Hungry Bear looking for food

 

It seemed like only years ago we were able to enjoy the freedom of owning a piece of property wherein we enjoyed such little pleasures as fruit trees and backyard barbecues. Guests conversing while watching some children running about with a puppy joining the festivities.  A variety of birds passing up the backyard feeders to steal at a piece of bread or potato chip left on the ground by some youngsters playing tag or moving about; or perhaps from some sloppy adult.

 

 

Adult conversations these days surround the economy, fuel prices, the election, and the war; serious concerns for all of us. Some gather in the backyard others drift off to the porch or garage wherever they can be out of children’s hearing.

The children somewhat shielded by age just enjoy the beauty of a day with family and friends.

Oh yes, those were the days as we heard our own parents say so many times.

 

Now lets’ fast forward to today, for a number of reasons that no longer matter, this once welcomed freedom has been infringed upon by the “overpopulated” black bear.  Why do we have an overpopulation problem? Because anti-hunters and animal-rights groups have infiltrated New Jersey and convinced vote hungry politicians that we should alter our lives to accommodate the wild black bear.

 

Let’s look at some of the changes:

 

Store garbage in bear-proof containers (they mean bear resistant as bear proof hardly exists), or store garbage in your garage.

Now this is reasonable only we need to advise the bear’s that garages are off limits and breaking into them is a crime. I guess the adults will have to stop using the garage for conversations or be willing to include the black bear in the discussions.

 

Keep food indoors or in airtight and order-free containers.

Sure either the guests can go inside each time they want to eat or sort through a variety of airtight lids and forget the appetizing order of food just close your eyes and swallow.

 

Put away picnic leftovers; clean BBQ grills.

Well don’t know of many that leave leftovers outside, clean the grill of course, and get the order of cooked food off the grill, it will never happen. Therefore, a new option should be offered, discard the grill and buy a new one for each BBQ.

 

Keep pet food inside, and bird feeders away.

OK, the pet food is easy, but climbing up trees to take in birdfeeders, don’t think so. Just imagine bird seed was the most popular and sold food for years as people enjoyed feeding these harmless birds and watching them scurry about feeder to feeder. Is there any concern for these creatures? Nah, that’s for the birds.

 

 

Remove cosmetic fragrances and other attractants.

Oh well! There goes Grandma and Aunt Millie kicked out of the BBQ for overdosing with Chantilly.

 

Pick-up any residual fruits or nuts from trees on your property.

Great, in addition to working, cleaning the house, taking care of children and figuring out how to make ends meet, we should go out each day and police residual droppings from fruit and nut trees; nuts to that.

 

Harvest gardens immediately as vegetables mature; keep vegetable gardens free of vegetable wastes.

Now this is good however, how do we convince the bears that eating vegetables before they ripen is wrong, might give them a bellyache. I don’t know about the second part never thought of a vegetables bathroom habits.

 

Locate compost piles, gardens and fruit orchards at least 50 yards or as far as possible from forest tree lines or other sources of cover for bears.

Well don’t know if the neighbors’ will like the location and if the bears will mind travelling so far from underneath decks.

 

Keep a close watch on children, and teach them what to do if they encounter a bear.

Now here is the best of all, our backyards were a place where children could play in the security of private property within earshot of the parents. Children, according to age were taught to deal with strangers, human strangers. Now we are supposed to take a small 50 pound child and somehow teach them how to deal with a wild black bear that weighs anywhere from 100 to 700 pounds and at any weight capable of catching a child and seriously mauling and killing them. On top of all this we are to explain to these tots that the bears are not dangerous, but timid and shy and they can share our space. Come-on now.

 

This is the non-sense we in New Jersey must go through because of all the issues created by misguided people that mislead innocent people, which really do enjoy wildlife, into placing this dangerous, carnivorous mammal in the same category as a deer or rabbit.

 

We will never, never be able to coexist with black bears unless they are hunted to a manageable population wherein they retreat to the remaining backwoods and return to there once shy personality.

 

It is not selfish on anyone’s part to expect to enjoy the freedom of their own backyards, to limit dangers to the lowest possible levels for themselves, family and friends. To expect our state biologists and Fish and Wildlife professionals to establish hunting regulations to control wildlife populations, especially dangerous game like the black bear.

 

 

 

Anti-hunters and animal-rights groups are constantly overstepping the boundaries when they really believe that a wild animal/mammal has more rights than a human being. These groups for the most part use politics to further a cause that in the case of the black bear puts human life in danger, they draw contributions from the rich and famous that live in the security of their castles, looking for a path to heaven through some cause, any cause.

Shame of this is that these same groups do good work on other animal issues that have merit, like “domestic” animal rights for horses, dogs, cat, etc. They are not needed in the “wild-kingdom” we have professional biologists all around the country and the endangered species laws they establish and monitor are successful, as with the New Jersey Black Bear.

 

We all need to look at this, a black bear being “culled” to a level that enables them to thrive in their own natural habitant or a child or adult being mauled or killed again, as is happening, because we put wild life before human life. What kind of sensible, caring human being would opt for the later?

 

Lastly, as for sure some anti-hunter will attempt to put “the-hunting-spin” on this issue, hunting is a legal right and heritage of this free country and in this free country one has the right to participate or not. Hunting is also a wildlife management tool, in fact, the only proven method.

Sterilization, is a failure and an anti’s smoke screen for stalling the inevitable, a hunt. Criticizing the New Jersey Fish and Wildlife and/or our professional biologists is just another flaw in the character of these groups. These professionals have had to listen to criticism not only from the anti’s but from the politicians that these groups have succeeded in influencing.

Here we have highly educated professionals that must attempt to perform the job assignments they were trained for while walking on egg shells to somehow create a balance with hostile anti-hunting and animal-rights groups.

Some of these groups are pushing to have members of there organizations take a seat on the F&G Council. Try reversing this and ask them to place a hunter on their boards; it will never happen.

 

Support the biologists and F&G that use science instead of politics and emotions to level the playing field and create the proper balance of wild game to humans.

Mike D

 

 

 

 

 

In a recent memo written by an anti-hunting/animal-rights group the following misleading out and out lies were posted:

·        The hunters and F&W create a fear factor to promote a bear hunt.

·        Hunters want the hunt to fuel their passion for killing.

·        Bears are killed by police simply for knocking over trash cans.

·        On “rare occasions” when homes or garages are entered by bears it is classified as a break-in and F&W ignores the real reason that homeowners did not “bear-proof” their property.

·        F&W set what they claim are non-lethal traps then arrive and shoot the bears.

·        F&W inflate the population statistics to enforce the necessity of a hunt.

·        F&W relocate bears to urban areas to incite fear among residents.

 

Let’s go over these points:

 

·        Hunters and F&W do not control the non-hunting public nor the newspapers that follow up with bear complaints and print the real facts as told by the victims. The public is scared as a direct result of overpopulated black bears infringing on their safety.

·        Hunters share a passion for the outdoors and recreation capped off by the legal right to hunt and cull legal wild game for food consumption either by themselves, family, friends or donation to food for the hungry.

·        Police have made every effort to use rubber buckshot to scare bears off for adverse conditioning; they shoot bears that continually demonstrate potential humans’ danger by returning to or breaking into homes and garages.

·        Black bear breaking into homes and garages is no longer a “rare-occasion” as homeowners are securing garbage by storing in shed and garages the black bear is following the scent into the homes and garages where they are now more dangerous than ever.

·        F&W rarely shoots a trapped black bear unless it was trapped exactly for demonstrating aggressive behavior or numerous break-ins.

·        F&W does not inflate statistics and in fact all statistics and reports are under inflated because the public does not report all black bear activity as they find it apparently does not impact the “political-web” that continues to ignore the dangers.

·        F&W relocates bears to urban areas to incite fear; herein lies the proof that these groups are warped people that have no common sense, no respect for human safety and no respect for themselves as they will concoct any story they can to drawn in gullible, innocent people that really have a love for animals, into misleading lies and information to support their cause. 

 

 

 

It is extremely important for the public to understand these facts, to separate the lies of anti-hunters/animal-rights groups from the truth. New Jersey is not unlike (26) other states that have thriving black bear populations. New Jersey politicians’, unlike the politicians in (26) other states however, have allowed these groups to feed lies to the public keeping this an unresolved issue.

We had a N.J. State Supreme Court review of this matter and they agreed with facts supporting a (5) year black bar management plan to include hunting as a primary tool for managing the black bear population to a level that allows for “safe” co-existence with the human population.

Then we had a change in Governors and DEP Commissioner, both with an anti-hunting philosophy that served to inflate the issue one more time resulting in the cancellation of the hunt and scrapping of the (5) year management program. Yes, after wasting several months of the N.J.State Supreme Courts’ time and taxpayer’s money N.J. politics entered the picture once again interfering in an area in which they have absolutely no experience.

The public opinion on this black bear issue has continued to lean to support of a hunt, a hunt that (26) other states, wherein politics and emotions are not allowed to figure into the equation, have been successful in controlling wild black bears to a number that allows safe co-existence with humans.

N.J. Government, to date, has not yet figured this out instead they are swayed by personal beliefs and the minority voices of radical anti-hunting/animal-rights groups that have more at stake than the actual hunting of black bears in N.J.

At stake for these groups is protecting the only battleground wherein they have succeeded in promoting their anti-hunting platform under the guise of protecting the black bear.

This is not rocket science; there is only so much land to support safe human and black bear population, we either have humans move out or reduce the number of black bears. Black bears do not pay taxes, contribute to industrial growth or create jobs and in spite of the emotional issue the anti’s have created it will not be humans that will move to make room.

Recently, at the N.J. State Fair, hundreds of domestic livestock was on display. Amazing championship cows, pigs, lambs, goats, chickens, ducks, etc. Groomed and competing for ribbons based on confirmation and looks. Just imagine that the offspring of these creatures wind up on the supermarket shelves as food. These very same farmers and the fair visitors that admire these majestic animals eat them as well. They may not do the actual killing but they do consume the food, this includes hordes of anti-hunting/animal-rights people.

A hunter has the legal right to hunt, kill, butcher and consume wild game and that same hunter is no more barbaric than those that travel to stores to purchase and consume domestic animals.

There is one main difference, wild game has a chance to escape and the hunter’s success rate clearly shows that many do, the domestic animal has no escape route..

So basically, all of us that consume meat and poultry and that is 95% of us, are not much different, nor wrong for doing so. Animals are on this earth as part of the food chain; lets’ not forget that nor criticize the method of how we obtain it.

Let’s not blame the professionals’ of our N.J. Fish and Wildlife, they do their job well and the proof is in the now healthy black bear population.

Let’s not blame the black bear for development of land and extraordinary birth rate and if a black bear could talk, they would more-than-likely love to be left alone in their natural habitant, unseen by humans with cameras and/or guns using their skills to outwit predators’.

Let’s not blame hunters’ for following the heritage of our free country pursuing the legal right to hunt and cull wild game for a healthy food source.

 

 – Mike D