Predatory attack or ill-fated dinner search?
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is terming an incident that left a Las Vegas man with a puncture wound in his leg a predatory bear attack, but Bill Lea, a renowned wildlife photographer who’s spent years observing bears in the wild, says he’s not buying it.
Bear euthanized following backcountry bite
Campers at the Spence Field Appalachian Trail Shelter in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park spent a harrowing evening in the backcountry May 10, huddling together for protection as a big black bear roamed the site. Around 11:16 p.m. that evening, it had approached a tent occupied by 49-year-old Bradley Veeder, of Las Vegas, biting the man’s leg through the canvas, then repeatedly returning to the area to snuffle through the then-empty tents.
Of bears and bees
I am not nearly so frustrated with my black oil sunflower seed-addicted bruin neighbor as I was after his little escapade last Friday morning around 2 a.m. I was trying to finish some writing before I left for my pre-dawn “day job” when I heard some noise on the deck. I had chased a raccoon away the night before and figured it was back. But the noise had a little more substance to it. Bear, I thought.
Gaming the system: Hunters snared in Operation Something Bruin claim legal proceedings were unjust
By Katie Reeder • SMN Intern
Hunters accused in a sweeping bear poaching sting in Western North Carolina have turned the tables on wildlife officers and prosecutors, tarnishing an operation that was initially trumpeted as a victorious round-up of rouge hunters.
Bear hunting guide brought down after failing to rein in reckless ‘client’
By Katie Reeder • SMN Intern
When Chad Arnold pulled into War Paint Kennels during fall bear season in 2011, Jerry Parker pegged him as just another flat-lander willing to fork out big dough to bag a bear.
The bait battle: paw-lickin’ good
The hunting community and wildlife officers have been engaged in an ongoing tug-of-war over the practice of baiting bears to make them easier to hunt.
With a little help from hunters, wildlife officials hope to curb the exploding bear population in the mountains
North Carolina has a bear problem, and wildlife officials hope hunters can help.
The population of black bears has been on the rise for decades — it’s more than doubled in the past 20 years alone — and needs to be reined in, according to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. The obvious solution is getting hunters to hunt more of them. The trick, however, is getting the formula right.
SEE ALSO: The bait battle: paw-lickin’ good
Going rogue: Undercover bear poaching sting uses dubious tactics to trap hunters
By Katie Reeder • SMN Intern
All Chad Crisp took with him was his Bible as he headed into Elkton Federal Correctional Institute in Ohio last week. For a rural mountain boy who’d never left home, 20 months of federal prison would be a long, hard road.
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• Cast of characters
“I felt that my heart would burst as I hugged him and told him I loved him and everything would be all right and that we would be back soon,” Linda Crisp, his mother, said. “For a mother, her son – no matter how old he is – is still in some ways a child in her eyes, and she wants to always protect him.”
Cast of characters
Davey Webb (alias Davey Williams): an agent with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources who first started hunting with the Crisps in the fall of 2010.
Hearing demands answers about bear poaching sting
By Katie Reeder • SMN Intern
A recurring theme emerged in a congressional oversight hearing last week aimed at shedding light on the questionable tactics and motives of wildlife agencies behind the now-infamous undercover poaching sting known as Operation Something Bruin: where is the line between personal freedoms and governmental oversight?
