Me, the old fool

There's no fool like an old fool. That's me.

As far as protecting my cameras from bears, I did well this year. That is, until December when I let my guard down.

I thought the bears were sleeping by mid-November. I had consulted the literature and that's the schedule in Washington State. Here in northern California I assumed it would be a little later.

I hadn't seen any bear scat in the woods for a few weeks, and since we've had some freezing weather, I left the bear guards at home. I put 6 cameras out this month, and the camera set you see above seemed to hold most promise. At least the setting was more picturesque.

On December 17th or 20th a bear smelled the gopher I had hung behind the leaning fir next to the log. The camera must have flashed, and the bear went for the camera. This is when the spikes on the bear guard give the bear an attitude adjustment. But there was no bear guard.

The bear opened the case, pulled the camera out and at the same time tore out the internal wiring to the controller. The case was held to the tree with a double loop of bungie cord, so the lid snapped shut and protected the batteries and controller from the weather.

The bear carried the camera to the log and left it face down on the moss. There's a tooth mark in the LCD.

Then the rain came.

The only good thing about a bear-trashed camera is looking at the pictures and witnessing the crime being committed. But not one of the 40 pictures turned out. They were all black images.

I am still drying the camera near the woodburning stove, and spent yesterday morning putting bear guards on the other cameras.

This would never happen to the redhead. She doesn't take chances.

I'm afraid I fit the definition of an "old fool" to a T.

Camera trap trashers and flashers

Camera trappers have three kinds of "bad trips".

Camera trap theft is by far the worst, because it transforms your normally lovable camera trapper into a brooding fiend obsessed with fantasies of revenge. Since most camera trappers don't consider therapy an option, they subject their families and friends to tiresome re-runs of imaginary Stephen King-like scenarios of revenge for months on end. In due course it all comes to pass, but they forever wear a small red button on their foreheads. If you push it, you'll hear the psychodrama all over again.

Vandalism affects our mental health too. Common poachers, thwarted by steel cable and locks, are known to have trashed camera traps when it dawned on them that they were photographed trying to steal them. This is also terribly disturbing for us guys who are just trying to have fun in the woods, and the psychological effects are the same as above.

Some camera trappers find a trashed camera easier to take when the perpetrator is a bear. Salvagable parts may also give some consolation. More often the bear's infraction is seen as a compelling reason to exact reverge when hunting season rolls around. Fortunately these corrective actions have not depressed the curiosity trait in the black bear's gene pool. Whether he takes revenge or not, the wise camera trapper is advised to chalk it up to experience, and in the future protect his camera with a bear guard.

A few camera trappers, clearly a minority, accept such a loss with resignation. They are a rare lot.

A camera trapping colleague in Colorado said losing his Furfindr (a predator sound decoy) was worth it just to get a picture of the cougar in the act.

My friend Brian Miller lost his camera trap when the intended subject, a beaver, cut and dismembered the tree to which the camera was attached. He never found a sign of it afterwards, but thought the beaver might have incorporated it into its lodge. I admired the equanimity with which he accepted this act of nature. It was as if the Great Spirit had sent him a message . . . "Not with my beavers you won't".

Then there are the camera flashers. Dr. Francie Cuthbert, a professor at the University of Minnesota recently took up camera trapping to monitor predator activity around piping plover nests in northern Michigan. Her bevy of grad students (nearly all women) has been studying this population for 25 years.

The students' skewed sex ratio may be part of the problem. This past summer more nude men entered the "closed areas" and sauntered past the cameras than plover predators.

Dr. Cuthbert observes, "The beach has always attracted a few nudists, and they don't think anyone is watching, but our cameras captured quite a record." (Appreciative of the decorum of this blog's virtuous readership, she has kindly spared us the images.)

She continues, "At the end of the summer someone discovered the hidden cameras and, in a rage, pulled out the memory cards and threw most of the cameras in the lake. We need some effective deterrents for the flashers, and the camera vandals, whoever they were."

Any suggestions out there on how to discourage these miscreants? Paint ball guns? Aldrich snares? Let's hear it.