More Bears and a Lion Too

According to this Reno Gazette Journal article, The Nevada Department of Wildlife has so far this year trapped 80 bears in an area stretching from Reno to south Douglas County and west to Lake Tahoe. Of those, eight were euthanized. Just recently, according to the article, a mother bear and two cubs were euthanized after breaking into homes in a subdivision south of Gardnerville. I had no idea this area supported so many bears!

Also, there is an alert over at News Carson City that there has been a Mountain Lion spotted on the west side of town (Ormsby and King). Great I say. Just great!

Bear Update

Here's a follow up on the bear that was in my yard. It looks like they caught him later in the day not far from my house.

Here's the article from the Record Courier, a Carson Valley newspaper.

The good news is that it was a 300 lb bear. Good news for me at least. I thought it looked pretty big when it ran across my yard, but so do most large carnivorous animals running around in your yard at 5:00 in the morning viewed with a flashlight in your pajamas. I was afraid to estimate too high, because if it turned out to be 100 lbs, I'd feel like a sissy. This poor bear had two bullet wounds in it it too!

The bear was tranquilized at returned to the mountains. Still I will sleep with my windows closed for the rest of the year!

Bears in the Backyard

Bear
Originally uploaded by Facility Bike Club.

We got a call at 5:00 AM from Kristy's mom telling us that there were was a bear in her yard. She lives over on the next street, so we thought we'd have time to let the dogs go the bathroom before we shut up the house. This wasn't the case though! The 4lb Chihuahua ran to the corner of the yard, and then our apple tree started shaking violently! Sugar just treed her first bear! We got the big dog in, but I couldn't catch the little one. I was running laps around the picnic table trying to scoop her up.

I got the camera and wanted to see what I could see. I figured it had to be pretty small to be in our tree. I got the flashlight and the camera and went to the tree. A huge head was peering out of the leaves looking at me! I got my picture and ran back in the house. Not a cub!

Pretty soon the cops arrived and wanted to see the bear. He asked me if I had any food in the house. Uh....is this a trick question? At first I thought he might have been fish and game because of his gun. I thought he was getting ready to shoot the bear out of the tree. He was just using the flashlight though. Good thing. It wasn't a tranq gun...it was a shotgun.

After about a 45 minute standoff, the bear jumped out of the tree, and ran across the yard. Man...it was pretty big! I couldn't get a good picture, because opening the door would let the dogs out. I finally jumped out and got a blurry picture of him hopping the fence to the neighbor's yard.

What a rush! More pictures by following the picture link...

Welcome to Bear Country

The planning of today's ride began in the early morning when Jon alerted us to this Nevada Appeal article about three bears that were captured in Carson City. We figured that these must be the three bears we've been hearing about that have been spotted on the Ash Creek trail, a mother and her two cubs.

Here's a video of the bear capture in Carson City:



So we figured the coast was clear, and time to hit the Creek Trail today. Which we did...with no megafauna encounters. I didn't see any animal tracks along the way, and I whistled periodically to alert the canyon dwellers of our arrival. (Later, Scott and I would discuss the merits of bear whistling. Does this summon the bear or send them running?)

This is where the story gets interesting. I got a call from Brent on my cell phone. Since I work in a basement, I had to go outside to take the call. Our conversation was garbled, and I ended up calling him back. When we had a clear connection, Brent asked me how to get to the Ash Creek trail head. It's somewhat secret, and the location is only given to those who are worthy. Brent had a good idea of where I was telling him to go and hung up.

About 40 minutes later I received another garbled cell phone transmission from Brent, "static static static BEARS! static static static". I ran for the door to the outside again to take this call. It sounded somewhat urgent. I figured if Brent was being mauled by a bear, he probably wouldn't be calling me to tell me about it. Still I was a bit concerned.

When I had a clear connection, Brent told me that he and Chili Dog had just dropped into the canyon and scared a momma bear and her two cubs. The two cubs went running, and momma was looking for them. In the end, Brent decided to back track instead of agitating the bears further. So while he didn't get to ride the creek trail, at least he got to see some wild nature pretty close up.

It is said that the bears were released in the Carson Range, so it's possible these are same bears that were captured just the day before. Who knows?

I'm sure Brent will add some details to this account...