Department of Bears: Tahoe Bear Wars 2009

Meanwhile in Northern Nevada, it's been a mighty year for bears - the #1 threat to America. This was in Wednesday's Reno Gazette-Journal:

A large bear with an attitude might have caused up to $70,000 in damage this year in Incline Village, officials say.

The black bear, likely a male weighing perhaps 700 pounds, has evaded traps and avoided special night patrols.

Two gunshots fired by a homeowner made the bear stay away for a couple of weeks.

"The deputies up there all say he's the biggest bear they've ever seen," said Carl Lackey, a biologist and bear expert for the Nevada Department of Wildlife who has been chasing this bear for three years. "He'll walk right by a trap, he won't go in them. He's really random in where he goes.

The black bear, likely a male weighing perhaps 700 pounds, has evaded traps and avoided special night patrols.

Two gunshots fired by a homeowner made the bear stay away for a couple of weeks.

"The deputies up there all say he's the biggest bear they've ever seen," said Carl Lackey, a biologist and bear expert for the Nevada Department of Wildlife who has been chasing this bear for three years. "He'll walk right by a trap, he won't go in them. He's really random in where he goes.

"He's made it real tough to catch up with him."

Incline resident Claire Vaughan heard a crash one night and saw a "huge" bear that had just knocked out a panel of her garage door. She watched as the bear tried to open the door latch of a locked car parked outside, displaying a working knowledge of that potential gateway to goodies.

"He's smart. He's super smart," Vaughan said. "He's a big, bad boy."

The bear was confronted this summer in an Incline Village home it had visited several times before, causing extensive damage, Lackey said. The bear was at the bottom of a staircase, the homeowner at the top with a .44 Magnum handgun.

"He shot it right between the eyes and the bullet bounced off his skull," Lackey said. "We know that because we found it.

"He shot it again and hit it. We know that because there was a lot of blood, but it wasn't a mortal wound."

Lackey said the bear returned after a couple of weeks, breaking into garages and going after trash or food in freezers. He said the bear has broken into 40 or 50 Incline garages this summer.

"It's all in the same area and it's the same M.O. all the time," Lackey said. [...]

That's Hollywood material. Updates if they ever catch the "big, bad boy". And there's a long list of bear break-ins in the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza. (A bear got into my parents' garage this year, as reported here.)