The tale of one lost bear cub and its rescue by game wardens

Living on Earth
Bear caught in sleeping bag

2015's heat and drought in Montana forced many black bear families to forage far from their natural habitat. Quite a few of the wandering bears wound up being shot or hit by cars. And that means there were a lot of orphaned black bear cubs this year.

“We’ve been really, really busy with bears, all throughout the state this year,” says Brady Murphy, a game warden in Augusta, Montana. “We’ve handled a lot of different urban wildlife bear complaints.”

While wildlife in the West is often protected by authorities, the animals' presence is not always appreciated residents.

Reporter Clay Scott of Mountain West Voices found himself right in the thick of things when he and a friend spotted a black bear cub while driving down a dirt road on the Montana prairie, miles from suitable black bear habitat.

“At first, as it scurried through the grass, it looked like a black lab puppy. Then it scampered up a power pole,” Scott said.

Scott made a call and game wardens were soon on the way. When they arrived, less than a half hour later, the cub was looking down at them from the top of a 40-foot power pole.

Bear on pole

The black bear cub perched atop a telephone pole, just seconds before he lost consciousness from the tranquilizer and fell. (Photo: Sarah Hewitt)

Warden Murphy decided to try to get some Telazol, a tranquilizer, into the bear so they could bring him somewhere to be relocated. He didn't have any tranquilizer darts, so he put out a call for help. Two other wardens responded from other districts and set out for their location.

Game wardens in Montana cover vast territories. Teigan Winters drove 50 miles to the spot; Kqyn Kuka came in from north of Great Falls, an hour-and-a-half drive. Scott asked Murphy why, in the middle of hunting season, three wardens would converge on a power pole in the middle of the prairie to tranquilize a black bear cub.

“You don’t do this job to get rich. You do it because you love the resources and you want to protect them, and you have that strong passion,” Murphy responded.

When the other wardens arrived with a dart pistol and tranquilizers, they realized that, even if they managed to hit the bear cub with a dart, the cub wouldn’t survive the fall. Instead, they devised a plan is to lure the cub down, chase him up a smaller pole and then dart him. Kuka offered her sleeping bag as a kind of net to catch the falling cub.

First, they tried firing a blank cartridge from a shotgun over the bear’s head to frighten him into moving down. But at the explosion, the cub didn't even flinch.

Finally, for reasons known only to the cub, he straddled the pole and started to move down. When he reached the ground, the group gave chase in their pickup truck. As hoped, the cub scurried across the road and up the smaller pole.

One expertly-placed dart shot later, the cub began to wobble on the pole and the wardens rushed into place to catch him.

“Here he comes!” Kuka exclaimed. “Oh, yes! You got him! Unbelievable! We did it!”

They laid the cub carefully in the back of the pick-up. It turned out to be a male, weighing less than 25 pounds. The cub will spend the winter at Montana Wild, the wildlife rehab center in Helena, and will be released next spring.

This article is based on story that aired on PRI's Living on Earth with Steve Curwood

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