When you're on the menu. What would you do?

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,120
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Florida
I'd rather not label one species of bear as any meaner than any other. Kodiaks vs Polars vs Grizz vs Blacks.....

The last I read (mind it's been a few years) was that they believe Grizzly and Kodiak to be the same species. The Kodiak's bigger size being due to a better diet rather than genetics.
 

Robson Valley

On a new journey
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,672
McBride, BC
Probably true. Bigger bears have less surface area for their volume so would lose less heat in cold weather. Simple math about SA/V ratios.

Conside a sugar cube as a bear = one unit of volume and 6 units of surface area exposed to the environment. SV/V = 6/1
Now make a little square of 4 and put 4 more on top for a big bear.
Eight units of volume but each now has only three units of surface area exposed to the environment.
That's 24SA/8V = 3/1, half what the smaller bear is.

Was a grizz sow that we all used to see in a couple of pastures east of town every autumn. Sometimes with cubs.
Judged next to the pasture fences, she was bigger than a Volkswagen beetle.

BUT
There have been several very recent kills in NWT and Nunavut of Polar/Grizz hybrids. DNA tests confirm.
Like the horse x donkey = mule, we would not ever know if they are sterile hybrids unless we find continued reproductive failure.

What constituted the original reproductive isolation is anyone's guess.
 

Arya

Settler
May 15, 2013
796
59
40
Norway
Jeeesus...This thread makes me feel happy to live where I live :p
When people can´t even take out the garbage without possibly risking their lives, then I think something drastically needs to be done.
I would probably sit on my property and wait 24/7-365, and take out every bloody bear that so much as sniffed in my direction. I´d probably end up as a paranoid wreck and paint myself with their blood, and my walls with their feces :lmao:
All respect to the people that live like this!
(Not covered in blood and feces, obviously...)
 
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santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,120
68
Florida
Arya part of the problem with taking the garbage out is that the bears might be at the collection point where you're depositing it. They're omnivorous, opportunistic, and not especially picky. They love to plunder the garbage cans with just as much relish as a fresh killed elk or rotten fruit, or a beehive full of honey. They'll also plunder your pet food if left outdoors.
 

Robson Valley

On a new journey
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
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McBride, BC
Won't be too much longer until both the blacks and the grizz bed down for the winter.

Years ago, there were some "near-encounters" with young grizz and children at the country school bus stops.
Those all got tidied up and there's been nothing since.

Just don't take out bags of kitchen garbage at night. Bears are very hard to see in the dark.
I sort of stockpile what I create and pack the bags all out to my can on Friday morning (village garbage pick-up day.)

The village has a garbage dump and there are some "garbage bears" out there. Last week's report of a black bear
on a village street is the first one for me in the 15 years I've been here. Have yet to hear of a moose in the village!
I still think that a bigger village concern is/are the deer that wander around and graze in people's yards = cougar bait.
 

Arya

Settler
May 15, 2013
796
59
40
Norway
They probably ate all the moose already, and are now degraded to garbage bears.
So, if I ever have the cash to travel to Alaska or somewhere close, I wont get mauled by bears around every corner?
After seeing the video of the guy that was just attacked, I can´t say that I would feel comfortable with only bear spray...
 

Robson Valley

On a new journey
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,672
McBride, BC
I'm probably up the side logging roads 10 - 20 times each autumn, hunting for grouse.
Ever since I bought my home here in 2000.
I have had just 2 bear encounters, don't know who was more surprised! We both ran in opposite directions.
Bird hunting of course, I'm always carrying 12 gauge bear spray.


There's variety in garbage! Many flavors! Yum! Different rottiness! Plus, it won't fight back at all. Some moose will.

I had a summer fisheries research job and made a trip to the local town dump every afternoon (in a Boreal Forest CDN National Park.)
Two or 3 washtubs of dead fish. I could throw dead fish, bounce them off the bears' heads, and they'd go back to snarfing garbage.

Here in BC, there are also the Kermode Spirit bears. White version of a Black Bear.
The ones I've seen in the garbage dump near Terrace, BC were almost a glacier blue.
 
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mrostov

Nomad
Jan 2, 2006
410
53
59
Texas
I currently live on the southern coast of Texas, not too far from Corpus Christi. Texas (27% bigger than France) has 1631 miles (2624 km) of Atlantic Ocean coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. It's relatively warm most of the year compared to many other places, and our latitude near Corpus Christi is roughly the same as southern Algeria and New Delhi, India. The coastline of Texas is mostly shallow wetlands, bayou, and inland bays sheltered by barrier islands. Much of the remaining real wilderness in Texas is the massive coastal estuary.

In Texas we are lacking in grizzly bears but in the coastal estuary we have lots of alligators and some pretty big feral hogs. Living on the water I also keep an eye on the presence of sharks.

How big?

Wild hogs are all over Texas and it's open season on them 24/7/365. The largest wild boar killed by a hunter in Texas and weighed was 790 pounds. However, I saw one that I bet weighed in as big or bigger that was hit and killed by a truck on highway 77 south of Victoria. From a distance I initially thought it was a dead cow.

As for sharks, not too long ago someone caught a 13 foot long tiger shark near Port Aransas, my home turf. The largest bull shark caught locally was about 500 pounds. A lot of the shark attacks in the USA are from bull sharks. They are aggressive and they are fresh water tolerant, known to swim up rivers.

Very recently they captured live the largest alligator ever found in Texas that was weighed and measured. It was 13 feet 8 inches long and it weighed in at over 900 pounds. Ones that are almost as big are not that rare. A while back someone killed and harvested a very large alligator in Mississippi that was 910 pounds and was believed to 185 years old. It still had several bullets in it's hide that are believed to be from the Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket, a common weapon with Confederate troops during the Civil War. The largest alligator on record to be harvested in the USA was killed recently in Alabama and weighed in at 1011 pounds.

The largest I've seen killed locally was shot by a friend of mine in his backyard. It measured out at a bit over 9 feet long, but it wasn't weighed before they butchered it for the meat and the hide. Alligator tastes and is textured like chicken but with a hint of catfish flavor.

Professional alligator hunters will typically use a .22LR, a .17HMR, or a .22mag to avoid damage to the hide. When they shoot them they commonly have the alligator on a large hook baited with gator caviar (spoiled raw chicken). This one, found by surprise in their backyard, they were taking no chances with. They shot it with a 12 gauge Remington 870 with a fully rifled barrel using a .50 caliber sabot round (a common deer load in the eastern US). During alligator hunting season, non-commercial hunters will typically drive a large stake into the ground not far from the water and impale a raw chicken on it (preferably spoiled), then wait for an alligator to show up.

An alligator's jaws are weak on opening but it can bite down with roughly 3 times the force of a lion. Even a 5ft alligator that you stumble upon by surprise looks like an escapee from Jurassic Park.

Alligator's are surprisingly fast and agile on level ground, with the smaller ones being faster and more agile on land. A smaller, 4 to 5 foot long alligator can sprint at up to 25 mph (40 km/hr) which many dogs have found out to their demise. What a lot of people don't know is that an alligator can climb a chain link fence. Below is a video of one doing that.

[video=youtube;7Qp_bUYPrTg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qp_bUYPrTg[/video]
 
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