Ted Was Out, Does Hunting Make Bears Fear People? - UPDATE March 6, 2016
Shadow - 7/27/15
Shadow - 7/27/15
Ted ventured out a couple times today. He went around to the side of his chalet, like Honey does, but we couldn?t see what he did any more than we could see what Honey did. The only reason I can think they do that is to urinate or defecate. I would like to ask staff to check on that if it doesn?t snow before Monday. A Lily Fan captured his outing in this 6-minute video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlkCyO8Jm60.
Out the window today, a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk sat in perfect light against a dark background. He or she has an injury to the left side of the head where the feathers are askew. The left eye is open only a slit, which probably makes it hard to catch prey which most likely would be one of the hundreds of redpolls here.
With local rivers starting to open up, a Lily Fan spotted a beautiful returning trumpeter swan standing on melting river ice stretching its wings a half-mile NE of Ely yesterday.
On another subject, some years ago I wrote the following as part of a discussion about whether hunting makes bears afraid of people. Most people thought hunting was needed to keep bears fearful of humans. My thoughts were in the minority. I thought Lily Fans might be interested in relation to discussions you might have had about this.
Swan - photo taken by a Lily Fan
Swan - photo taken by a Lily Fan
Bears are often less visible in hunted areas, but everything I know about bears tells me this is hardly due to hunting except for a reduction in bear numbers. Otherwise, the relationship is almost entirely coincidental as I'll explain. In short, where bears see a lot of people they eventually get used to it. Most hunting areas are places where bears don't see a lot of people, so they remain afraid. Many hunting areas are also relatively food-poor (non-coastal areas), which means they support lower bear densities than are around the food-rich coastal areas where many of the bear-viewing areas are located. When a new bear-viewing area is established, it takes time for the bears to get used to seeing people. This is the case whether they are hunted or not in my experience. For example, brown bears along the coast in Katmai National Park concentrated around rich coastal food sources for many years, but for many years there were few visitors, so bears ran from the few people they saw. Then the Exxon Valdez oil spill brought clean-up crews to the area and the bears gradually accepted them as part of the environment and began to ignore them, leading to the bear-viewing industry that flourishes there today. The bears now go about their business with little concern about the plane-loads and boat-loads of people. Poaching was a problem there in the old days and may still be a problem today. I don't know if it still is because poaching would occur in the fall after the bear-viewing season is over. Despite whatever poaching occurs, the bears basically ignore people.
Sharp-shinned hawk
Sharp-shinned hawk
In Minnesota, about 3,500 bears are killed annually in hunting seasons, but Minnesota has places with perhaps the most habituated black bears anywhere. The bears are used to seeing people in those locations but avoid people elsewhere. Habituation, to a large extent, is location specific. As an example, we radio-collared a mature female who was extremely tolerant of people at a couple locations where she expected to see people. In those locations, people could closely surround her and pet her. We radio-collared her at one of those locations without using tranquilizers. However, for three years now we've tried to home in on her signal and approach her in the woods without success. The only time we've been able to see her was when she was hibernating. This is fairly typical in my experience. Bear personalities differ, but it takes a lot of hunger and habituation to move a black bear past the fear that rules their lives. Their flight reaction was bred into them throughout the ice age as they lived alongside such powerful predators as saber-toothed cats, American lions, dire wolves, and giant short-faced bears. They ran first and asked questions later. Timid individuals survived to become the timid black bears of today. Ask any hound-hunter, and he will tell you that he can chase the biggest black bear with his smallest hound.
From my experience, I don't see any way for a bear to learn about hunting. In my experience, they don't react much to gunfire, which sounds like thunder, and they have no idea what a gun is. Bears wounded at bait sites often return to the same bait site a day later to be killed. Being wounded doesn't establish a pattern to learn from. It is a one-time blast and pain with nothing to connect it to a human, the bait, the season, or any of the hundreds of other associated factors. The hunter in many cases is camouflaged in a tree stand by a bait which the bear has been visiting without consequence for weeks. The bear has become accustomed to the sweaty clothing the hunter leaves in the tree stand. The gunshot is a one-time seemingly random event that teaches no lesson. And most bears that get into that situation are killed. If it is that difficult for an individual to learn about hunting, I don't see any way that a bear POPULATION can wise up about hunting. Bears are solitary for the most part, so they don't see their comrades getting killed. Finding a gut pile with human smell would not make bears afraid. It is simply food, like a dead cub becomes food for its mother or a dead mother becomes food for her cubs. Human smell does not make bears afraid, they simply habituate to it. It does not deter bears from eating at dumps or garbage cans, and tens of thousands of bears get killed each year at hunters' baits. The next year, tens of thousands are killed the same way. I don't see any learning here.
Sharp-shinned hawk
Sharp-shinned hawk
The actual presence of humans is a separate issue. Where bears become accustomed to seeing people they get used to it and accept human presence whether bears are hunted or not. Hunting seasons usually are for a few days or weeks. Bears have the rest of their active seasons to habituate to people and judge the balance between unnecessary flight and going about their daily routines of foraging, finding mates, raising cubs, etc. Running away from people is counter-productive most of the year unless the people are practicing aversive conditioning. In any case, bears are constantly assessing whether a person is threatening or non-threatening, just as they constantly assess the demeanor of other bears. If someone fires a shot over a bear, the bear might run away, but is likely reacting more to the person and his demeanor than to the sound.
I recently heard a lecture by an animal behavior expert who went beyond his area of scientific study. He believed that hunting teaches bears to fear people because people with guns move confidently as a dominant animal would move, and people with guns move stealthily as if they are stalking. In my experience, sure, those things scare bears if bears are not used to seeing people, but so does the mere presence of a person where he or she is not expected--whether the person is moving confidently, stealthily, or sitting still. Once the bear discovers the person, it doesn't make much difference how a person moves if he or she is where a person is not expected.
Some of the above topics are explored in the Black Bear Courses offered at the Wildlife Research Institute (see
www.bearstudy.org) in northeastern Minnesota. We explore habituation, consequences of supplemental feeding, bear vocalizations and what they mean and don't mean, and factors that influence bear survival in their increasingly urbanized environment. There is a need to get more decision-makers to these courses.
On a related note, bear personalities vary. The picture is of Shadow who has had longer than any other local bear to get used to seeing people?29 years?yet she is wary of anyone away from the few community feeding locations where she has learned to trust people. And even at those locations she is careful who she trusts. Yet, at one of those locations at night, when I lay down and was in non-threatening position, she let me reach up and pet her all over as she ate from my other hand. However, she felt enough anxiety to slap the ground as I rolled away from her and got up. Some of that scene is in ?The Man Who Walks With Bears? that aired in 2001. Today, she is old and gray in the face as in the picture.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
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