ALL CLEAR

I am questioning my decision to post these two pictures but it is a fact of life up north that sometimes you have to do things that you don't like to do and this is one of those times.  We have had a problem with one particular bear that has been coming around for the past several weeks.  We know that he has been on our driveway and close to the garage.  He has been visiting the feeders we put up for the deer and actually tearing them off the trees.  We tried not putting corn out for a while but he continued to come around.  We have deer hunters coming up for the hunt on November 2 and when you have a bear you don't have deer.  Not to mention the fact that they head out to their blinds in early morning and you don't want to surprise a bear this size in the dark.  We had to do something about the bear.
Long story short, Rejean headed out to the blind at 6pm Sunday - I stayed home.  I heard the shot at 6:30 and Rejean called me on the walkie-talkie that he had him.  He stayed in the blind just to be sure the bear was dead and not just injured.  I called some friends for help in retrieving the bear before it got too dark.  He had only run about 50 feet before he went down.  Arnold says it weighs over 200 pounds and a nice healthy male.  He will be butchering it today and we will be getting some roasts and maybe some pepperettes from it.
When we went out today to put the feeders back up, I noticed an oak tree with broken branches all around the base of the tree.  Looking closer you could see that all the way up to the top of the tree branches had been broken off.  The bear must have been after the acorns.  It must have climbed the tree and broken the branches all the way up the tree.  Amazing such a big bear could climb out on those branches to break them off.  It wasn't a good year for berries so they had to look elsewhere for food sources to fatten up before their hibernation.
I do feel bad about killing the bear but it did have to be done.  You can't have a bear this size wandering around where people live and hope you don't run into it.  After living up here for 10 years, it was the first time I was a bit scared to walk to the mailbox to get my mail.

I hope it is the last bear that we have to deal with in this way.