How peculiar.....Several years ago, a friend and I wen to Colorado to do a little gold mining. we camped out on the claim, and of course when camping you do generate some trash. We kept it all in a plastic trash bag, and when we went to leave, we were just going to put it in a dumpster somewhere.
Well, SURPRISE, SURPRISE! We found out that Colorado has a state law that says all dumpsters have to be PADLOCKED shut, to keep the bears out. We ended up having to bring our trash all the way back to Kansas to find an open dumpster to throw it in.
So, I guess this bear is not only smart enough to make off with the dumpster with the goodies in it, he must also know how to PICK A LOCK in order to get any scraps out of it.
It looked like it was unlocked, plus it looked like a plastic lid anyway. He’d tear through that in one swing if he wanted to.
Probably only the case in the forest areas. If you get into the towns, dumpsters are not padlocked. They have nifty trash cans for the forest areas though. Kind of like mail slots.