Anyone Spotted a Bear?

A friend of mine noticed that a lot of her plants and shrubs were pretty much destroyed yesterday morning. At first she thought it was a deer. In talking with her neighbor she also had plants destroyed and last night sighted a bear. Anyone else? This is in the Jefferson area.

Not recently but Yogi has been around for a while.

https://maplewood.worldwebs.com/forums/discussion/id/117096-Bear-alert-Collinwood-between-Ridgewood-and-Wyoming

Didn't know the Bears made it as far as Ridgewood

Several years ago there was one in Golf Island!

Wow! And I thought wild turkeys on mayhew would be the craziest thing I saw

The Golf Island bear was sedated and released in western New Jersey. He ended up in Pennsylvania and was killed when he was hit by a car or truck. The story was in a Pennsylvania Fish and Game publication that one of our posters subscribed to as he and some friends owned a hunting camp. Kind of sad. I believe the MW animal lovers named the bear Mappy.

I posted about this two or three weeks ago -- there was definitely a bear in the area, moving from Ridgewood up Collinwood towards Wyoming. Might be the same one? Somebody else had seen a bear earlier that morning in the Parker area.

A few years ago, a bear made it to Irvington or Newark. Ridgewood Rd.? Piece of cake.

Yesterday, a bear was shot in a backyard in Plainfield.

Bears are still in the Jefferson area. One was sighted in a backyard on Garthwaite. Be careful with pets and children. The bears can destroy your garden as they love to eat your prettiest flowers. They also leave their droppings.

Definite bear tracks, scat and digging for roots in our yard on Winthrop Terrace in the past week. I'm familiar with the signs from our place in VT and a neighbor could even pick out hind and fore prints. So far, it has been overnight, and foraging for natural food, not trash. We have only been leaving trash out the morning of pick up, and I'm hoping that the natural behavior continues.

Sorry to hear about your garden, I remember how pretty it was when I visited! I don't know if it works for bears, but I use the below product to keep deer, rabbits, and raccoons away from my plants and whenever I leave garbage bags out overnight -- I have some on hand and happy to bring some by for you if you would like to try

http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Out-32oz-Concentrate-Repellent/dp/B002DQMXNQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

Sweetsnuggles said:
I found fresh scat again this morning in our backyard. It has totally destroyed my Sweetpeas vines. I sprayed the area with Critter Ridder, but it has made no difference whatsoever. Fortunately it has not gone after our trash. Part of me wishes it would develop a taste for garbage and leave my flowers alone, but that would not be good for the bear and I really don't want anything bad to happen to it.

I can attest to Deer Out being very effective for Deer---but it probably smells like another bear, to a bear

I'm spending a vacation week at our little place in High Falls, NY (Ulster County, near New Paltz). I still haven't seen a bear in the wild, but my neighbor tells me we have a regular who now has a cub. I've seen her tracks. She comes up the road on garbage collection days and goes through everyone's bins. My neighbor yelled and clapped his hands, and Mama and Cub fled. He wanted to minimize the amount of cleanup he had to do. Around here, I don't think killing a bear is appropriate unless it acts threateningly, which doesn't usually happen. Of course, in the suburbs and cities, if a bear is cornered, there is no choice.

There is ALWAYS a choice...

I am by no means an expert, but I think I saw two piles of bear scat at the Marshall garden. Not deer or raccoon. Yikes!

Imagine seeing this is your backyard. This was in rockaway nj.

http://nypost.com/2015/08/21/mama-bear-5-cubs-beat-the-heat-in-nj-familys-pool/

Not in MSO,but this guy has been in our neighborhood this week. We were told to keep pets and kids inside

My daughter found bear scat in her back yard in South Orange near Grove Park a few weeks ago. (No spottings of the bear, though.)

Make sure your garbage is secure. This guy was in our backyard in Green Pond two weeks ago, one town over from Rockaway. We scared him away with an airhorn.

Friends of ours had one in their yard on Norfolk in Maplewood earlier this summer.

This mama and her cubs have been wandering all over our neighborhood over the last few weeks so we've been keeping our eyes peeled.

My husband ran into a "teenager" a few weeks ago wandering across our lawn. I think he wanted to welcome us to the neighborhood.

dpawaters said:
Imagine seeing this is your backyard. This was in rockaway nj.
http://nypost.com/2015/08/21/mama-bear-5-cubs-beat-the-heat-in-nj-familys-pool/