Bear Hugs

We had the most awesome adventure today. We traveled three hours to White Mountain in the Ozarks to visit a bear den. This trip and others like them are donated by AGFC and auctioned off for up to $2,000 for charities. Steve "Wild Man" Wilson, our Public Affairs Coordinator and host of "Talkin' Outdoors" tv show coordinates the trips. I have been wanting to go on one of these trips since I first started working at AGFC and Wild Man told me late Thursday there were some open spots.




We met at the office at 6:30 am and made the trek up to the Ozarks. We left our vehicle and had to get into one of AGFC's trucks with 4-wheel drive to go up the mountain on a dirt road with a severe drop off on either side. At about 11 am we arrived at our destination. Myron and Kevin our bear biologists talked with us and explained that we would be hiking another 500 yards or saw up the mountain to get to our staging area. There we would wait while they went ahead and darted the mother bear. We waited almost and hour for the dart to work because they could not get her in the preferred neck shot and had to hit her in the hip. It takes much longer for the drug to enter her system when it has to go through all of her fat.



We trekked another 50 yards to the bear den when they were ready for our group to join them. It wasn't an easy hike but well worth it. Nico road on Phil's shoulders the whole time.


Last summer the mother started showing up in a couple's yard, so they called Myron, our statewide bear biologist, to see what could be done. Myron had trapped her, put a radio collar on her and released her a few miles away. They have been tacking her and new she had bear cubs. The couple who discovered her got to name the mama bear, so they named her Gracie after their granddaughter. All of them were in attendance and Gracie got to hold her namesakes cubs.


(Phil had to stick his head in den and get face to face with Mama Bear.)



Myron told us the cubs nurse so loud you can hear them outside the den. He went into the hole (talk about occupational hazards!)and brought out each bear cub one at a time. They were about four weeks old and the eyes hadn't fully opened yet. They can easily get pneumonia so they kept them in fleece blankets or let us hold them in our jackets. They weighed them and took measurements before passing them to the group for pictures. Our AGFC photographer was on the trip so I was able to get copies of some awesome shots.

(The cubs were 4 week old females, 45cm long and weighed about 4 lbs each.)