Posted on 01/22/2024 4:58:02 AM PST by marktwain
Connecticut has passed a law allowing bears to be shot if they are or are about to injure people or pets or enter a building occupied by people. Florida is considering a similar but broader measure.
As black bear populations have increased across the United States, more people and bear conflicts are occurring. Before 1960, bears had been considered a problem to be taken care of. In most states, they could be shot as pests. There was a legacy understanding – bears make for bad neighbors. Bears would kill your pigs, destroy your apple orchards, and your bee hives. Before 1950, a large majority of people understood bears could make the difference between hunger and plenty. If they had not experienced farm life themselves, their parents and grandparents had. In the 2020s, people in suburbia are re-learning what their great-grandparents knew a hundred years ago. Bears make bad neighbors. From Little House in the Big Woods:
Pa owned a pig. It ran wild in the Big Woods, living on acorns and nuts and roots. Now he caught it and put it in a pen made of logs, to fatten. He would butcher it as soon as the weather was cold enough to keep the pork frozen.
Once in the middle of the night Laura woke up and heard the pig squealing. Pa jumped out of bed, snatched his gun from the wall, and ran outdoors. Then Laura heard the gun go off, once, twice.
When Pa came back, he told what had happened. He had seen a big black bear standing beside the pigpen. The bear was reaching into the pen to grab the pig, and the pig was running and squealing. Pa saw this in the starlight and he fired quickly.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Now the urban population has been disneyfied.
Any “animal” attacking people needs to be shot! ....imho
They do not bother me, do not come near my home and have never destroyed anything. A couple of cubs chewed the rubber handle on my cement mixer and also chewed the control knob on my wood splitter control lever.That's all in a period of 12 years.
I do not leave any food around that would entice them.But I would shoot one should it come up on my deck to get at the grease on my BBQ.
So the whole thing about bad neighbors depends on circumstantial balance, not on whether they make bad neighbors. My brother in law raises Belgian draft horses, and when a mare is about to drop a baby, the bears can sense it and hang around close.So he HAS TO shoot them and bury them using an excavator.That's his balance by necessity.
When the bears are on my grown up pastures eating apples .I carry a pump action Benelli shotgun into my wood lot where I cut firewood,one with an unmodified barrel loaded with rifled slugs and 00 buck. The mag is extended and will hold 7 rounds altogether. Since the barrel is a cylinder with no choke, the slugs are quite accurate out to 100 yards.
Remember one thing.
Bears are eating machines in the fall and have a voracious appetite. A human is nothing more than a skin bag full of meat to them.A bear within 200 yards of you is way too close.Black bears stalk humans.They follow scent.
All the noise, all the bear spray, and all the tactics used against bears , often advised by naturalists, do not work on a hungry bear, all that just pisses them off when they are hungry. They get so hungry that they may not even feel a bullet entering their bodies , just the push of it but not pain.
So the trick is to not attract bears, do not leave garbage or food around.Stay away and leave them alone if you can. If they invade your secure space, drop them and haul them away,or bury them. If not , the rotting carcass will just attract more bears and you will have to shoot more of them and then you are on a treadmill. Bears can smell a rotting bear carcass or bear blood on the ground from 20 miles away.Do not shoot a bear unless you have a way of disposing of it that does not attract more of them.
Finally I refer you to the story of FReeper Kanawa ( Tom Tilley) who had to jump onto a black bear's back and stab it to death with a 6 inch buck hunting knife to save his dog.
Yes! I blame Bambi / Disney for a lot of modern problems with idiot policy. And deer are large exurban rats on the hoof, i.e. pests that need their numbers reduced.
How long before the meat is tender?
Regards,
We’re lousy with bears in Georgia. If you shoot one its the end of the world.
Here in CT bears are becoming a big problem in residential areas. Homeowners with guns doesn’t seem like a good idea. A bear hunting season is needed. It will take the death of a child or something to get action.
Bear will be shot law or no law!
I see black bears weekly from about April - November. I like watching them and only had a few that were getting a little to close to the front door. I found a good size firecracker thrown their way scares them off quite easily... 12 gauge is handy if needed. Had one up on the back deck which is 14’ off the ground. Didn’t think they’d make it up the 6” X 6” post with the 90 degree edges but they can. We now have an electric fence around the deck. No problem since.
Homeowners should already have guns.
Even Joe Biden says you should have a double-barrell shotgun.
But nevermind his advice to shoot into the air.
I let the bears that come around my house very unwelcome.
I like my meat meat a bit more on the fresher side.
They are very good to eat.
They do not come around my house less its at night , leavuing an ocassional guard on my side by side trail just to let me know they are there. They eat apples all night about 1/4 mile from my house...for 4 weeks or so.
They sleep all day, and their scat looks like apple sauce.They never come around my house.They know better. I have takena few shotsat groundhogs around my home, so Mr. Bear knows .
Ikeep the gun handy in case some young bear or an old sick one comes around to be a deadly nuisance.
I like bears...but they will eat you. Somethihg to NOT forget.
Around here, very few people eat bear meat.Not healthy according to local custom. Some folk render the bear fat and keep the hide.
Bears can be pretty wormy.
They are seen often on golf courses and running down streets in MA and CT. haven’t seen many yet in upstate NY.
Or some soccer mom who runs in the neighborhood, I've heard true stories about bear sightings in residential streets in CT by runners.
I get a bear tag any time I can.
They are good to eat.
I bear fattened on apple should be great eating.
I agree that they should be good eating. I can shoot one anytime I want, our Dept. of Wildlife Resources allows farmers to do so.But I leave ‘em alone.
I am more interested in the Moose, deer and wild turkey.
I've heard true stories about bear sightings in residential streets in CT by runners.Spent the night at a friend's house in a suburban town in western CT. Left the next morning 6am: every bin on the road set for trash pickup was overturned. My idiot friend thinks it's just sharing space with nature. Glad he doesn't have pets or small children.
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