TLDR: bear woke me up because he was getting after my turkey fryer, so I poked him in the face with a dowel rod.
Full Story:
Well... looks like it might be another bad year for bears in Pagosa. I'm seeing more and more each week in our neighborhood, I'm assuming a correlation with tourists renting homes and leaving stuff out. It's a hassle now that so many in our neighborhood are VRBO'ing.
Woke up a little bit ago to some noise on the back porch. Grab the flashlight and gun, and go investigate. I see a pretty decent (he's maybe 175-200) cinnamon colored bear on the concrete patio just off of our deck. He is 5' from our back door, and has my turkey fryer (which hasn't been used in months) on its side with his head in it. I flip on the porch light- no response as he is sprawled out on his belly with his head buried inside the fryer licking the inside.
I'm out of spray, which is my normal go to. I remember a big piece of 1.5" wooden dowel I had leftover from a honey-do project, it's about 6.5' long. I grab it and ease the sliding glass door open a hair. My wife is behind me, holding the flashlight saying over and over "What are you doing- Don't poke the bear! DON'T POKE THE BEAR!"
The bottom of the fryer is closest to me, bear on the far side. The bear is going at it like a dog licking peanut butter out of a Kong toy. I hit the fryer with the dowel, and the bear pulls his head out and stares blankly at me momentarily, licking his lips. The dowel is only about a foot from his face at this point, so I give it a good shove- and let go fully expecting him to grab it and go nuts. Instead, he turns his head and I catch him square on the jaw, a little harder that I intended. The dowel makes a huge racket as he slaps it away.
This sends him scurrying away at warp speed, tripping over a tarp and face-sliding down the steep hill in my back yard, before clumsily lumbering over my back fence. Pistol and light in hand, I carefully survey the surroundings and try to give him a little more audible motivation to leave the area. He responds with a snort from the neighbor's yard (only 20-30 yards away)- so I snort back at him as loud as I possibly can. Crashing brush is the last thing I hear as he tears off down the canyon.
Going back and looking at the crime scene- he came all the way on my deck to check out my grill (we did hamburgers tonight, but I cleaned it well). There are greasy footprints everywhere. That SOB found my brand new can of grill spray and punctured it (I wish I had a video of that...). This really pisses me off- because NO ONE in freaking Pagosa sells grill spray except for like 2 weeks in the summer. I had to order this online, and it JUST came yesterday. It looked like the bear climbed on my couch (on the deck), and sat down for a rest, greasy foot prints and the cushions have hair on them. Then he crawled under the table (probably licking up crumbs from the kids, we ate outside) before descending on the turkey fryer.
Guess I better put up the game cameras this year to capture the circus. My wife wouldn't go upstairs to get my phone and recorded this- I told her TexAgs needs proof of the story, or the Darwin-award committee would need proof of my death. She thinks I'm nuts (she isn't wrong). But here are some pics of the aftermath. I had already grabbed my fryer before taking pics- no real damage thankfully.
And... I'm STILL mad about that grill spray.
Full Story:
Well... looks like it might be another bad year for bears in Pagosa. I'm seeing more and more each week in our neighborhood, I'm assuming a correlation with tourists renting homes and leaving stuff out. It's a hassle now that so many in our neighborhood are VRBO'ing.
Woke up a little bit ago to some noise on the back porch. Grab the flashlight and gun, and go investigate. I see a pretty decent (he's maybe 175-200) cinnamon colored bear on the concrete patio just off of our deck. He is 5' from our back door, and has my turkey fryer (which hasn't been used in months) on its side with his head in it. I flip on the porch light- no response as he is sprawled out on his belly with his head buried inside the fryer licking the inside.
I'm out of spray, which is my normal go to. I remember a big piece of 1.5" wooden dowel I had leftover from a honey-do project, it's about 6.5' long. I grab it and ease the sliding glass door open a hair. My wife is behind me, holding the flashlight saying over and over "What are you doing- Don't poke the bear! DON'T POKE THE BEAR!"
The bottom of the fryer is closest to me, bear on the far side. The bear is going at it like a dog licking peanut butter out of a Kong toy. I hit the fryer with the dowel, and the bear pulls his head out and stares blankly at me momentarily, licking his lips. The dowel is only about a foot from his face at this point, so I give it a good shove- and let go fully expecting him to grab it and go nuts. Instead, he turns his head and I catch him square on the jaw, a little harder that I intended. The dowel makes a huge racket as he slaps it away.
This sends him scurrying away at warp speed, tripping over a tarp and face-sliding down the steep hill in my back yard, before clumsily lumbering over my back fence. Pistol and light in hand, I carefully survey the surroundings and try to give him a little more audible motivation to leave the area. He responds with a snort from the neighbor's yard (only 20-30 yards away)- so I snort back at him as loud as I possibly can. Crashing brush is the last thing I hear as he tears off down the canyon.
Going back and looking at the crime scene- he came all the way on my deck to check out my grill (we did hamburgers tonight, but I cleaned it well). There are greasy footprints everywhere. That SOB found my brand new can of grill spray and punctured it (I wish I had a video of that...). This really pisses me off- because NO ONE in freaking Pagosa sells grill spray except for like 2 weeks in the summer. I had to order this online, and it JUST came yesterday. It looked like the bear climbed on my couch (on the deck), and sat down for a rest, greasy foot prints and the cushions have hair on them. Then he crawled under the table (probably licking up crumbs from the kids, we ate outside) before descending on the turkey fryer.
Guess I better put up the game cameras this year to capture the circus. My wife wouldn't go upstairs to get my phone and recorded this- I told her TexAgs needs proof of the story, or the Darwin-award committee would need proof of my death. She thinks I'm nuts (she isn't wrong). But here are some pics of the aftermath. I had already grabbed my fryer before taking pics- no real damage thankfully.
And... I'm STILL mad about that grill spray.
