Keep bears out of your trash

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Bears LOVE Garbage

Bears are attracted to trash bins and any place where garbage is stored or dumped. When you live in a rural area with a bear population it is imperative that that you keep bears away from your trash.  Bears feasting on your trash is dangerous for you and the bears.  Once bears become accustomed to humans, they must either be relocated or destroyed.  In addition, once bears find an easy food supply, they will continue to return - and that's bad.

Bear-Proof Your Trash!

This is a picture of our "bear-proof" fence.  As you can see, it is not a cumbersome or expensive solution.  Any ranch/farm supply and many hardware stores will have everything you need to build a bear-proof electric fence.  Inexpensive plastic poles support an electric "hot wire" which is connected to a standard 12 volt car battery.

We keep our battery out of the weather by storing it inside a large plastic storage container.  The corner posts are plastic and merely pushed into the ground - no tools required.  For added stability, we added tent peg tie-downs at the corners.  When laying out your perimeter, give some extra room around the trash bins.  We've had large bears actually reach over the fence and pull the bin toward it laying it on top of the hot wires.  Bears are smart - don't take anything for granted :-)

Since this picture above was taken, we "upgraded" our fence using metal "ranch fence" posts that are hammered into the ground.  Plastic insulators are mounted to the metal posts to keep the "hot wire" away from the metal, which would short out your fence and cause it to fail.  By using the metal "T" posts, we eliminated the corner tie downs and raised the overall height of the fence.  Again, this is an inexpensive solution as the posts cost only a few dollars each and the insulators are sold by the bag for a few dollars.

When we first started having problems with bears, we acquired a special pet, a Karelian Bear Dog.  In this pic, she is just a puppy and not quite ready to defend the world against bears.

Why is this a problem?

The story below is duplicated every year in states that have bear populations. In this case the bear wes relocated, but too often the bears have to be destroyed.

State biologists tranquilized and moved a grizzly bear that had torn through garbage receptacles on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. The Department of Fish and Game had received several calls from Sterling reporting that the bear was rummaging through trash. It was darted near the Suzie's Cafe trash bin about 7 p.m. Thursday. "It kind of left a trail of destruction in its path," said wildlife technician Larry Lewis. Read the rest of the story...

Teddy Bears, anyone?