Biologists Finally Know What's Hunting Black Bears in Montana - And No One Can Believe It

A young black bear was found buried under a warm mound of dirt on Montana's Rocky Mountain Front. The whole town blamed a mountain lion. They were wrong. Retired field biologist Vern Hale walks through the clues that solved it, and the four natural hunters every black bear has to watch for. One of them is another black bear. FROM VERN'S FIELD NOTEBOOK - The mound: soil dug from a wide circle, roots torn out, and a flattened bed pressed into the top. A cougar does not cover a kill that way. - The bite: two punctures just under 2 inches apart. A mountain lion's canines sit a little over 1.5 inches apart. - The color problem: about half the black bears taken by hunters in southwest Montana are brown, cinnamon or blond. Montana makes every black bear hunter pass a bear identification test, with 80% needed to pass. - The comeback: grizzlies reached the Missouri River in 2010, the Big Snowy Mountains in 2021, and the Judith River in 2023, about a century after the last ones there. - The twist: bears showed up at 8 of 55 cougar kills in Glacier and 19 of 58 in Yellowstone. Out here, the bear usually robs the cat. CHAPTERS 00:00 The warm mound 00:57 Waiting at the kill site 01:30 Is the black bear really on top? 02:21 Three notes in my field notebook 03:47 The detail that did not fit 05:43 Four strikes against the lion 06:26 What buries a kill out here 06:51 Brown black bears and the ID test 08:00 Hunter number one 09:34 The Ice Age climbing theory 10:52 Grizzlies walk back onto the plains 12:08 Meriwether Lewis and the river 13:02 Old Ephraim and the silvertip 14:42 Hunter number two 15:53 Hunter number three 17:19 Hunter number four 18:22 The honest version 19:26 What Juniper taught me If you ever find a fresh mound of dirt in bear country, do not walk up to it. Back out the way you came, and talk loud. Vern's own field stories are told for illustration. The studies, places and numbers he cites are real. #blackbear #grizzlybear #montana