State wildlife biologists in Montmorency County recently removed a blue plastic lid from the neck of a black bear that had carried the encumbrance around for two years.
According to a release sent by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, state wildlife biologists in Montmorency County don't know exactly where or how the male bear got its head stuck in a 5-inch hole in the lid. Some hunters will use 55-gallon drums to bait bear and landowners are known to store materials, like chicken feed, in similar buckets that will attract bears. The lid is similar to ones that would be on those types of barrels.
Legally, hunters can use baiting as a method for hunting bears in Michigan. However, containers can only be used on private land and may only have holes that are either 1 inch or less or 22 inches or greater in diameter.
Landowners can do their part by recycling or crushing containers such as empty cheeseball tubs and being “BearWise” about securing garbage, according to Cody Norton, bear furbearer and small game specialist at the Michigan DNR.
“Container openings of a certain size can result in bears and other wildlife getting their heads or other body parts stuck in them, leading to injury or death,” Norton said. “It’s important to remember that the opening diameter is more important than the size of the container.”
The then-cub was first seen through trail camera photos by the DNR's Atlanta field office in 2023. Over the next two years, it would occasionally appear on other trail camera photos, but disappear after a day or so.
In late May, a Hillman resident spotted the bear in trail camera photos taken on his wooded acreage and alerted the DNR. With the landowner’s permission, state biologists set up a baited enclosure trap and caught the animal safely on June 2. After anesthetizing the bear, they cut the lid off its neck and collected body measurements and other data.
The bear weighed 110 pounds, had significant scarring, and an abscess on its neck, but otherwise seemed healthy. Once the anesthesia wore off, the bear was released back onto the property.
Michigan is home to 13,000 black bears, of which 1,700 call the Lower Peninsula home. Because of this, Norton said the trapping, chemical immobilizing and data-collecting effort "provided DNR staff with valuable training and information that can inform future research and bear-management strategies," according to the release.
