“Would you like to hold a bear cub?” asked Randy Cross, a biologist from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Randy had the stellar reputation of being the person who knew more about black bears than probably anybody in the country. I was thrilled to have been asked to go along with a group of 20 others on an outing led by Randy to learn about the bear population in our state.
Our group headed out Route 9 on a sunny March day toward a location that we were asked to keep secret for the protection of the bears.
We had at first gathered in a classroom type of setting where Randy gave us information on how the event would go. He told us that the female had a radio collar on so they knew her location, but they weren’t sure if she had cubs.
We would hike into the location and hope for the best.
This was an educational trip for both us and the biologists. They were hoping there would be cubs so that they could take health measurements and tag them.
Having the information from both the mother’s radio collar and the cubs’ ear tags are crucial methods they use for studying and managing bear populations. These items tell the biologists about the bears movements, behavior and survival rates, which in turn helps with management and conservation efforts.
Once we were headed down the back dirt road toward the den, we all became very excited but nervous. Even if there weren’t cubs, we were still going to be up close and personal with a big black bear.
We parked our cars, put on our winter hiking gear including snowshoes and started the hike into the woods. We were asked to stay quiet, so we turned off our phones and talked in whispers.
The closer we got, the more nervous I became.
When we arrived at the site, it looked different than I imagined. It wasn’t a cave-type of dwelling, but looked to be a shallow hole under some fallen trees.
One of the other biologists that came with us took the tranquilizing dart and climbed head first into the den. Yikes! They waited until it was safe and then found, much to our joy, three baby bears.
They checked the mother’s radio collar to make sure it was good and then health measurements were taken on the cubs.
The mother was a 5-year-old sow and this was her first litter, which consisted of two females and one male. They weighed them and checked them all over and put tags on their ears. Once they had their health checks, we were allowed to hold them.
They were the cutest little things and one snuggled his head under my chin. But one look at the claws reminded me that these were wild animals and once grown would be a force.
We took photos and then the cubs were placed safely back in the den with their mother.
On the hike back to our cars, we couldn’t contain our elation. What a wonderful experience.
Once back at our vehicles, Randy said he was going to be tagging some big boars in May. I asked if I could tag along and watch them do that and he said yes.
I even got to touch a live 350-pound boar. Such an incredible experience.
Many thanks to the now retired Randy Cross and the other DIF&W biologists for their dedication to Maine and for keeping the black bear population so healthy.
