I just discovered these pics which Gary took on his camera this summer.
We have a family of bears living up the hill right behind the house. There's a mom and 2 cubs. The mom goes about 650 pounds. The record-size bear (brown) was shot earlier two towns away from us (850 pounds).
They're not aggressive, so we just leave them be. We just put our our garbage in the morning on garbage day (that's how we discovered we have the bears!)
They've stopped the bear hunt in NJ - which I have very mixed feelings about. As a teen, I would have been unquestionable opposed to it. But being older and more conservative, I guess I think it's almost cruel not to cull the population. There are more brown bears in Northern NJ now than there were when the area was first populated in the 1600s. But their territory is so shrinking - while their food supply is increasing (garbage). The poor things do get shot when they barrel their way into someone's home, which happens not so infrequently around here in the spring and summer.
This is just one of the baby bears. When this pic was taken, he would have come up to about my chest level (pic doesn't have good size perspective):
We had to stop putting the bird food out the back. We now put it out on feeders hung at the second floor level, so the kitties still have their "TV."
But we also have a lot of deer and turkey that roam through the property very regularly.
They ALL love our property because we have LOADS of raspberry, black raspberry, and blackberry bushes. We also have peach trees and fields of strawberries (all just growing in the wild!) This was also this summer:
Laurie
We have a family of bears living up the hill right behind the house. There's a mom and 2 cubs. The mom goes about 650 pounds. The record-size bear (brown) was shot earlier two towns away from us (850 pounds).
They're not aggressive, so we just leave them be. We just put our our garbage in the morning on garbage day (that's how we discovered we have the bears!)
They've stopped the bear hunt in NJ - which I have very mixed feelings about. As a teen, I would have been unquestionable opposed to it. But being older and more conservative, I guess I think it's almost cruel not to cull the population. There are more brown bears in Northern NJ now than there were when the area was first populated in the 1600s. But their territory is so shrinking - while their food supply is increasing (garbage). The poor things do get shot when they barrel their way into someone's home, which happens not so infrequently around here in the spring and summer.
This is just one of the baby bears. When this pic was taken, he would have come up to about my chest level (pic doesn't have good size perspective):
We had to stop putting the bird food out the back. We now put it out on feeders hung at the second floor level, so the kitties still have their "TV."
But we also have a lot of deer and turkey that roam through the property very regularly.
They ALL love our property because we have LOADS of raspberry, black raspberry, and blackberry bushes. We also have peach trees and fields of strawberries (all just growing in the wild!) This was also this summer:
Laurie