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Victor, Monograph, and Bruno - UPDATE July 9, 2020
09 July 2020
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Mature males are being sighted now after the mating season, and their wounds reflect the determination of these courageous suitors. This is Victor who is probably 17-19 years old and has been a regular since 2006 when he was a young adult male. It looks like a claw narrowly missed his eye. He shows a number of scars and the fresh wounds of this year.Victor's eye wound
Victor's eye wound
Someone said they searched everywhere and could not find the monograph. That and about everything I?ve published can be found on bearstudy.org. Hover over PUBLICATIONS and then click on Published Papers. Scroll down and click on the highlighted titles to have the entire paper come up to read or download. Number 55 is the monograph: Rogers, L. L. 1987. Effects of food supply and kinship on social behavior, movements, and population dynamics of black bears in northeastern Minnesota. Wildlife Monograph 97. 72 pp.
Someone else asked what I think about Bruno roaming from Wisconsin to Missouri. I wish I knew what to think. From the picture I saw, if it is of him, he looks like a mature male. One of the reasons I am still trying to learn all I can about bears is that there is still a lot to learn. None of my study bears have roamed that far, so I?d like to know why as much as anyone. Without radio-collars, questions come up often that I can?t answer because the way to answer a lot of them would be to know more about the bear?s life and put the incident in context. Given the time of year that Bruno traveled so far, my first guess is that there is a bell-shaped curve on how far males travel, and Bruno is far out in a tail?possibly because he was looking for a mate and went in a direction where there were no bears and no mates. He might be the rare bear that introduces new genes into a bear population that he may find in southern Missouri. Ironically, some of the genes in that population came from northern Minnesota back in the 1960?s when dozens of bears from here were traded for turkeys from there. I?m glad Bruno has a following. It might help people that aren?t accustomed to seeing bears take a benevolent attitude toward the bear that is making history.
On another note, if anyone sent me an email on Sunday afternoon, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I didn?t get it and it just bounced back to the sender. My mail server was full. Linda fixed everything today in case you want to send the email now. A similar problem is that I often don?t get any notice of phone messages until many days after they are left.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
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Topic: Jewel and her cubs (Read 1745157 times)