Post by sideswipe on Mar 29, 2020 17:37:29 GMT -4
Just a short, very basic mention of bear turd inspecting. Of course it goes w/o being said; "is it fresh?" or "how big is the bear?" Usually getting a closer look requires you to get your fingers a little dirty sometimes but it can reveal some usable information. Of course, unless the scat has seeds, pits, bone fragments, or fur mixed in it....once it has aged a little & dried out a lot of bear scat looks about the same.
Of course shiny, wet scat w/flys buzzing around it is an obvious indication you might want to look over your shoulder. Coke can-size turds can raise the pucker factor and/or the heart rate. I was never lucky to get a really large Black Bear. My largest was 300#. His turds misled me as the biggest ones weren't much over 1-1 1/4" diameter (maybe he was on a diet?). We had been playing hide & seek for about 3-4 days of still hunting before our face to face encounter. I would still hunt this same old skid road (during 2008 Spring WA Bear season) for 4 days. Found plenty of partially debarked stumps that seemed to have more added each day. But he must have been varying his diet as the scat was always most dark black after drying out a little. I have run into somewhat dry, rusty brown scat amongst old stumps w/peeled off patches of bark. Definite correlation there.
But back to walking the skid road. Each day I would find what I thought was pretty fresh scat. One obvious reason was that, after inspecting it, I kicked it over the downhill side of the road. Then when the scat reappeared the next morning there was not doubt. Breaking one of the turds apart it appeared as though I had just opened a can of spinach. Same texture & color...telltale sigh he'd been grazing on grass. Other vegetation (partially digested) has difference appearance/texture. Another reason I learned about from kicking scat over the side I learned from other hunters who weren't so careful in leaving scrape marks in the dirt. I soon learned they were trying to not share the evidence of an active bear in the area. I confess I preferred to not share the active travel pattern of this bear on "my" road.
In August in WA purple colored scat w/a lot of tiny seeds visible is a no-brainer they're hitting the blackberries or blue huckleberries. But I wasted a lot of time sitting over a "hot spot" only to realize it might have been a week ago. If broken berry vines are all dried out or all the scat around it is blackened & dry its history. Animal tissue or spawned-out salmon seems to result in darkened scat w/o much texture.
Sometimes the trail of scat can be as much fun as scatalogical investigation. Came across a small pile of wet, gooey scat that was mostly 5-10 plum pits (ouch!). The deposits were distributed along the road I was still hunting on, spaced every 100-200 yds. This bear definitely had the trots! Like a hound, I had no idea from looking at the "tracks" which way was the bear's direction of travel after hitting the food source. Fortunately I did have a lot of experience hunting this area & pretty much knew where the few wild plum trees were. I had a few hundred feet elev to walk down to the parked Jeep. Looked like the bear had been coming up the road earlier. Scat could have been a few days old but I wanted to verify where it had been eating. When the trail disappeared off the downhill side of the road I didn't want to do a lot of brush-busting so I kept on the road & fortunately for me, more than once, the trail re-emerged on the road from the bear's shortcut. Found the trees w/busted limbs & most plums gone, it must have really gorged them all. Checked the trees everyday but no sign it ever returned. Speaking of gorging, I had 3 10 year-old apple trees in my yard in northern Calif. Every year the bears would harvest any apples I left. If they couldn't climb the tree easily they would bust the branches to get to the fruit. One year the bear must sat in the crotch of the tree because I found the trunk split from the crotch. Also, it ate so much that it would crap about a quart of what looked exactly like fresh applesauce before resuming the feast. The part of WA I hunted it, when it got to November & bear sign scarce, chk w/any property owners you know who have orchards or backyard fruit trees...the remaining active bears start coming down to local food supplies...permission to hunt often hard to get unless the owner is mad about damaged trees.
Told you this was very basic & short. Perhaps others can add to it. We none know it all. It took me a couple of seasons to accumulate this common-sense information. Hope it helped.
Of course shiny, wet scat w/flys buzzing around it is an obvious indication you might want to look over your shoulder. Coke can-size turds can raise the pucker factor and/or the heart rate. I was never lucky to get a really large Black Bear. My largest was 300#. His turds misled me as the biggest ones weren't much over 1-1 1/4" diameter (maybe he was on a diet?). We had been playing hide & seek for about 3-4 days of still hunting before our face to face encounter. I would still hunt this same old skid road (during 2008 Spring WA Bear season) for 4 days. Found plenty of partially debarked stumps that seemed to have more added each day. But he must have been varying his diet as the scat was always most dark black after drying out a little. I have run into somewhat dry, rusty brown scat amongst old stumps w/peeled off patches of bark. Definite correlation there.
But back to walking the skid road. Each day I would find what I thought was pretty fresh scat. One obvious reason was that, after inspecting it, I kicked it over the downhill side of the road. Then when the scat reappeared the next morning there was not doubt. Breaking one of the turds apart it appeared as though I had just opened a can of spinach. Same texture & color...telltale sigh he'd been grazing on grass. Other vegetation (partially digested) has difference appearance/texture. Another reason I learned about from kicking scat over the side I learned from other hunters who weren't so careful in leaving scrape marks in the dirt. I soon learned they were trying to not share the evidence of an active bear in the area. I confess I preferred to not share the active travel pattern of this bear on "my" road.
In August in WA purple colored scat w/a lot of tiny seeds visible is a no-brainer they're hitting the blackberries or blue huckleberries. But I wasted a lot of time sitting over a "hot spot" only to realize it might have been a week ago. If broken berry vines are all dried out or all the scat around it is blackened & dry its history. Animal tissue or spawned-out salmon seems to result in darkened scat w/o much texture.
Sometimes the trail of scat can be as much fun as scatalogical investigation. Came across a small pile of wet, gooey scat that was mostly 5-10 plum pits (ouch!). The deposits were distributed along the road I was still hunting on, spaced every 100-200 yds. This bear definitely had the trots! Like a hound, I had no idea from looking at the "tracks" which way was the bear's direction of travel after hitting the food source. Fortunately I did have a lot of experience hunting this area & pretty much knew where the few wild plum trees were. I had a few hundred feet elev to walk down to the parked Jeep. Looked like the bear had been coming up the road earlier. Scat could have been a few days old but I wanted to verify where it had been eating. When the trail disappeared off the downhill side of the road I didn't want to do a lot of brush-busting so I kept on the road & fortunately for me, more than once, the trail re-emerged on the road from the bear's shortcut. Found the trees w/busted limbs & most plums gone, it must have really gorged them all. Checked the trees everyday but no sign it ever returned. Speaking of gorging, I had 3 10 year-old apple trees in my yard in northern Calif. Every year the bears would harvest any apples I left. If they couldn't climb the tree easily they would bust the branches to get to the fruit. One year the bear must sat in the crotch of the tree because I found the trunk split from the crotch. Also, it ate so much that it would crap about a quart of what looked exactly like fresh applesauce before resuming the feast. The part of WA I hunted it, when it got to November & bear sign scarce, chk w/any property owners you know who have orchards or backyard fruit trees...the remaining active bears start coming down to local food supplies...permission to hunt often hard to get unless the owner is mad about damaged trees.
Told you this was very basic & short. Perhaps others can add to it. We none know it all. It took me a couple of seasons to accumulate this common-sense information. Hope it helped.
