Here we go again. MT Grizz re-introduction

mt100gr.

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Amen to that. If I could choose to remove wolves or bears from SW Montana, I’d choose bears. Wolves affect the hunting worse, but bears are a serious risk to life in a lot of areas. I’m willing to accept risk, but it’s getting really bad in some drainages.


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Agreed. When they stay out into the winter months, keying specifically on carcasses, they aren't anything to mess with.

I see a handful of bears throughout the year, typically, and the majority don't want anything to do with a human. When they're against the clock and competing for a food source, they're a pain in the ass and a liability.
 
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Jake Larsen
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The density of bears in the greater Yellowstone area cannot be overstated. This video is from a trail cam taken this last summer in SW Montana


Yea you saw that correctly. 7 Grizz rolling together in a grizzly gang. Would never have believed it if I didn’t see it. This is NOT normal bear behavior.


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Jake Larsen
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Agreed. When they stay out into the winter months, keying specifically on carcasses, they aren't anything to mess with.

I see a handful of bears throughout the year, typically, and the majority don't want anything to do with a human. When they're against the clock and competing for a food source, they're a pain in the ass and a liability.

Which happens right during hunting season. The clock starts ticking as soon as the white bark pine nuts ripen. Also, when the population density gets way out of control, that competition gets even more intense. Check out the video I just posted


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mt100gr.

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Which happens right during hunting season. The clock starts ticking as soon as the white bark pine nuts ripen. Also, when the population density gets way out of control, that competition gets even more intense. Check out the video I just posted


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I saw that video when it was floating around last summer. Crazy. But no surprise.

15 years ago, on a farm neighboring the property I worked on, some folks buried a horse....not deep enough. There were 6 different bears chewing on that for a couple weeks. We'd see grizzlies every day at work! Near there, on a property I maintain now, FWP has trapped 7 bears in the last few years.

The east side of the flathead valley has way too many bears. They come through my place often. Anyone with livestock or chickens gets visited. Just down the road they made a habit of killing 4H hogs for the better part of a summer. A relative of a friend was mauled by a grizzly in her front yard by a bear that kept coming back for dog food....I could go on...

This is all also very near where 2 dead grizzlies were found dumped on the roadside, so some people are really getting tired of it.....

FWP tells everyone they're just bears doing bear stuff. F*kc that!! But the bear humpers sure think it's grand!
 
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Jake Larsen
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I saw that video when it was floating around last summer. Crazy. But no surprise.

15 years ago, on a farm neighboring the property I worked on, some folks buried a horse....not deep enough. There were 6 different bears chewing on that for a couple weeks. We'd see grizzlies every day at work! Near there, on a property I maintain now, FWP has trapped 7 bears in the last few years.

The east side of the flathead valley has way too many bears. They come through my place often. Anyone with livestock or chickens gets visited. Just down the road they made a habit of killing 4H hogs for the better part of a summer. A relative of a friend was mauled by a grizzly in her front yard by a bear that kept coming back for dog food....I could go on...

This is all also very near where 2 dead grizzlies were found dumped on the roadside, so some people are really getting tired of it.....

FWP tells everyone they're just bears doing bear stuff. F*kc that!! But the bear humpers sure think it's grand!

Maybe we should start pushing hard for grizzly reintroduction on the Front Range of CO, western OR, or the California coast. It’s native range after all…maybe if some of the people who vote for and fund this crap had to live with the consequences, they’d start to see the light


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trekker9

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Apr 28, 2015
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I saw that video when it was floating around last summer. Crazy. But no surprise.

15 years ago, on a farm neighboring the property I worked on, some folks buried a horse....not deep enough. There were 6 different bears chewing on that for a couple weeks. We'd see grizzlies every day at work! Near there, on a property I maintain now, FWP has trapped 7 bears in the last few years.

The east side of the flathead valley has way too many bears. They come through my place often. Anyone with livestock or chickens gets visited. Just down the road they made a habit of killing 4H hogs for the better part of a summer. A relative of a friend was mauled by a grizzly in her front yard by a bear that kept coming back for dog food....I could go on...

This is all also very near where 2 dead grizzlies were found dumped on the roadside, so some people are really getting tired of it.....

FWP tells everyone they're just bears doing bear stuff. F*kc that!! But the bear humpers sure think it's grand!

So they loaded the rather heavy bears into a vehicle so they could dump them along a road. I call BS.
 

digdeep

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There needs to be some state management with grizz. If they're not going to allocate tags, they need to manage population numbers. You hear stories from the old timers that there wasn't a grizzly in Montana or Wyoming for miles in the 70's, that's just not the case today.
 
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Jake Larsen
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So they loaded the rather heavy bears into a vehicle so they could dump them along a road. I call BS.

If the bears are rather heavy, it’d be hard to get them far from a road….just following your logic. But it would probably be advantageous to get them off your property if you killed them there


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mt100gr.

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So they loaded the rather heavy bears into a vehicle so they could dump them along a road. I call BS.
BS on what I posted or BS that they killed 2 bears?....I'll wait. The reward got up to 15k but i never heard that it was solved. I talked to a warden, the day of, before any of it went public, he stopped to question me at work, if I had heard or seen anything. They knew which bears they were and where they had been.... part0.jpg
 

MTForester

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The drive is for a migration corridor between Glacier and Yellowstone. The tough part is there isn't any favorable habitat. The only food to eat are beef calves and tourists. Even got the local warden to agree. I have never seen anything that even hints of grizzly occupation in the last two centuries. Not even Lewis and Clark. They darn near starved going through this country to the Snake.

Is it wrong to tell the tourists that the only true bear repellant is bacon grease rubbed into your pants?
You didn’t look very hard. Plenty of documentation of griz in the Selway-Bitterroot/Lochsa country prior to the 1930s. Bud Moores book talks about it some.

I don’t think they should be/need to be reintroduced in this spot, but let’s get real with our facts.
 
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Jake Larsen
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There needs to be some state management with grizz. If they're not going to allocate tags, they need to manage population numbers. You hear stories from the old timers that there wasn't a grizzly in Montana or Wyoming for miles in the 70's, that's just not the case today.

That will never happen. Look at what happened in WY. And also what’s been happening with the wolves throughout the west. It’s why some of us are so against this. We’re not anti bear or anti wolf. We’re anti political management, or total lack thereof.


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I think it’s both those things. You gotta give the anti hunter lib types this much, they know how to win a political fight. As of right now, they can’t get hunting outright banned.

However, If our wilderness areas are just “too dangerous” in the fall, they can close those areas. It’s already happened three times in the last couple years that I’m aware of. Certain drainages were closed to the public in Madison range and the Gravellys due to active bears. It’s a back door way of accomplishing their goal


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I’m just wondering, how did they justify shutting down hunting in an area due to an active bear? Wouldn’t half of Montana and most of Wyoming be closed due to active bears?

I’m not trying to call you out or say I don’t believe you, I’ve just never heard of such a thing.

Here in Washington they won’t admit there’s bears anywhere besides where they say there’s bears. That way they can keep bringing in problem bears from other states.


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I’m just wondering, how did they justify shutting down hunting in an area due to an active bear? Wouldn’t half of Montana and most of Wyoming be closed due to active bears?

I’m not trying to call you out or say I don’t believe you, I’ve just never heard of such a thing.

Here in Washington they won’t admit there’s bears anywhere besides where they say there’s bears. That way they can keep bringing in problem bears from other states.


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They 100% close areas due to aggressive bear encounters.


 
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Jake Larsen
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I’m just wondering, how did they justify shutting down hunting in an area due to an active bear? Wouldn’t half of Montana and most of Wyoming be closed due to active bears?

I’m not trying to call you out or say I don’t believe you, I’ve just never heard of such a thing.

Here in Washington they won’t admit there’s bears anywhere besides where they say there’s bears. That way they can keep bringing in problem bears from other states.


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The MO has been If someone gets charged or mauled and the bear doesn’t get killed, the trailheads are then closed. In one case, a horse broke a leg and was killed by the trail. A griz got on the carcass, and FWP closed that trail for 3 weeks from mid September to early October. I don’t have an article to prove that case, but I personally know the guy who had to shoot his horse. He was pissed. Had a camp in that drainage with all his gear. Ended up having to just leave it up there until FWP would allow him to go back and get it.


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