The Year of the Poor Pine Harvest

Well, what a drag.  After a week of frustration with my Bushnell Trophy Cam, I finally diagnosed that the camera is broken.  And the reason it’s a drag is because yesterday someone left a gut pile at the bottom of my driveway.  Here’s the story:

Early yesterday morning some deer came out to graze in the private pasture across the road.  It’s deer hunting season and I noticed a nice 3 point buck hanging with the does.   Around 1 pm I heard 2 shots coming from behind my property.  At sunset, Koda and I took a walk beyond my back acreage and returned via the main dirt road.  It was almost dark when we crossed over the cattle guard marking the forest service boundary line.  I petted the horses on one side of the road while Koda was busy in the ditch on the other side.  I went to investigate and in the dark I could see the gut pile left from the buck, lying by the roadside.  With my camera not working, all I could do was check the area in the morning, knowing that probably a grizzly would be bye during the night.  With the pile so close to the house, I made sure Koda and I stayed inside that night.

In the morning, after walking around the area, from the blood evidence, this hunter illegally shot from the road.  He waited till the deer wasn’t on private property, then shot him.  But the easy access was through private property, so he dragged the deer under the boundary fence and through my neighbors’ property to the nearby road just about 25 feet away.  I can’t say I hate hunters because I know quite a few.  Many are ethical and kill for the meat.  I myself like elk and deer meat.  But I do despise the ones that break the law, or are too lazy to walk or ride in, or hunt just for trophy, or complain incessantly about wolves making it harder for them to find elk.

What giveth, taketh away, and then giveth again.  My little buck friend saw its last day and had its last meal this morning.  But grizzlies are hungry this year.  It is the Year of the Poor Pine Nut Crop, and that is what fattens grizzlies up for their long winter sleep.  This grizzly gorged himself on the gut pile, then left a scat of his last meal or meals, which clearly consisted of rose hips.  His scat was full of rose leaves and fruit, and although rose hips don’t taste too bad, especially after a frost or two, they’re not gonna put much weight on the bear.

 

Bear scat consisting of lots of wild rose and hips

 

I felt sad for the buck, but it was a nice stroke of luck for this grizzly and I was glad for him.

After checking the area, I went for a hike down a spectacular secret slot canyon.  Its secret because most of the year there’s a stream running through it.  In summer the brush is so thick you can’t paw your way through.  But in the late fall, the leaves of the Cornus (Dogwood) shrubs are gone and the stream has dried up.  Its only about 50 yards through the 5′ wide canyon to the main creek.  The creek, surrounded by high canyon walls, is inaccessible except for this narrow slot canyon.  But the game know the way and there were grizzly tracks down through the muddy canyon floor.  I crossed the creek and came into a wide wooded valley surrounded by high granite walls.  Large Junipers, Douglas Firs and a few Pines populated the area.  Exploring the canyon, it was obvious a grizzly had been hanging around here for quite some time.  He too was eating rose hips, but he had been spending a lot of time invading middens for pine nuts.  These aren’t from Pinus albicaulis, the White Bark Pine, but Pinus flexilis which is also in the white bark family.  The grizzlies seem to have been eating quite a lot of these this year.  Even the grizzly who ate the gut pile had old scat nearby with Limber Pine shells in it.   Although Limber Pine has been hit heavily by blister rust and beetles, we still have large stands around here and apparently the grizzlies are taking advantage of them in a bad White Bark year.  They certainly are not as big and fat as White Bark, but they’ll do in a bad year.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the bears, how resourceful they must be, how they’re mostly herbivores, how they have to spend so much of their energy foraging for food with so little calories.  I’ve been thinking about those reports I’ve read this summer about undernourished bears.  I am amazed how they are able to make a living out there.  What a wondrous animal.