is recovering after a black bear attacked him while he was riding his bike to work. John Hearn said he saw something out of the corner of his eye early Thursday morning. The nearly 300-pound bear smacked him off his bicycle and then fled into some nearby woods. Passing motorists stopped to help

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. -- A late-night bear attack left a camper scratched and shaken near South Lake Tahoe over the weekend. The bear ripped open the camper's tent and

A bear with two cubs nearby attacked and killed a dog on Friday in the backyard of a Stonefield Road home, the town's animal control officer said. Max, a chocolate Cocker Spaniel, died in the yard where owner Linda Jensen was working, said Beverly LaPlume, the animal control officer for Avon and Canton. "I am devastated, because this is a dog they adopted from me," LaPlume said.

Research regarding North American black bear fatal attacks on people shows lone males are most dangerous, attack rates are rising with human population growthFatal encounters with black bears have been exceedingly rare during the last century, but appear to be mainly the result of predatory male bears targeting humans in their wilderness home ranges, according to a new study led by the world's leading expert on bear attacks. In an article published today in the Journal of Wildlife Management, University of Calgary professor emeritus Dr. Stephen Herrero, University of Calgary graduate Andrew Higgins, and colleagues from the Massachusetts Division of...

The number of bears killed in the New Jersey bear hunt climbed to 386 by the close of check stations Tuesday, the second day of the hunt. The new number was reported Wednesday morning by the state Division of Fish and Wildlife. Hunters brought in 264 bear to check stations Monday and 122 by 7 p.m. on Tuesday. The total number of bear killed in the first two days was more than the entire duration of the last two bear hunts in 2003 and 2005. State officials expect that 500 to 700 bears will be killed by the time the...

The family of a Utah boy killed by a black bear can move forward with its lawsuit that contends the state didn't do enough to warn them to steer clear of the area where the bear had been seen earlier, the Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The court's ruling held that the state isn't immune from a lawsuit in the death of 11-year-old Samuel Ives, who was pulled from his tent and mauled by bear in American Fork Canyon on Father's Day in 2007. A state judge last year dismissed a negligence suit against the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources,...

If you remember the movie, "The Jungle Book", then you must remember the bear called Baloo. Now remember when he sang the song, "The Bear Necessities"? Well during that sequence he started scratching his back on a tree. In this video you have Baloo and a real live black bear mixed together as they both get their backs scratched. It really is funny

A 21-year-old Walloon Lake bow hunter who was trapped 15 feet above the ground when black bears came calling on his tree stand delivered a haymaker when it matter most, survived to tell the tale — and now is disputing the state's account of his harrowing ordeal. Chad Fortune said he punched, kicked and screamed at two of four "full-grown," snarling bears that made separate attempts Saturday evening to climb into his stand in Emmett County's Bear Creek Township.

Jessica Olmstead has no problem staring down wild animals. The 17-year-old Harper Creek High School senior has taken up one of nature's oldest, and possibly most dangerous sports, hunting. In the middle of August, Olmstead and her father, Tim, took a hunting trip up to Oba, Ontario, Canada, where the high school senior shot down a bear more than twice her size. "When I go out hunting, it's really exciting," Olmstead said. "Whenever I see a bear I just want to go at it. When you're hunting, your heart is racing, your blood is pumping, and you feel that adrenaline...

Too close for comfort. Residents of one New Jersey town said they're used to seeing black bears near their homes, but not like this. An entire family of the wild animals were captured on video playing and lounging where children had been moments before. Ushanti Gerri shot the video Tuesday afternoon, shocked to see bear cubs at play only steps from her back door. Not just two, but three of them, standing on their hind legs, sparring, exploring, acting like children, under the watchful eye of their very large mother. The bear family spent more than a half hour playing...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials euthanized a 60-pound female black bear Thursday afternoon that attacked a hiker and ended up becoming an Internet cause celebre. Wildlife biologists determined the young bear that park rangers captured May 13 bit the foot of an unidentified man who got too close with a camera as he was hiking along the popular Laurel Falls Trail the day before. Park spokeswoman Nancy Gray said park policy dictates that all animals who attack humans must be euthanized. The bear was put down "in a humane manner," according to a National Park Service news release Thursday.

No one really knows who took this video of a 3 legged black bear, except that it was possibly taken in the Canadian wilderness. I have been told by some reputable sources, that some thought they had actually found the elusive Sasquatch.  Unfortunately for those who continue to believe in the story of Big Foot, what they  actually found was a mother black bear who had either been born with only one front leg or lost it in a fight at a younger age. When watching this video you will be struck by the almost human aspect of the...

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev., Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Homeowners and authorities in Incline Village, Nev., say they're on the lookout for a marauding, 700-pound black bear . The bear, they say, has caused as much as $70,000 in damage so far this year, including havoc wrought inside a home it has broken into several times, the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal reported Wednesday. "The deputies up there all say he's the biggest bear they've ever seen," Carl Lackey, a biologist and bear expert with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, told the newspaper. "He'll walk right by a trap. He won't go in them....

In Indian Kashmir, an Islamic terrorist leader, and one of his followers was killed by a black bear. Two other terrorists were wounded, but were able to flee to a nearby village. Although the terrorists were armed with assault rifles, the bear attacked quickly, and at night, and the men were unable to use their weapons in the restricted confines of the cave. Apparently the bear was going to use the cave to hibernate in, and was upset to find that the terrorists had moved in. The four terrorists thought the cave was abandoned, and a good place to hide...

HAYWARD, Wis. – Shoppers in a Wisconsin grocery store got an unexpected surprise when a 125-pound black bear wandered inside and headed straight for the beer cooler. The bear stopped Friday night at Marketplace Foods in Hayward,.. It calmly climbed up 12 feet onto a shelf in the beer cooler where it sat for about an hour while employees helped evacuate customers and summoned wildlife officials.

Wildlife officers with the Colorado Division of Wildlife are searching for a bear involved in an attack Thursday night in Aspen. A man ...was attacked in his home by a bear shortly after 8 p.m. the homeowner's three dogs began barking loudly in the ground floor of the house... When the homeowner went downstairs to check on the dogs, he was confronted by a large, black bear. The victim of this attack is being treated at an area hospital.

Wildlife officials say a bear was found feeding on the body of a 73-year-old woman who had been repeatedly warned not to give dog food to the bruins that live near her home north of Ouray. Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman ...says the woman was known to feed bears dog food and would not stop, even after repeated requests from wildlife officials. Sheriff's deputies investigating the incident killed an aggressive bear at the woman's home. A necropsy is planned for the 250-pound male to determine the contents of its stomach.

New Mexico officials captured and released a bear after it was spotted with a sheep it had just killed in the yard of a Dona Ana County farming community. Lita Tafoya found the 160-pound bear in her back yard after it had made the kill Thursday evening. State Department of Game and Fish officials tracked the bear near an elementary school ...

With black bear populations rising, run-ins have become almost commonplace... Canadian bear researcher Hank Hristienko, who conducted the survey in January, found that 18 Eastern states were seeing more encounters with bears. In a 2006 attack, a 210-pound male bear killed a 6-year-old girl and mauled her 2-year-old brother as well as her mother who tried to fend off the animal. The attack occurred during a family outing in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest. near Prestonsburg, Ky., last year, a bear held tourists at bay inside a cabin until rangers arrived to chase it away. The U.S. bear population more than...

Alaska State Troopers say an Anchorage man was forced to climb a tree to dodge a black bear near Campbell Airstrip. Charles L. Lamb of Anchorage told officers he was forced up a tree by a large black bear at about 11:30 a.m. Lamb says the bear stalked them for a half mile as they walked out.

A federal judge has declined to throw out a lawsuit against the government filed by the family of an 11-year-old boy who was mauled to death by a black bear. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled against the government's claim that federal agencies had immunity from being sued for negligence in the case... a black bear pulled him from his tent and killed him.

"And that's New Jersey Politics."Taped phone conversation indicates Adler and other Trenton insiders traded legislative access and action for endorsements in Congressional race           Mount Holly, October 27, 2008-Excerpts from a taped phone conversation between New Jersey Outdoor Alliance (NJOA) Chairman, Anthony Mauro, and another individual who taped the conversation, expose the seedy, underside of New Jersey politics, and detail how Senator Adler and Trenton insiders like Speaker Joe Roberts and Senate President Dick Codey traded promises of legislative favors to secure Adler endorsements in the 3rd Congressional District race this year, charged job-creating businessman and decorated combat veteran Chris...

An animal-rights activist from Vernon has been charged with obstruction and resisting arrest when she interfered with state wildlife biologists who were trying to tranquilize a black bear to change a satellite-radio collar used to track the bear, police said today. Susan Kehoe, 58, was charged Wednesday at 4:16 p.m. when she interfered and prevented a biologist from firing a tranquilizer dart at the bear, police said in a press release. They did not specifically say how Kehoe interfered, and police and state officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Reached by telephone, Kehoe also declined to comment.

One family had an unwelcome guest visit them on their camping trip Wednesday. The Division of Wildlife says campers reported a black bear came into their camp site and carried their dog away in its mouth. It happened on the Uncompahgre Plateau in the Big Creek Reservoir Area near Divide Road. No one in the family was hurt-- but their dog wasn't so lucky. If you come across a bear or mountain lion the first thing you want to do is make yourself look as large as possible. Making noise and throwing things can also help-- just don't bend down....

An aggressive black bear was shot and killed in a remote section of Denali National Park by park staffers on July 4... The black bear had threatened the life and safety of three park employees ... Three seasonal National Park Service technicians were conducting a botany field study along the remote river when a sub-adult black bear approached their camp ... The three tried to scare it away by yelling, waving their arms and throwing objects at the bear. After being chased off into dense brush, the bear circled back to the camp three or four times. At one point,...

Florida biologist saves drowning bear Last Updated: 12:14AM BST 30/06/2008 A biologist has dived into the Gulf of Mexico in Florida to rescue a stray black bear. Biologist Adam Warwick saves a 375-pound black bear from drowning in Gulf waters Warwick performed the daring rescue when the bear bolted for open Gulf waters after taking the tranquilizer dart The 375lb beast had been roaming a residential area at Alligator Point, near Tallahassee, when wildlife officers decided to trap it and move it away from houses. They shot the bear with a tranquiliser dart, spooking the animal, which raced toward the...

The husband of a 70-year-old grandmother who was killed by a bear in northern Quebec ... Conservation experts set traps after Friday evening's attack, but ... the bear was still at large in the wilds of northern Quebec. As she scouted a fishing hole for walleye, Ms. Lavoie became separated from her husband. Barely 10 minutes later, Mr. Lavoie felt something was amiss and went searching for his wife of 51 years. Metres away he came upon the nightmarish scene of her body being dragged into the forest by a bear. Mr. Lavoie chased the predator for nearly 200 metres...

"Bearzilla" is real and living somewhere in West Milford. A 726-pound male black bear, the heaviest ever handled by New Jersey wildlife officials, was captured over the weekend in the northern Passaic County township. It was treated for a nose injury, marked with identifying tags and set free. "That is just its spring weight. It only recently left a winter den ... Wait until it feeds all summer to fatten up for denning this fall. It could get over 900 pounds," said Len Wolgast, a member of the state Fish and Game Council and former wildlife biology professor. The bear...

VERNON — A Lake Wanda man, investigating a noise in his house, came face to face with a bear rummaging through his kitchen trash Sunday evening and escaped through a bedroom window to call police from a neighbor's home. A responding officer spotted the bear in the front yard of the Chestnut Street home, still eating garbage. The officer fired once at the bear and believed he hit the animal, but the bruin ran off into the woods. A Sunday night search of the area couldn't find any trace of blood or hair, and a follow-up search Monday could not...

A 400-pound black bear found last Friday on I-64 is “the largest I’ve ever seen,”... The bear weighed a total of 397 pounds and also weighed 262 pounds after being field dressed, Kaiser said. From head to toe, the bear measured seven feet in length. “It’s the largest bear I’ve seen in my 29 years in the department,” Kaiser said. “And bears at this time of the year normally weigh less because they are just emerging from their dens after hibernating most of the winter. This is a huge bear.” The bear was skinned and processed at Bluegrass Meat in...

The parents of the 11-year-old boy killed by a black bear last summer in American Fork Canyon are suing the U.S. Forest Service and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. They say more should have been done to prevent their son's death. Step-father Tim Mulvey, his wife Rebecca Ives and Sam’s father say they have lived with the horror of that father's day weekend every day since and now they want to make sure it never happens to anyone else's family. It is grief beyond comprehension for most of us; a child ripped away from his family in the middle of...

The number of black bears that got in trouble between late November and late December nearly doubled last year as compared to the same period in 2006... In a report to the state Fish and Game Council, the division's five-member Black Bear Unit said it received 50 calls for assistance between Nov. 20 and Dec. 20. During the same period in 2006, the black bear unit fielded 27 calls. The unit uses a category system to rank misbehaving black bears. The most nefarious activity -- such as unprovoked attacks on people or animals, entries or attempted entries into houses, tents...

Long ago, grizzly bears thrived in Montana as did tales - some tall, some true - told by frontiersmen of a man-eater even more fearsome than the other two bogeymen of the forest, wolves and mountain lions. Today, the reputation of Ursus arctos horribilis - along with other major predators ... Also changed is how people can handle encounters with grizzlies, using a chemical spray rather than guns to improve the odds that both humans and bears will escape the encounters unharmed. But Workman believes that if a bullet was good enough for his great-grandfather more than a century ago,...

An Oregon State Police trooper had to shoot and kill a black bear that broke into a home in Florence on the Oregon coast. The homeowner said the bear broke into his house ... again ... The bear was in a tree when the trooper arrived, and then climbed down and charged at him before the trooper killed it with a shotgun.

Bears that barge in on people in the forest have become enough of a nuisance that more of them should be hunted, state wildlife managers have decided. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, responding to a spike in human-bear contacts and an 11-year-old boy's death in June, want to issue 296 black bear hunting permits for Utah's 2008 spring and fall hunts, a 20 percent increase from the 248 permits offered this year. DWR officials say the state's black bear population is high enough to warrant the permit increase. Wildlife managers also say bears and humans clashed too many times...

Bob Heckman of Quakake took the second-heaviest black bear — a 628-pound boar — registered during last week’s three-day, statewide season, according to information compiled by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. His bear is second in weight to a 712-pound boar ...

While on a walk in town after voting Tuesday, Shirley Hardmeyer noticed the latticework under part of her daughter and son-in-law's porch seemed to have been pushed down. "I got down on all fours and looked in," Hardmeyer said. "That's when I saw the ears and said, 'Whoa.'" A black bear, possibly a 500-pound male, was camped out under the front porch. This isn't a country setting, but Mason Avenue, just a block off Main Street, smack in the middle of a neighborhood bustling with cars, kids and commotion. And if a state wildlife official is right, Newton is familiar...

A man awakened by a bump in the night went to investigate and found an intruder, but it wasn't a burglar. Instead, Blaine Harling found himself face to snout with a black bear that had come in through an open window. Harling, 19, has been staying at the cabin belonging to his grandparents... "He thought it was the blinds flopping in the window from a two feet wide, by five feet high, crank-out window that he had left open for ventilation," ... The screened window was open just 18 inches, but that was enough for the adult black bear to...

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is considering lengthening the black bear hunting season ... as a way to help reduce the number of "home entry" incidents. The proposed change would set the opening of bear season in the Catskills region on the same day, Saturday, Nov. 17, as the start of the regular deer season. Bear season starts two days later. On Sept. 1, a Greene County resident found a sow and three cubs inside his home... The four bears fled, but on the same day, a different, male bear entered the same home twice... Between 2001 and 2003,...

The aggressive bear that was killed a week ago by an Amish Road homeowner after the animal charged and then attempted to pull out a window air conditioner has tested positive for rabies... "We sent the head to our health and mental hygiene lab in Baltimore on Thursday and got the results Friday," ... At 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 29, the homeowners had heard a commotion outside and saw a bear attempting to get at two penned pygmy goats. When the family hollered from its main doorway at the bear, it wheeled and charged the house. "At first it was...

A family dog protected four young children in a West Vancouver tree house from a hungry black bear. The dog assumed a defensive position below the tree house in a backyard on Highland Drive as the children, aged 2 to 6, screamed for help. "Bears climb trees. I thank God the dog was there," ... The bear wandered into the yard looking for food ... "What's unique about this is the way the dog protected the children. I've never seen anything like it."

Bruce Hemphill has nothing against a midnight snack, he just doesn’t want to become one. Last weekend, Bruce and his wife, Pat, believed they almost became a snack as a large black bear tried to claw its way into their camper. “It was probably the most scared I’ve ever been in my life,” Hemphill said. Their entire camper started violently shaking... The bear had climbed up the hood of his truck on top of his camper. He saw the animal through the roof vent, which he had left open before going to bed. He quickly tried to reel the vent...

On Friday, Wright and fellow Colorado Department of Wildlife officials Perry Will and Bill Andree had the unpleasant job of killing a male black bear that earlier this week broke through a locked door at the Wildwood School east of Aspen. The task came hot on the heels of Wednesday's euthanasia -- the first of the season in Pitkin County -- of a bear that broke through the locked window of an east Aspen home. The Wildwood School bear was a repeat offender, Wright said, and the DOW finally managed yesterday to catch the 350- to 400-pound bruin in a...

An unusually large black bear topping 425 pounds was killed by Colorado Division of Wildlife officers Wednesday after it was trapped for busting through windows to enter an east Aspen house. Wildlife officers said they had no choice but to euthanize the bruin because it physically smashed into the house rather than entered through an unsecured window or door. "off the charts" for size. He had a girth of 52 inches around the midsection - higher than a DOW chart for determining weight. The best guess was he weighed 425 to 450 pounds. He measured 80 inches from the tip...

State Environmental Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson issued draft recommendations for a new black bear management policy on Thursday, emphasizing non-lethal measures to control New Jersey's growing bear population. But her recommendations were not supported by the state Fish and Game Council, which is supposed to work with her in setting wildlife management policy. The council favors hunting as a way to reduce the bear population, now estimated at 3,000 statewide. The state is under court order to have a new bear management policy in place by Aug. 10... Meanwhile, Jeanette Vreeland, chairwoman of the Fish and Game Council, said the...

Roy Klopp survived a shocking twist in his daily bike ride Monday after being bit in the behind by a black bear near Clinton. "It wasn't my day to die," said Klopp, who returned to his job at the sawmill last night after taking a day to recuperate from the attack. Around 11 a.m. Monday morning, Klopp, 56, and his border collies, Tippy and Chuckie, met an unusually aggressive black bear in the bushes near a curve in the walking trails above Clinton, a town of about 740 residents 380 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. Protected only by a pair of...

Gladys Clark is thinking she ought to get herself a slingshot so she’ll be ready the next time a bear comes for breakfast. At 91, Clark admits she’ll have to practice, but she was handy with one when she was an eastern Montana ranch girl riding the range. On Sunday morning, Clark pulled open the sliding glass door on her log home along Rock Creek in Red Lodge to let in some fresh air. She went upstairs to get ready for the day. When she returned downstairs, a large black bear was standing with its paws on a counter and...