Night Moves in the Backyard

My neighbor just got back from eastern Canada where he went bear hunting, quite successfully. 

While out felling trees yesterday, we got to talking about bears. I asked him if he had seen any up on our knoll? 

He said one came through five or six years ago; a young male getting pushed out, as is typical of young male bears, coyotes, and fox. He didn’t see that bear, but others had. That was the only bear he knew of in the last 15 years.

I nodded, and said I was strapping down the bee hives some more, but was not yet committed to putting up an electric fence.

We have forested mountains with bears only about eight miles away. A young bear or two wanders east from there every year, generating a little neighborhood and press coverage before the young male moves out on his own, or is darted and moved back with an escort.  The chance of a bear on the knoll was not zero, but it’s a *very* big area out there, and a bear attack on my rather isolated bee hives seemed remote.

Until this evening.

This evening, my neighbor sent me the picture, above.  

Surely, this was from Canada, I inquired? 

Nope, he said, “this was taken last night, about 100 yards from where you sleep.”

Of course, I immediately went out to check the bee hives, and they’re fine. 

That said, I’m going to put up game cameras on the hives tonight, and bee-suit up tomorrow in order to put more tiedowns on my *very* active bee hives.

Was Heather right? Do I need to install an electric fence? Or to put it another way, is Heather *ever* wrong? Not too damn often.  I can’t remember when.

So tonight cameras, and tomorrow more straps.  

I’ll investigate lights, alarms, and e-fencing over the next few days.  

Hopefully barking terriers and a close-by shed, along with the tie-downs, will give me the space I need to get things sorted better.

But yeah, there’s a bear out there, and he showed up a hell of a lot sooner than I would have guessed.

I’m gonna name him “Houlie”.