RangerDanger
New Member
I once lived in a house adjancent to like 100 miles of Nat'l Forest land.
In following a trail from the house into the woods, I came upon a clearing about 1/4 mile in someone probably a former tenent had made.
A perfect spot for a dozen plants in grow bags, which is what I put out there.
Everything went swimmingly until sometime in Sept.
I went out with my 3 dogs as usual. When I reached the garden the dogs got all excited and I saw 3 bags had been ripped to shreds. The plants were laying on the ground, a bit torn up, dead.
I checked for tracks and found some--bear tracks. From a rather large-sized bear.
I talked with some friends and found out that
-it was mating season
-male bears have a very large area they consider theirs
-a bear didn't want me in it's territory, and was smart enough to figure out the plants and people were connected, so it showed it's anger by slashing my plants.
I wasn't about to abandon the remaining plants. I went out the next day (carrying a pump-action 12 ga.loaded with deer slugs) I discovered 3 more had been ripped to shreads.
So I started making calls to hunters on how to get rid of a bear.
They knew how to attract them, not how to keep them away.
The only suggestions I got were
-shoot it (yeah like I'm gonna wait out in the woods for a 500 lb. omnivore I don't think so)
-bear trap, which I would NEVER use.
Plus in the above two instances that means I'd have a 500 lb, carcass rotting in my pot garden.
So I racked my brain.
And what I came up with was this:
I went and bought 9 rat traps.
I also have a really neat battery-operated fluorescent lantern. It has 3 settings--the normal on stting, 1 seting that turns on the lantern when a sensor detects motion, and a third setting that trips the light AND a high-pitched low-volume siren.
Best dam lantern ever but unfortunately they no longer make them (to my knowledge).
So I go out to the garden. There are 3 paths--the one I used and 2 breaks in the surrounding brush that animals used in their travels.
I put 3 cocked rat traps face down on all 3 entrances, about 18" apart and covered them lightly with grass.
One of the 2 smaller paths had been used by the bear. I set the lantern in that path before where the rat traps began.
The next morning I found that the 3 rat traps had been sprung on the path that had the lantern, but no plants were harmed.
The next day only the first trap past he lantern was sprung.
The 3rd day I saw the bears trackes where it had walked up as far as it took for the light & siren to come on, then turned around and left.
YES!
Like Pavolv with his dogs I had taught the bear to associate the light/siren with things jumping up of the ground and snapping at him.
The bear continued to patrol the woods, but he avoided my garden.
P.S. I harvested about a pound of buds off 4 of the remaining plants. 2 were sativa's that only got halfway thro budding before the early cold snap killed 'em.
In following a trail from the house into the woods, I came upon a clearing about 1/4 mile in someone probably a former tenent had made.
A perfect spot for a dozen plants in grow bags, which is what I put out there.
Everything went swimmingly until sometime in Sept.
I went out with my 3 dogs as usual. When I reached the garden the dogs got all excited and I saw 3 bags had been ripped to shreds. The plants were laying on the ground, a bit torn up, dead.
I checked for tracks and found some--bear tracks. From a rather large-sized bear.
I talked with some friends and found out that
-it was mating season
-male bears have a very large area they consider theirs
-a bear didn't want me in it's territory, and was smart enough to figure out the plants and people were connected, so it showed it's anger by slashing my plants.
I wasn't about to abandon the remaining plants. I went out the next day (carrying a pump-action 12 ga.loaded with deer slugs) I discovered 3 more had been ripped to shreads.
So I started making calls to hunters on how to get rid of a bear.
They knew how to attract them, not how to keep them away.
The only suggestions I got were
-shoot it (yeah like I'm gonna wait out in the woods for a 500 lb. omnivore I don't think so)
-bear trap, which I would NEVER use.
Plus in the above two instances that means I'd have a 500 lb, carcass rotting in my pot garden.
So I racked my brain.
And what I came up with was this:
I went and bought 9 rat traps.
I also have a really neat battery-operated fluorescent lantern. It has 3 settings--the normal on stting, 1 seting that turns on the lantern when a sensor detects motion, and a third setting that trips the light AND a high-pitched low-volume siren.
Best dam lantern ever but unfortunately they no longer make them (to my knowledge).
So I go out to the garden. There are 3 paths--the one I used and 2 breaks in the surrounding brush that animals used in their travels.
I put 3 cocked rat traps face down on all 3 entrances, about 18" apart and covered them lightly with grass.
One of the 2 smaller paths had been used by the bear. I set the lantern in that path before where the rat traps began.
The next morning I found that the 3 rat traps had been sprung on the path that had the lantern, but no plants were harmed.
The next day only the first trap past he lantern was sprung.
The 3rd day I saw the bears trackes where it had walked up as far as it took for the light & siren to come on, then turned around and left.
YES!
Like Pavolv with his dogs I had taught the bear to associate the light/siren with things jumping up of the ground and snapping at him.
The bear continued to patrol the woods, but he avoided my garden.
P.S. I harvested about a pound of buds off 4 of the remaining plants. 2 were sativa's that only got halfway thro budding before the early cold snap killed 'em.
