In my opinion there are two symbols of the wilderness — black bears and loons, but today I’m going to concentrate on the bears.
Now, as most of you know, I’ve spent a lot of time both in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, and I’ve never seen a bear. I know that some of you might think that’s hardly possible, but when you hike with other people they probably hear us coming. After all, we usually talk a lot as we hike.
One day we were heading up Windham High Peak. When we came across a muddy section of the trail, I saw some bear tracks. Obviously we had just missed the bear because water was slowly flowing into the tracks.
With about 8,000 bears in this state, you’d think I would see one every once in a while. When we hike in the Adirondack High Peaks, you are required to carry a bear canister if you plan on staying overnight.
We used to carry a bag with all our food and throw a rope over a branch, pulling our food out of a bear’s reach. But what rope did most everyone use? Yup, you’re right. We used white quarter-inch nylon rope. Well, bears aren’t dumb. They quickly learned that a white rope tied to a tree meant food. So, what did we do? We used camo or maybe black rope. That worked for a while, but those big, black, furry creatures soon caught on. So along came the bear canister.
Several so called bear-proof canisters came on the market, but most made a back country meal for a bear an easy target. Companies that made bear canisters used to take them into the Marcy Dam area and let the bears test them. There was a large, old female bruin that scavenged the area. They would leave a canister filled with food out near a lean-to and wait for Yellow-Yellow (a bear with two yellow tags in its ears) to come along and test it out. She could open every canister except for the Backpacker’s Cache in just a few minutes.
Just a note — if you are hiking in the High Peaks and don’t have a bearproof container, the rangers will send you packing and not in the direction you intended to go.
So where are the bears? 50 to 60% are in the Adirondacks, 30 to 35% are in the Catskills and 10 to 15% are in the Central-Western region. But truthfully, there are bears just about everywhere. Bears can be found in semi-rural areas, agricultural regions and even in some urban areas. They can be any place that has available food. A couple of years ago, a 350-pound bear was shot in a farmer’s corn field near Laurens. He was destroying acres of corn by laying down, pulling down the stalks and eating the ears before rolling over to repeat the process. Huge areas of corn in large circles were destroyed.
Recently, a couple bears were seen on the hilltop between Davenport and Schenevus. After seeing the pictures, I estimated the larger one at about 350 pounds.
Years ago I had a friend down along the Pepacton Reservoir. She fed her cats on her screened-in back porch. Well, one morning she put the cat food out as usual. A while later she heard the screen door, followed by some rustling at the cat dish. She looked out to find a small black bear having breakfast. She grabbed her broom and swatted the bear a couple of time as she drove it off the porch. The next day the bear was swept from the porch again. He had learned where to get a meal and returned every day until the food wasn’t left out on the porch.
They are smart and have great memories. One thing I should advise however — don’t use a broom on a big, older bear. You might not be so lucky.