Today Lon came with me again to help with the snare sets. It sure does ease my mind when he comes with me. It's just comforting having someone else with you in black bear country! I know they are more scared of us than we are of them, but I had a black bear encounter last summer in New Mexico and that bear was not scared, and would not back down!
Anyway, today we checked the snare sets I have on Canaan Loop Road -- this was the first real check for Flag Run, since they were baited for the first time on Tuesday, so I was pretty excited to see what we would find, but first we went to the Big Rock site. Guess what we found -- more snares that were knocked down by bears -- YIPPEE (that was a sarcastic outburst). Thankfully we had all the necessary tools with us so we were able to hang them back up on the spot and even fix #6 which it seemed like the bear stomped on it because it was really bent out of shape! There was one snare though where the bear completely chewed up the little aluminum tray I made to put the bait in! I was kind of upset about that. Next to snare #9 I noticed a pile of woodpecker feathers -- there was obviously a woodpecker murder in the area, but who was the murderer you ask? Well, I wish I knew the answer to that. I didn't see any animal sign in the immediate area, not even scat. I was thinking maybe a large weasel, or maybe a hawk...more than likely a hawk...
So, we finished the Big Rock and headed to Flag Run and starting off we weren't having any luck with the snares. None of them had been triggered and majority of them still had bait in them. Snare #7 had been knocked down but we hung it back up and there was no real damage. I pulled the SD card out of the camera we have placed on #6 and couldn't wait to look at the images because #6 was also on the ground -- I figured we might have trouble with this one because there is some bear scat in the area. So far Flag Run isn't productive, but it's only had one bait day so I'm not discouraged by this at all.
When I started looking at the photos from Flag Run I noticed that a bear visited the snare 30 minutes after we baited it on Tuesday! I think he was hanging out in the area and when we left he went to check it out! Then 20 minutes after that bear left another bear --I'm calling it the Big Kahuna Bear -- showed up and knocked the snare down! I also got pictures from the Big Rock site of a bear cub up the tree!
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