620 pound male grizzly shot at Toad River
By Kathy Smith
The Conservation Office in Fort Nelson was contacted about a grizzly bear exhibiting dangerous behaviour at Toad River on September 30th. Conservation Officer, Micah Kneller, says “There was a grizzly bear frequenting a residence and it started pushing in the windows of some of the buildings – leaning on the big pane windows and pushing them right in – damaging property. One of the people living there saw the bear walking at dusk and yelled at it. The bear turned and bluff charged them, huffing and charging toward them.” The bear stopped about 25 yards away, turned around, and went back to what it was doing.
Normally when a bear does not find what it came for (food), it will move on, but the bear remained and continued its behaviour. Conservation Officers Micah Kneller and Nathan Smienk attended. They waited all night trying to spot the bear but did not see it. They set both a leg hold snare and a culvert trap to secure the bear, but the animal took the bait and fouled the trap, so they re-set it. Kneller says the way the trap works is, “The animal steps in, and a cable will catch its paw so it’s basically tied to the tree. Once we learned that it was caught in the snare we went out that night again. We got there at two in the morning, euthanised the bear, and removed it.”
Kneller says the type of snare used is specifically designed to trap the foot. “In doing that we set the trap in a spot so that someone can check it from a vehicle and we know when something’s in it. The animal is not going to be left there for a long period of time,” says Kneller. Whenever Conservation Officers set a trap they ensure that they’re available to respond as soon as an animal is caught. Researchers use the same type of snare when gathering information on animals.
On the physical state of the bear, Kneller says that in a healthier condition the eight-foot-long bear would have been quite a sight to see. “He was an old bear – he was the type of bear that probably lived a very healthy natural life – it was smart and stayed away from people. But it just wasn’t big enough and didn’t have enough fat on him – he probably knew it and in order to make it through the winter he needed more food. His weight was 618 pounds, and in a healthy condition this bear should have been around 800 or 900 pounds – he was just old and at the end of his life.”
Kneller says there was nothing the owner of the residence could have done to deter the bear in terms of not attracting it, as the meat kept in their building was stored properly. “The bear had to be put down because he was breaking into buildings and being aggressive with people while doing so – he thought he was protecting his own food source.” In addition he was a mature older bear without cubs and would not have been a candidate to re-locate given his circumstances. “When you get a bear that just comes out of nowhere and starts doing things like this, we can reasonably put together the facts to determine it’s an older or injured bear. A regular healthy bear won’t all of a sudden decide to start breaking into buildings,” says Kneller.
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