Creative Endeavors, The Home of BoxcarOkie.com

American Black Bear

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Why is it called Tourist Season” when you are not allowed to shoot them?”

The weather map today shows the majority of the country as heated up, only a few places that would serve as heat sanctuaries and those are near Seattle-Oregon, another in Vermont.

I suppose it is rather cool up in Radio Girl Territory (she lives in Canada), but for the remainder of us down south in the lower forty eight, it continues to be rather hot.

A few years back we were close to Canada, didn’t cross the border, but we were some 12 miles from it. We had taken the opportunity to visit Glacier National Park and that is about as close as we came to visiting our neighbors to the north.

I did a lot of walking and hiking there as I remember it. Such a beautiful place, and in August the temp’s were just about perfect, most of the kids were back in school, vacations over and the place was surprisingly quite empty.

It was afterwards, much later, when back home in Oklahoma that I got the scare of my life. This is when I learned of the apparent dangers that confront the hiker tourist in bear country.

Oklahoma for the most part is void of wild animals, basically we are down to small critters, raccoons, coyotes, turtles on the road in the summer time. Which makes me wonder. “If a turtle is out of its shell, is it naked or homeless?” Just thinking outside the box. Pardon the pun.

We don’t have a whole lot of bears here in my area of Oklahoma, mainly coyotes. Coyotes are just like my relatives. They go out in pairs, they whine at night and they go anywhere there is food. But realistically speaking they aren’t much of a threat to anyone. Let’s face it, Okies are not great outdoorsmen, we seldom get out of the house during football season and we don’t know a whole lot about the great outdoors.

For instance, I saw a snake in our backyard, so I ran into the garage and got a shovel and whacked it in the head, over and over repeatedly, until I was sure it was dead. But we didn’t have any cable for almost a week afterwards.

So, after visiting this majestic location of nature, on my return home I get my rude awakening as my daddy used to say. (Son, you are in for a rude awakening) My education and introduction into the complex world of bears was quite startling. As I sat in my living room and viewed a special on bears on the Discovery Channel or some other nature show, I found out that everything that I did while I was in bear country, I did wrong. It is no small wonder that I am here today to testify to my apparent ignorance, saved by God I guess.

It seems that there are rules in nature that have to be taken seriously while in the great outdoors.

For instance, you are not supposed to hike by yourself, but I did. You are supposed to whistle and make some kind of noise, which I did not. You are supposed to be aware of your surroundings at all times and I was clueless. In fact, everything that I did, while in bear country, could have possibly been fatal.

That is a sobering thought.

I understand that in Canada it isn’t much different. Due to the frequency of human-bear encounters, the B.C. Fish and Wildlife Branch is advising hikers hunters, fishermen and any persons that use the out of doors in a recreational or work related function to take extra precautions while in the field.

They advise the outdoorsman to wear little noisy bells on clothing so as to give advance warning to any bears that might be close by so you don’t take them by surprise. They also advise anyone using the out of doors to carry “pepper spray” with him/her as the case may be in case of a chance encounter with a bear.

Outdoorsmen should also be on the watch for fresh bear activity (scat), and be able to tell the difference between black bear feces and grizzly bear feces. Black bear feces is smaller and contains lots of berries and squirrel fur.

Grizzly bear scat has bells in it and smells a lot like pepper.

Pass this on to all of your friends ……

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