Grizzly roaming around region
A subadult grizzly bear has been raiding chicken coops in rural neighborhoods between Athol and Garwood. The bear is seen here at the home of Crystal and Noah Kearl along Old Highway 95 south of Silverwood. (Courtesy photo)
COEUR d’ALENE — A young grizzly bear that has raided chicken coops on both sides of U.S. 95 between Garwood and Athol is in the sights of Idaho Fish and Game.
State game biologists don’t want to shoot what they think is an immature and wayward grizzly that likely strayed south from its Selkirk Mountain haunts.
They just want to get the bear in a barrel.
“We started getting reports on Saturday,” said Wayne Wakkinen, regional wildlife manager. “It looks to be a subadult, a young grizzly bear that seems to be raiding chicken coops.”
Wakinnen, the Panhandle’s bear expert before becoming the regional head of wildlife, said his department has placed culvert traps to catch and relocate the bear.
Culvert traps are large barrel-like traps on a trailer that are baited and have heavy metal screens on both ends and a trap door.
“Culvert traps are probably the only good option we have,” Wakinnen said.
Because grizzly bears don’t climb trees like black bears, using treeing hounds isn’t being considered to locate the young grizzly.
In addition, high temperatures aren’t optimal tracking conditions.
A mediocre berry crop — a prime bear food source — so far this season may have prompted the bear to leave the mountains, Wakinnen said.
It seems to have focused its efforts on chickens.
Crystal Kearle, who lives with her husband on Old Highway 95 south of Silverwood, sat on the porch Sunday watching the big, brown bear with the pan face and humped back try to climb a fence into her chicken run.
She yelled and her son clapped, frightening the animal, at least temporarily.
Her husband shot near the bear, thinking the concussion would scare it.
“It didn’t even budge,” Kearle said.
She grew up in North Idaho and has seen one black bear in the wild. The grizzly that sat in her yard Sunday afternoon playing with her sprinkler was a show stopper for her and neighbors who heard about the incident.
“This would be a first,” she said. “I don’t think they have had a grizzly before. It’s kind of crazy.”
The Selkirk region, which stretches between Bonner County and into British Columbia, contains about 80 grizzly bears with around 35 of them in Idaho, Wakinnen said.
Grizzly bears usually stick close to their home range. The average home range for an adult female grizzly bear is about 70 square miles, while adult males can have home ranges of 300 square miles or more because males travel to find females.
Subadult bears, Wakinnen said, are bears that have been chased out of their range after leaving their mothers.
“They can go on a pretty substantial walkabout,” he said.
Fish and Game asks anyone who sees the bear to contact its office at 208-769-1414.
Bears that haven’t settled into an area are often hard to catch with a culvert trap, he said.
“If they are reported someplace yesterday it usually isn’t the same place where they are today,” he said.
In the meantime, Wakinnen said rural residents should try to keep feed indoors, including chicken and pig feed. He said bears are attracted to garbage and anything that smells like food, including a grill.
Grizzly bears are federally protected. A man who shot a grizzly bear north of Bonners Ferry was fined $1,000 in 2011 and a grizzly bear was shot near Cataldo 10 years ago after it killed a bull elk at an elk farm.