Beginning in July 2020, I became a regular contributor to Wisconsin Outdoor News (WON) in "From The Little Cabin In The Woods" column.
This article was published in the WON October 29, 2021issue.
“Don’t threaten him with a good time, or he might take you up on it,” cautioned Dean Bortz.
I had texted Dean photos of the aftermath of a bear attack on the bird feeders at the little cabin. His comments came after I told him my plan to move a trail camera onto the front porch. It turned out to be a fruitless and unneeded effort to get a photo of the culprit. I had left a damaged bird feeder with seed hanging on the flagpole. Yogi came back to the yard on at least two occasions. However, he timed the visits for when the camera was gone. We had also removed the feeders, as I decided that as much as we like the bears, having them in the yard was problematic. I figured that sooner or later Dean’s caution would come true with more major damage to show for it.
The damage to the bird feeders was catastrophic enough. Hangers that previously hung horizontal were universally bent vertical. A feeder on a stand outside the kitchen window, was tipped over with the glass laying in sparkling shards on the ground. The various feeders…expensive squirrel-proof feeders… were mangled and strewn about the yard, with some dragged 50 yards or more down a trail. The hummingbird feeders were especially popular. They had been ripped from their hangers and lay empty on the grass. There was a makeshift bench near my big RED smoker. Our marauding bear managed to tip the bench planks off the concrete blocks. Speaking of the smoker, it now has a bear-induced rip in its vinyl cover. On an ensuing foray into the yard, the beast tipped over the rain barrel.
We have had bears around the cabin before, although not regularly for the past 6 years. I wrote an article about bears for WON last fall. If you missed that or would like to see it again, you can catch it on my website at www.christinethomasoutdoors.com.
We have three large (110 gallon) stock tanks on the property. One collects rain from the woodshed roof. We have that one for fire protection. The other two are situated, one north and one south, on the west side of the land. Their purpose is to provide water for wildlife, as there is no surface water on our place. We keep trail cams focused on those two for the sheer enjoyment of seeing what comes and goes. We discovered the bird feeder damage on August 16. The camera on the north tank showed Yogi taking a bath on August 15, 19, and 20. He has been back about once a week since. So, the porch camera turned out to be moot. We have hundreds of mugshots from the north tank camera.
Our bear is good sized. I think one tends to over-estimate the size of bears. They look BIG, even if they are not. Due to the time that Stan and I have spent on the UWSP College of Natural Resources bear research project, we have seen dozens of bears weighed. You start to get a feel for the visual perception versus the scale reality.
One of my favorite anecdotes about bear weighing involved a sow that was denned on the property of some Italian ladies from Chicago. We pulled a very large sow out of the den. When we weighed her, someone exclaimed, “Wow! Can you believe how much weight she put on?”
One of the landowners chimed in apologetically, “Well, she really likes lasagna!”
Is this not every woman’s nightmare? First, they drug you and haul you out of your nice warm den. Then they publicly weigh you and criticize you for having put on weight due to poor diet choices. I digress. We think our bear is in the 300-pound range. Male or female? Who knows?
Our stock tanks all have chunks of wood, mainly pieces of scrap dimensional lumber floating in them to provide a safe haven for small mammals that might otherwise drown. Interestingly, we generally find small green frogs sunning themselves on the planks. Where do they come from, with the nearest surface water a mile away? We know how they leave the tanks. When we start to see owls (barred and great-horned) in the camera photos, the frog numbers decline. I have wondered what the frogs must think when those big black bear paws step into the water. TIDAL WAVE!
We have lots of photos of Yogi playing with the blocks. One cute photo of him with a block in each paw made me contemplate getting him some beach toys for the tank. Then the Bortz admonition flashed into my head along with visions of a beach-ball choked bear dead at the little cabin and I gave up on that idea.
The last few weeks, our tanks have been getting low on water. For physiological reasons I am not aware of, the deer drink a lot in the fall. Also, a 300-pound black bear displaces a great deal of water when settling in for a bath.
When I inspected the photos from last week, Yogi must have had plans for the weekend. He took a bath in both the north and south tanks on Friday night.
“Stan, I think your bear got tired of waiting for you to fill up his bathtub. He has taken his bathing routine to the south tank,” I joked.
Stan hauled water today. He gets a real kick out of the bear photos.
We will be staying overnight more often at the little cabin now that the summer heat has subsided. I am glad to have Yogi on the place. He just adds a higher level of interest. However, my plans for after dark trips to the outhouse include Airedale Major and an extra-large Maglite.
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