By Mike Koshmrl, Jackson Hole Daily
A black bear cub of the year was grabbed with a poled lasso Thursday and driven away from near the athletic fields between Jackson Hole Middle School and Colter Elementary School.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department had been receiving calls about an orphaned cub in the neighborhood for a couple of days before reports came in early that morning that the bear was roaming not far from where many of Teton County’s children were about to show up to school.
“It was behind the district office and sort of in and around the track and the stadium area,” Teton County School District spokeswoman Charlotte Reynolds said. “The bear actually never made it over to the Colter location, but staff of the district saw the bear and called 911.”
Teachers and staff made sure that kids who were already at school stayed indoors while wildlife managers and the schools’ facility staffers worked to catch the young bruin, Reynolds said.
“It was certainly a fun little reminder for students about what a special place we live in,” she said.
The operation consisted of basically herding the solo bear into a corner, where it was grabbed with a device called a catchpole, Game and Fish regional supervisor Brad Hovinga said.
The agency’s local large-carnivore biologist, Mike Boyce, then drove the bear away to relocate it to a more remote area to the north of Jackson. Its destination wasn’t available with certainty, but Hovinga said it might have been brought to the Togwotee Pass area.
It’s hard to say why the cub was orphaned at less than a year old. Sow black bears typically send their cubs packing at 1 1/2 years old, when they have a better shot at surviving.
“It’s possible the mother was hit by a car or even harvested this fall,” Hovinga said. “Or sometimes in a bad food year like this year, those females, if they’re in bad shape, will wean early and kick those cubs off.”
Boyce reported that the cub was “in really good shape,” Hovinga said, which bodes well for its chances of living to see another year. Sometimes instincts can kick in and even a cub of the year will find a den and hibernate, he said.
“It depends on the individual bear,” Hovinga said. “I don’t know that happens all the time.”
After weeks of regular conflict with bears — mostly with black bears, but also with grizzlies — in developed reaches of Jackson Hole, activity has slowed down quite a bit. In September conflicts were being dealt with daily.
“This is the first call we’ve had in weeks,” Hovinga said. “It seems like those bears have dispersed off the valley a little bit.”