Posted on 10/12/2010 8:11:08 PM PDT by marktwain
A Walloon Lake man was injured Saturday night, Oct. 9, in his treestand when he was attacked by a female black bear and her three cubs in Bear Creek Township in Emmet County, according to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
Chad Fortune, 21, was treated at Northern Michigan Hospital in Petoskey for a bite to his left calf, thigh and shoulder. Investigation of the incident is ongoing and is being conducted by the DNRE, with assistance from the Emmet County Sheriff's Department.
Fortune told law enforcement officials that he was bow hunting for deer just before dark on farmland in Bear Creek Township Saturday night when the bears approached and then climbed up his treestand and attacked him.
Fortune said at first two cubs climbed up the treestand ladder, and when he shouted at them, they dropped to the ground. A third bear then climbed up the tree, and the hunter punched and elbowed it until it fell from the tree. Then a bear climbed up the treestand ladder and bit Fortune on the leg.
Fortune remained in the treestand for two hours until his fiancee and father came looking for him, worried that he had not returned from hunting after nightfall. After helping him down from the treestand, they transported Fortune to the hospital for treatment.
The DNRE's preliminary investigation of the incident indicates that Fortune may have been wearing clothing underneath his camouflage hunting gear that smelled like fried food items from a family party he attended just prior to going hunting. A DNRE conservation officer and wildlife biologist who are investigating the incident theorize the bears were lured by the food scents on the hunter's clothing.
"Anytime you are dealing with a sow and her cubs, you have a potentially dangerous situation," said DNRE Wildlife Chief, Russ Mason. "A sow will do whatever it takes to protect her cubs if she perceives a threat. In this case, the hunter was not threatening the cubs, but the sow apparently thought he was, and she attacked him."
The black bear is the only bear species native to Michigan, with approximately 90 percent of the bear population living in the Upper Peninsula. Black bears are shy by nature, and have a fear of humans. The fear of humans should remain intact, and the DNRE encourages Michigan residents and visitors to not leave food accessible to bears. Once a bear associates food with a human, the situation can become dangerous. For more information on bears in Michigan, including how to prevent problems between bears and humans, go to www.michigan.gov/bear.
That one word explains everything...’cubs.’
Bears will be bears! It’s what they do.
It explains everything and nothing. Why are we expected to give a pass to dangerous animals attacking us simply because they are females with young? About 20 percent of the bears that you encounter will tend to be females with young. As mammals, we can empathize with the emotions of a mother mammal protecting their young. That does not put us at a lesser level of danger.
We have lots of bears, in many places, way too many. We must constantly remind dangerous animals that we are at the top of the food chain and to be avoided.
Bear climbs up the stand? Guess it's bear season!
Must’ve been a pretty small sow if it could climb.
Black bear climb easily.
Bureaucraps lie easily, as in the following from the article: “The DNRE’s preliminary investigation of the incident indicates that Fortune may have been wearing clothing underneath his camouflage hunting gear that smelled like fried food items from a family party he attended just prior to going hunting.”
“When gunpowder speaks, beasts obey.”
A CCW permit would have solved the problem. Even a .38 snubby would have solved the situation.
No joke, I get a dozen or so bear coming into my bait station everyday. When I stop baiting the barrel and hanging popcorn, they start following my trail a mile and a half back toward my house, no joke. They get to wondering why I ain't bringing them goodies no more. These bear actually smell my track back home but when the dogs open up they take off. After a week or so they forget about my good eats and stay away from house. One thing for sure, you have way more bear around your house than you'd ever believe; just don't see them too much. Get a game camera and you will realize I'm speaking the complete truth.
Ouch!
A large caliber revolver would have come in handy.
The nimrods in the WI DNR don’t think black bears are dangerous. Just go “shoo-shoo” and they’ll run away!
There is a God. Except that these hunter predators seem to be incapable of learning compassion, even when they become the prey, or when the arrow they were going to use on the deer accidentally pierces their flesh - they say “0oh, that really hurt” but still can’t grasp that it hurts the animal as much. The mother bear protecting her cubs seems to me to be s more advanced form of life than the teenaged “mother” who threw her newborn out the window a few posts back.
Answer: yes.
What is too many bears? Emmet isn’t exactly a suburb of Detroit. There are only about 30,000 in the entire county. Unless this guy set up his tree stand in a city park, he was right where you would expect bears to be.
Seems to me the real issue is that he was in an area with a high bear population and he wasn’t armed to protect himself.
However I do agree that we overprotect the wildlife. Just last week a teenager was driving in Hillsdale county and hit a European boar. There is also a huge number of coyotes in this part of the state now and a growing number of mountain lion sightings. Here south of Lansing we shouldn’t really ever have to deal with anything more dangerous than a raccoon.
You are allowing your empathy to rule your rationality. It works better the other way around.
“What is too many bears?”
Too many is when the danger they present outweighs the advantages of having them around. Judicious cropping keeps the balance. If everyone is armed, the balance shifts to more bears as the danger is diminished.
Falling numbers of hunters is becoming a problem even in hunter heavy Michigan.
I few years ago I spent a couple weeks at the home of my girlfriend’s unlcle. We took a shotgun with us where we went bike riding on the old logging trails around the area.
Here is an update, with a first person account of what happened. It is quite a different story than what we were first fed:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2607069/posts
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