Bear Tracks!

This morning, while Tom was doing some spring wake-up tasks for the motorhome, he noticed some tracks.   He thought they might be bear tracks and came in to tell me about them. 

 

When I went out to look at them, camera in hand, I immediately went back for a ruler.  These were not wimpy little bear tracks - they were good size tracks and I wanted to document just how big.  The front paw is almost a full 5 inches across.  And the back foot is 8 inches long with the claws; 7 without.  It had just walked from (across?) the road and through the yard, right next to the motorhome, headed deeper into Columbine.  I think it's fairly safe to assume it came out of the park.

 

I think there's a good chance it's a large male.  A rule of thumb bear hunters use is to measure the width of the front paw, add one, and that's how long (tall) your bear is.  So 5 +1 gives me a 6 foot bear that might weigh around 250.  Actually it's probably lighter since it's still spring, and a lot of their natural food sources haven't sprouted/bloomed/fruited for them and they're still looking to start regaining the weight they lost over the winter.

 

I'm hoping this bear finds some good natural food sources.  We keep our garbage can in the garage, which is normally a safe practice.  If the bears get hungry enough they will break doors to get to the trash can.  There have been some interesting reports on the news recently, including one where the bear came into a garage (with a trash can) and accidentally closed the door it had used to come in.  Then it broke the overhead door window (and more) to get out of the garage.