New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

A hat full of bear scat at my back door!

Thursday 05/12/2005

At last, at last I have irrefutable evidence that a black bear has visited me! In my thirty year career at Fish and Game, nearly half of it as the "bear biologist", I was always the visitor.

I suppose, to most people a pile of bear crap near their back door would not excite them. Well, at least not nearly in the way it does me. You see in October of 1978 I transferred from the Fisheries Division at Fish and Game, where I was full time, but in a temporary position, to a newly created wildlife biologist position where the primary goal was to develop a newly funded "black bear project". Prior to this bears were not studied in NH but merely records were kept of the kills, both hunting and non hunting. I was to begin actually focusing on bears.

I immediately began to collect bear teeth for aging, actually whole skulls or jaws, from which I had to extract a tooth. The first year or two I had to remove the big canines which was very difficult, but soon technology improved and just a small pre-molar tooth needed to be extracted for aging. Bear teeth were sent to a lab that specialized in reading the rings in the teeth just like tree annular rings.

By using the age information as well as kill data we estimated that there were 1,200 to 1,500 bears in the state about 1980. By 1983 it appeared that the population was in a decline. Using the scientific data we had collected for 4 or 5 years the department was able to justify to the legislators that the department needed to regulate bear hunting and stop the decline in the population.

Beginning in 1985 the department drastically reduced the bear hunting season, from over three months to one, and closed hunting in half the state. By 1990 bears were really on the rebound and the current population estimate pegs the population over 5,000. There are now more bears distributed over more of NH than there has been since the 1700's!

Which put a bear near my back door for the first time in the 26 years that I have lived here. Oh, others have seen them up and down the road for years, including my 83 year old mother's place a mile away where she refuses to take her bird feeder down. So I'm obligated periodically to go fix the bear damage. A price well worth it in my book.

So a pile of bear poops has warmed my heart immensely. Thank you bear.