Wildlife Education

by Fred Bohler
This is a really big bear, I trapped him to save his life from angry towns people. We WERE going to knock him out and tag him, however this did not go as planned. The bear weighed approximately 580-600+ pounds. My biologist ended up injecting 3 doses of Telozol and he still would not go down. He was facing forward in the trap and at the very front.

The trap is on a boat trailer designed to tilt. The bear’s weight was forward of center so when we attempted to tilt to slide him out, we could not lift the trap at all. I used an axe handle to assist lift, but it broke. I looked into the trap and all I saw was a huge bear butt, he was groggy but not down and he could not turn around in the trap easily being so big.

So I told her (the biologist) to lift the trap while I get in the trap and pull the bear by the butt. I climbed in the trap and got two hand fulls of bear butt and started pulling. I could see him trying to turn to look at who had him by the butt. I kept yanking and yanking slowly pulling him back further and further.

The problem was, being inside the trap I could not see where the “over center” area was . Jane (not her real name) was lifting at the same time I was pulling and all of a sudden everything went black. I had pulled the bear over center and with Jane lifting the whole trap went skyward. The door of the trap crashed down on my back, I thought, “thats gonna leave a mark”. At the same time the bear came crashing on me rolling over top of me, I pushed and scrambled to my feet.

Jane got a catch poll and we attempted to pull him clear of the trap but could not. He swung out and I ended up between him and thick brush so I jumped over the bear. As I jumped the bear looked up at me, I remember looking down at him lol. Jane had grabbed her camera and took some pictures of him taking a breather. He never went down all the way and was up on his feet walking immediately after these pics. We were not able to tag him or anything.
I love my job.

Photos by Fred Bohler