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Picking berries with bears

Started by Okanagan, July 09, 2017, 08:32:40 AM

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Okanagan

As a refugee from Photobucket I am still experimenting with posting photos here.

Our trailing blackberries are late this year and my foray a few days ago to scout for ripe ones found more bear sign than ripe berries, though I picked a pint or so.  My wife loves fresh ones on cereal.

A bear ahead of me that morning had dug up an ant or termite nest in the ground, which was a mix of dirt and rotted wood.  The dug up area is about 3 x 5 feet and over a foot deep, with a few unripe red colored blackberries showing around it if I zoom in.   There were no clear paw prints, just scuffs in the duff and into the dirt some places.  To be ruthlessly objective, my conclusion that this is bear sign is circumstantial, including some fresh bear piles.





Another 40 feet up the shallow draw the bear had pried off the outer layer of wood from a log, probably looking for bugs.  I've found spring bears by hearing them working on logs, usually a much softer sound than we might expect.  Rather than bashing logs and stumps to get ants and grubs, it is usually a fairly quiet sound of them using their claw tips to peel off bark or thin layers of rotten wood. 



It was getting to be a hot day and I'd guess that by the time I arrived at 1:00 PM, Mr. bear was lying in the shade on spring cooled mud in a marshy creek bottom 50 yards from the log above.   He had more sense than I did about the best time to pick berries on that hillside.






Okanagan

#1
Been picking a few more times.  Have heard two bears, one of them close to me in brush that ran when I tried to see it, and found fresh bear tracks over mine but haven't seen one.  Blackberry pies from the little trailing blackberries are quiver to your toes kind of good. 

Bear track in dust below.  Sun was so bright I could not tell what I was getting on camera and I was AFRAID of logging trucks at that spot so when I saw the tracks I popped out, snapped one pic and took off again.  I was on my way out about 11AM after picking berries and the tracks were made since I had driven in 2 hours earlier. 

The bear was walking to the left in the photo.  The front pad shows clearly and two front toe prints show faintly in the upper center of the photo.  He had stepped on the other toe prints of his front track with the heel of his hind foot, the pad of which is to the left of the front track.  The front of the triangular hind pad extends to the upper left corner of the photo.  It needed afternoon or early morning side light shadows to define the tracks.   Medium bear or smallish medium, track estimated 4 to 4 1/2 inches wide. 



The setting: dust pic before it rained, lake photo after.



Zuki trying to hide in the grass from bears.



I figure that I have spent $5.00 worth of gas per pie, if I don't count my first scouting foray before the berries got ripe.









coyote101

#2
Very cool.  I love fresh blueberries and blackberries, but would probably spend most of my time with my head on a swivel looking for bears.

What are you using to post pictures? I hate photobucket and really need to find something else.

Pat
NRA Life Member

"On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died." - Sam Ewing

Hawks Feather

What amazes me is that a bear would spend time looking for bugs to eat.  I know they have to eat something but something the size of a bear and then dropping in a few hundred ants hardly would fill it's stomach.  I have watched them eat bugs and moths in shows and I just can't understand how it would fill their belly.  Now something the size of a deer, elk, or person might be a different story.

Jerry

FinsnFur

or a person he says LMAO  :alscalls:

Never had fresh blueberrys. Well, not THAT fresh anyway.
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Okanagan

Quote from: coyote101 on July 22, 2017, 08:18:06 PM

What are you using to post pictures? I hate photobucket and really need to find something else.

Pat

I am using Imgur to post photos, not that it is necessarily the best (I don't know) but it was the easiest for me to figure out how to use.

Hawk's Feather,
I have thought about that as well, bears eating bugs when they could eat berries, especially when I find where a bear has stopped in the middle of a berry patch and worked a log for bugs.  I think that insects have much higher nutrition per ounce than berries, especially protein.  I recall from survival instruction that ants are very nutritious, and they taste like blackberries to me.  And bears are like teenage boys; they ramble along and eat all of the time, and the bugs add up.   :shrug:




Okanagan

We discovered bear hair in one bucket of wild blackberries yesterday as we cleaned and packaged them for the freezer.  I've never before found bear hair in picked berries of any kind, ever, but this time one bucket of berries had a half dozen fine black bear hairs in it.  I'd guess that the bear caught some of his fur on blackberry thorns, like they do on barbed wire fences.  At first I thought it was one of my hairs, then realized it was too long and too black.  It was a mix of guard hairs 4 inches long and wavy underfur strands half that long.  My wife was fascinated.  We spread the blackberries out on white paper towels to pick out leaves etc. so it was easy to get them all, and the cleaned berries will sterilize when baked.

We measure berries for a specific size pie recipe, and freeze them in that amount.

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