 Excellent. So, hi everybody. Thank you very much for coming tonight. My name is Dustin Searcy. I'm the Game Warden for the Calta Plainfield District. It's really the northern half of Washington County, so I cover from Middlesex up to Cabot in Woodbury. I've been doing this job about eight years. It'll be eight years come July. I used to be down in Southern Vermont, but now I cover this area. And for those of you that don't know, we work for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and what we do is anything from what I'm doing tonight, public outreach about nuisance wildlife to responding to nuisance wildlife calls. We're law enforcement officers, so we also do law enforcement related to fish and wildlife law, but we also do recreational enforcement as well. Recreational enforcement means snowmobile, boating, ATVs, anything in between. Pretty much anything anyone likes to do outside, fun, and there's some laws with it. That's what the Game Wardens patrol. So that's what I do, but again, public outreach is a big part of what we do as well. Specifically tonight, I want to talk about bears. I don't have a PowerPoint or anything. The way I see this talk going tonight is I'll probably talk for, I don't know, 20, 25 minutes, maybe not even that long, and I'll kind of just go through the common issues that people have, which are trash, birdseed, bees, domestic livestock, and building damage. These are kind of the top things, with trash being at the top of those. 46% of our bear complaints are trash related, and compost is lumped in there as well, and we haven't teased out how much of those are compost specific, so I think that's a category we will get into eventually as far as data collection, but right now it's all lumped into one. The vast majority of which is trash and not compost. But specifically why I wanted to do it this year and talk about this is because last year we had four goat attacks in East Montpelier, and unfortunately a couple of those goats ended up dying, and it was really sad, and I think it was really a big shock to the system for me and for the town, and it was the first time I'd ever had anything like this in my eight years. I'd had the occasional bear try to get a sheep or something of that nature, but definitely never harmed the animal, and in this case, to actually grab a hold of four or four goats, it was likely one bear, but we don't know that for sure. Last year we did set out a trap to attempt to catch the bear, but we did not catch it, so I don't know what happened to this bear. I have a theory that it either learned its lesson because one of the goats it did attack was a ram, and I think it got rammed a few times in the head, so either the thing learned its lesson or it got severely injured. Don't know for sure, though, because we never actually saw this bear. We never actually caught it, but likely the same bear doing it. So what I want to do now is go through kind of the hot topics of what the issues are, how to solve some of these issues, but then I really just see, we have a relatively small group here tonight, so I think we can just open it up for questions when I get to the end of the, again, 20 minutes or so, and we can kind of dive into those specific situations that some folks might have and any specific questions, because I can talk generally about what to do, but I think talking about people's specific situation, how their trash is set up, or how their beehives are set up, or whatnot might be helpful to answer those specific questions for folks. And then in a perfect world, everyone here and on Zoom will help spread the word, because at the end of the day, it's definitely a community effort, because, you know, let's say everyone on Zoom here does a great job, does everything I say, but then no offense to two people in the room here, maybe you guys don't do everything I say, but you guys are neighbors to them, the bears will still learn to associate people and buildings and chickens and goats with food. And the goal is to ruin that association for the bears, and it really does take a community wide effort. So, let's start talking about trash. But actually, let me back up a little bit. I'll give a little bit of a background on bears, I suppose. So, black bears are a big game animal in this stage is why we classify them for the Fish and Wildlife Department. And why do they wake up so hungry? Well, it's because they quote-unquote hibernate. I'm using finger quotations because they don't have, they don't go into what nutritionally is a hibernation. A hibernation is a very, very deep state of low lethargy, low metabolic state, and they pretty much can't be woken out of it unless for the most part they can't. This is what they call a torpor. So, it's a lower metabolic state, not quite hibernation, but similar. Raccoons do it as well, and part of the reason for that is because they give birth during winter. So, they need to have some sense of, oh, I got to wake up now. And so, they actually, they give birth during winter, and then they nurse through winter as well. And so, nursing through winter is a very metabolically demanding thing, a very high energy thing. And so, to produce milk, so they wake up and they are, they are famished. So, the males as well, just because they burned all their fat through the winter, especially the females, because they need to continue, well, they need to basically regain the fat that they lost in order to produce the milk. The fat produces the milk and that's how they feed their young. And then, and then for the males, it's equally as important because they need to be big and strong to patrol their area and to look for females when it comes to the breeding season. And so, that's why they wake up so hungry and then towards the end of the season during the fall, they also have to pack on those pounds to get ready for the, again, hibernation, finger quotes. So, that's why they eat so much, right? And that's why they come out so hungry and so ravenous. So, what do they look for? They look for trash. And again, 46% of our calls are related to trash and compost. And I think it's just because everybody produces it. Everybody produces trash and, and compost in some way, shape or form, whether you're actually actively composting or not, everyone produces it. So, I think it's just a simple matter of numbers. It's not that people are bad at taking care of their trash. It's just a numbers game. If everyone produces trash, that's going to be the easiest thing that's accessible for those bears, right? So, how do you take care of your, of your trash? So, ideally, what you do is, and there's, it depends on what you have. So, if you have a trash, like a toaster on the side, ideally, you don't bring it out until the morning of pickup day. And that can be a little difficult, especially if you have like a 5 a.m. pickup. So, you've got to work with your waste haul. You've got to find out what their schedule is and try to work with that. Because if you leave it out the night before, the bears will learn that. The bears will learn what pickup, what pickup day is. And they just learn these routes over, over the course of the season. And they, and I see a lot of head nodding, and I'm sure there's head nodding, you know, metaphorically on Zoom here. But yeah, that's, that's what they, that's what they will do. And so, ammonia is really good if you have to leave the trash outside. The problem with ammonia, and what you can do with ammonia is that you're going to have a, either a soaked rag, kitty litter. So, that can work as well. Because they get ammonia in the litter. That's what I do every, every night before garbage pickup. I empty the cat box. And that's, and it's, and it's because for people listening here, so it's, it's specifically because of the ammonia. When, when the cat, when the cat's pee. It's a very bad smell. And it smells bad to us. So, it smells really bad to a bear. So, a bear's smell is about nine times as strong as a bloodhound dog, a bloodhound, bloodhound tracking dog. And that's the best tracking dog known, known to man. And so, so we're talking thousands of times stronger than our sense of smell. So, if it smells bad to us, it just, it's horrific. That smells horrific to a bear. It actually, it actually hurts their nose. It smells so bad. So, kitty litter works great. Straight ammonia is a bit better just because it's the straight ammonia. And some people, when they say kitty litter, some people then associate that to poop. So, so they actually love diapers. So, if you've got a baby like I do, don't assume that your diapers are going to keep the bear away. They, they love diapers. I don't know what it is. Actually, I think I've, I think, well, I've, I have some idea. This is, I think, because I think, I think baby poop is kind of sweet compared to, compared to other like cat poop. And so, so they smell that and they smell that and they think that they think it's great and they think it's, they think it's delicious for some reason. But also, a lot of diapers have like a perfume smell to them. So, that can attract them. And, and again, just to kind of emphasize their smell, even something like bird seed, if you leave out bird seed, with the wind in their direction, they can smell, smell that from half mile away, if not more. And so, it smells like nothing to us. But to them, they can really pick up on that. So, something that really smells like, like diapers, they can, they can pick up on that. So, cat litter is not the same as poop. So, cat litter good, just diapers, bad. Yeah, ammonia is great. So, you can either splash it in there or you can keep a rag soaked in there just on the top. Or, and just, you can, you can have a, the cut out part of a yogurt can or a soda can and just hang it on the inside with, with like a wire or something. And, all the way, if it's a trash toaster, it'll probably just get dumped during, during pickup day. So, really the simplest thing to do is to have a thing of ammonia, splash, splash it in every time you bring it out. And that's really good if you're leaving it in a shed or garage too, because then, because I've had calls, several calls where bears will go into Damagey garage or Damagey shed to get the trash. So, even if you're keeping your trash inside of a, a shed or garage, ammonia is a really awesome thing. It's really only not a great idea as if you're leaving it, say if you have to leave it inside the bathroom until pickup day, because that's your only, only option, right? I wouldn't do that just because ammonia, if it builds up and gets too hot, it can actually, it can actually, it's not good for you. So, if it's inside, don't use ammonia until it's going outside. And then, if you get, if you say live in an apartment or multiple people, if you're like using a dumpster, sorry, I'll silence that. If you're using a dumpster, it's a little more complicated because, so, Kisella is really the only place in the area that will offer a bear resistant dumpster, excuse me, and, and it's bear resistant, it's not bear, it's not bear proof. What they do is for an extra 30 bucks a month, they will put in some effort and, and kudos to them, honestly, because no one else is doing this, they'll still reinforce the lid and they put some, some chains on it, which again, the bear, a really determined bear could get through that, but certainly better than nothing. So, if you have mires or if you don't want to spend the extra 30 bucks a month, you can either get a good piece of plywood, three-quarters inch piece of plywood, you can put it, put it on top and you ratchet strap that down. And again, if you're in an apartment building or if you have multiple people using it, it can be difficult because you've got to get everybody on the same page and everybody has to use it the same way, which is why getting some sort of bear resistant dumpster, if you have Kisella is probably, is probably the way to go because it'll be easier to understand how to, how to use it. And, and what I'm going to talk about with all these things is that there's, there's tiers of intervention, right? So, like, if we're talking about trash, lowest tier is doing nothing, right? Just hoping nothing happens. I don't recommend that strategy, especially in this area because once the, once the bear finds it, it's going to be so much more difficult to stop that activity, which actually this is probably a good segue to talk about bear behavior, really bear, let's call it bear training or untraining, which can really be linked to like training, training a dog. So, if we know anything about, about training dogs or heck even training a toddler, I've got a toddler, positive reinforcement is, it works way better than negative reinforcement. We know that about dog. We just, we just know that science has proven that psychology and even animal psychology. So, the problem is, is we can't use positive reinforcement on a bear. There's no way to positively reinforce that bear to be in the woods. There's, we just have no way to do that. We can't reward the bear for being out in the woods because it's illegal to feed a bear. And even if it was, if we put food in the woods, there's probably just going to put it closer to another house. It's just, it's just not going to work in this state. We don't have giant pieces of woods. And then even if we did do that theoretically, all the bears would go to the same place and they would kill each other over the resources. So, it's a terrible idea. So, that's why we don't do that and that's why you can't do that. So, you can't positively reinforce that bear. So, the only tool we have is the negative reinforcement. And on the flip side of that, again, the positive reinforcement is every time they come to your house and they get bird seed or they get trash, that is a positive reinforcement. You are not, I say you, I'm speaking everybody and everybody in the state, we as a collective, you know, as collective citizens of the state are training these bears to come to our homes and to associate homes with people and people with food. And that's why we say a fed bear is a dead bear because whether you're intentionally doing it or not, every single bear that has ever caused an issue and that's had to be unfortunately killed by the department is because they have been started on something small, trash or bird seed. Our biologist, Jackie, she likes to say it's the gateway drug. The garbage and bird seed is the gateway drug to break it into cars, to break it into houses. And God forbid hurting people, which has happened I think six times in the history of this state. Luckily no one's known, only one person's ever been killed and that was a hunter back in 1943. And he shot the bear, went up to his quarry afterwards. His bear wasn't dead yet and the bear mauled him to death. And so super sad for that hunter and for that family, but also a hunter, a hunter likely should have had his firearm with him. And everything else has been related to some sort of activity, either dog walking or trash or most of those actually have been, the bear has been again started on trash and got habituated to people. So these 46% of calls, I'm going to spend a good chunk of time talking about trash because all of these bears, whether they goodness forbid attack a goad or goodness forbid attack, attack a person. And again, the person thing is very, very rare, doesn't happen out of hundreds of calls. I'm talking about six and last and last. So I said since 1943, we've been recording that since before then. So we're talking out 80 years probably. So very rare. I want to make that clear. Most bears are just absolutely terrified of people. They're just like big raccoons. If you yell at it, it's going to, it's going to run away. But the reason why we're talking about this is because the bears do have potential to cause that damage. They have potential to cause harm and it makes people nervous because it is such a big animal and because they aren't, because they can get to a point where they're not afraid of people. So the goal is to nip this thing in the bud and get these bears never to that point. Okay. So I'm going to go back, go back to talking about trash now. So if you're in a situation where, where say you have a toaster or you have, or you have trash in a dumpster, or let's say, let's say, I don't know, I'm just going to pick an example here. Let's say you cannot leave your trash inside. That's not an option, not an option, right? So the higher levels of intervention could be something like, actually this is going to be good. So this is, so this thing's a critter getter. And so if you have to leave something outside, and this doesn't really work for, so this, this shoots out, I'll explain this. So this shoots out a beam or I don't know if it's lasers. I'm going to call them lasers. I don't know what they are, but it shoots out some sort of detection at a 45 degree angle from each side. So it covers a, basically a 90 degree plane. And I think it goes out about 25 feet. So it covers a decent size area, perfect for covering the area of a trash receptacle, right? Or even a small garden. I've used this thing at, at my house to get rid of, to get rid of wood shucks. And of course, the second I put it away, the wood shucks, the wood shucks came back. So this, this thing works really well for, for a lot of things. The downside is it's about 90 bucks. But I'll show you, I'm going to show you, it's very loud. So I'm going to show you how, how it works. The reason it's 90 bucks, you can get cheaper ones on Amazon. Again, levels of intervention depends on how much you want to spend on it. I heard a quote recently, there are no solutions as only trade-offs. So this will work, this will work really well, but the trade-off is you got to spend more. You could use it, you could do the $25 one, but it might now work as well. The reason is because this one, one, it's a lot louder. Two, it changes the noise it makes. So it has different pitches, different volumes. So it really freaks the, freaks the animals out because the other ones will just emit a light and just go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. You'll see with this one when I, when I show and tell it right now, it makes a really loud noise, but, but different noise. Let me see what's a good place to put this. And I'm going to turn it on. Ouch, turn it on high just for the effect. So I'm going to put it right here and it takes like a second to warm up. So you, if it starts to make noise, you might want to plug your ears because it has to like calibrate and then since we're inside, it'll be loud. I'm hoping, I calibrated it earlier, so I'm hoping it won't go too crazy. We'll see. Very nervous. Okay. So it says to turn it on and you have to wait 30 seconds for it, for it to calibrate. So that's, so that's what you do with this thing. And, and so this is my department owned, owned once. So I've loaned this out to folks who are having trash issues and someone who was having chicken issues as well. There was a bear, actually this was in, was this East Montpelier? I think it was two years ago in East Montpelier. Bear was traversing someone's fence to get to their chickens and there was a particular weak spot in that fence. So we use this to protect that weak spot. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for a big area because the bear figured out, Oh, I can just go find this other weak spot. So this is good for a small area, not a large area. Okay. I just put a new battery in it. So it should work fine. So kind of annoying, kind of an annoying sound. And then you'll notice this is a little bit different. So change. So that little bit at the end changes. So it has seven different, I guess patterns or tones. And so it confuses them and not, and not just bears. This works for a lot different, a lot of different critters. So this is, this is mic'd up. This is for Orca, correct? So, so maybe I can, yeah. All right. Is this better? Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. So, so that's a, that's a great tool. Another tool is just a simple ratchet strap. And so if you have to leave it outside, and again, I recommend always using ammonia, because again, that'll cover up that smell. And then if the bear does get into it, luckily it'll get mostly a smell of ammonia and not the good, not the good stuff. And, but the ratchet straps work great as well. I recommend, you know, using, using two of these make X over your trash totter. And that should keep, I mean, this is, I mean, let's, let's be honest. I mean, this is nylon strap with a, with a metal buckle. A bear could easily defeat this if they want to. But at this point, and we're trying to work with our waste, waste haulers, but at this point, there are no waste haulers in the state that offer curbside, bear resistant or bear-proof trash totters. They don't have the equipment to deal with it. And I don't think it's a big enough issue, at least they don't see as a big enough issue for them where they want to invest in the, in the trucks to be able to handle it. And so I think it's one of these, one of these things where consumers, everyone has individual consumers, can contact them to either complain or to recommend to them that they get these things, you know, as a consumer, it's about demanding these things. And again, we've been, we've been working with these folks to try to, try to get them to work with us. And Castel seems willing to work with us again with the, with the bear resistant dumpster that they're using and that they're making. And they did that before we even recommended it. But still, I think the, at the end of the day, everyone here is the one who pays a, pays a waste hauler. So they're going to listen to everybody else here, before they listen to the, to the department. And so just keep, keep that in mind. So yeah, ratchets do work great, but it's about making it harder to get into. You're never going to make your trash totter impossible to get into for the, for these bears, unless we get these true bear approved containers. So yeah, so the goals that make it difficult to get into and not easy, because the easier it is to get into these bears, I mean, if they can get birdseed, trash, they can get all their calories they need in just a couple hours, versus they would take them a day to get an entire day of foraging. Why would they spend an entire day of foraging? And I mean, all day, I mean, all day, this is what they do. Go around looking for nuts, looking for berries, looking for food, especially right now. There's not much out there for them. And but at the end of the day, they evolved for this, right? They can, they can survive. They don't need us. They can, they will be fine. They need to find that food for them, for themselves. And so that's, that's just really important to, for them to understand. So and I'll answer specific questions about trash later. So birdseed, this one, this is one where we get about 15% of our bear complaints. So this is the next one on the list. So it's 46% and then 15%. And I don't know the percentage for the others, but it's kind of descending, descending from here. But my biologist really wanted me to emphasize that the 46 and the 15%. And so the birdseed, it's really just a matter of putting the birdseed away. It's, it's pretty simple. Trash is one thing where everyone has to produce it. We have to know how to manage it. We have to know how to, we are people, we produce trash. We are living in this ecosystem, but we have to also understand that the bears live in this ecosystem as well, right? Regardless of who was here first, it was the bears, but regardless of who was here first, it's about everybody living in this ecosystem together. We are part of their ecosystem. They're part of ours. We're not separate. Everything we do affects them. What they do affect, affects us, right? So we have to make sure that we keep, that we keep that in mind. So with birds, with birdseed, again, birds have evolved without us. They'll be just fine without, without birdseed. So I think the biggest thing with birdseed is you get a lot of people who are, who are, and I, and I, and I kind of categorize myself as this, as a bird nut. And so, cause I, in college, I took ornithology, I took field ornithology and I just love going out and spotting birds, listening to bird songs and finding them and identifying them. And I just, I do, I love, I love birds. I always have. And so, so I'm a, I'm a self identified, I'm a bird nut. And so, so, but you get people who just really love to see, to see birds, just like me. And the problem is when you get bears involved, it's really difficult to, to, to deter them. And especially, especially birdseed. Cause birdseed is such just like, just like the nuts you eat, you know, whether, well, peanuts aren't a true nut, but peanuts, pistachios, cashews, they are such a fatty, high calorie dense food. And the bears know that when they eat it, they fill up quick. So when they get birdseed, it's like finding a pot of gold. They will come back to that every single time, every single day, if they, if they know it's there. And I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking, thinking that, oh, it's just birdseed. You know, I don't mind filling it up. I like the birds. I like the bear. What's the, what's the big deal? The big deal is, is not a big deal until it is. It is just bears getting into trash or getting into birdseed until they're, until they're not. It's a, and that's often, often what happens. I've been to communities where somebody down the road will be feeding birds, but somebody that's, somebody that same year will have to have scared a bear out of there. This was in Barrie town two years ago. We'll have to have scared a bear away from their grandchildren because it was just kind of approaching their grandchildren. As far as I could tell, it wasn't going to, it wasn't going to harm them, but the person believed that, that it was. And so the, the grandmother had to scare, scare this bear away. Meanwhile, five houses down, someone was feeding birds. So, so you got to ask the question, how does that bear learn to associate people with food? So that bear wasn't going up to people because it wanted to hurt people. It was like, Oh, you must have food. You're a person. You must have food. All the other people have food around here. And so that's, so that's what it is. So it's about stopping that association. Now I will say there is a way and I, and I hesitate saying this because you really should just not be feeding birds. But there were people out there who just will feed birds no matter what. So this is what I read. This is the way to do it. They're actually, there's really two ways to do it. You could either keep the birdseed out and lay down a tarp, stake down a tarp. People don't like doing that because a tarp looks ugly. But then you pick up the tarp every single night. You pick up the birdseed and you're bringing it inside because bears can come during the day, but they're more likely to come at night because you can't just bring the birdseed in at night because the birdseed birds are messy, right? They're animals. So they're going to drop seed on the ground. So that is, that is one of the ways to do it. You can do the same thing with a shop vac. You could bring out a shop vac every night and clean it up. Again, I don't recommend doing this because that's hard. That's hard work that peep that and maybe everyone here will do it because clearly everyone here, if you're in this meeting, you care about this stuff. But I think your average Joe or Jane is not going to do that because that's hard work. So that's why I hesitate mentioning that outside, maybe outside of this group. But if you have a neighbor or if you have somebody who is really adamant that they just love their birds, try offering up this suggestion to them. Like, hey, why don't you just lay down a tarp? Or, hey, why don't you just, why don't you bring it out at night and clean it up with a shop vac? You know, be a neighborly person. You know, maybe you loan them their shop vac for a month or two. You know, it's about working with these folks to try to see if we can get something done with a compliance method. Because at the end of the day, worst case scenario, what happens is if you have neighbors or if you have folks who refuse to put in their birdseed, absolutely refuse to put in their trash and aren't doing anything to deter the bears or, goodness forbid, they are intentionally feeding the bears. All of those things are illegal. Once you know a bear is coming into your food source, you have to contain that. And so, if you have somebody that you've tried to work with them, or maybe it's somebody you don't feel comfortable approaching for one reason or another, maybe you don't know them, or maybe you don't have a relationship with them, that's certainly a situation to get me involved. Because what I do, and we always, in wardens, we issue way more warnings than we do tickets. Our solution is always to go in with the least intrusive method first, and then we work our way up progressively if we need to. So for us, it starts with a conversation. At least for me, and I know a lot of warden, I can't speak for every warden, but I know a lot of wardens operate this way. It's just a conversation. Some wardens lead with a letter. But for me, it's a conversation first, and then I'll issue a letter. And a letter says that you have to contain your birthday. You have to put away your birthday by this date. If you do not do that, then you could be issued a ticket. So for me, it's a conversation, let's call it a verbal warning, conversation, verbal warning, then it's a written warning in the form of a letter. And then you could actually be written a ticket for it. And so that's the progression. And I've only issued one feeding ticket, maybe two. And those are pretty egregious. Somebody hand feeding a bear or intentionally doing it. Usually when I issue a letter, usually people clean it up because they understand the value in that. So I just want to throw that out there because everyone will have a neighbor that they're thinking of that like, that person's not going to listen to any of this. So keep me in mind. And I can certainly keep everything anonymous and not tell the person who contacted me because what I do is I do patrol all the time. And I can just say, oh, I noticed that your bird seed was still out. And I noticed that there's a bear down the road. So I can just use that as kind of a nexus to talk to them to start a conversation. So that pretty much covers bird seed. Actually, the other method, so instead of just picking it up, and I've only seen this once, but I'm sure other people do it, you could put an electric fence around your bird feeders. There's a person in middle sex who does this. And I don't know how it doesn't zap the birds, but he loves birds and he's never zapped a bird, he said. But he has an electric fence. I don't know if there's something I don't understand. Again, I'm a bird nut, but I don't understand how this works. But he has electric fencing. He has electric fencing around his bird seed. He said he's never had an issue. And when I say bird seed, he has a lot of bird seed. When I say electric, like, yeah, I'm talking about five or six bird feeders. And we're talking about an area where people in Zoom can't see this. Well, you can get some perspective, but it's about the size. It's about this size, the size of you would take this rectangle of all these tables. It's about that size, bird feeders and electric fence. It just, and he just loves it. He just loves it. So that's an option. But again, that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. So I just say all this because for those people out there that just cannot stop feeding birds, there are options out there to do it and to do it safely. But it takes work. Again, there's no solutions. There's only trade-offs, right? So that's trash. Oh, I guess I kind of glossed over compost. And so I'll talk about that real quick. Compost in a nut shell. I think there's a myth going around there that our bear problems are because we started composting. It's probably a small contributing factor. Well, at least a lot of people have told me that. And it's probably a contributing factor. It's hard to know how much. But at the end of the day, whether we're throwing our refuse, our disposable or compostable refuse in the trash or in the compost, it's still going outside somewhere where it's accessible. So for me, it's one way or the other. But I will say that the vast majority of calls that actually, pretty much, maybe except for one that I can think about the top of my head, out of the, since the compost law has been passed, or since, I guess it was the recycling law and now we're in the composting phase of it. Since that started, the composting phase, I've been to maybe, I don't know, or at least spoken on the phone with maybe 70 or 80 people. Only one of those was actually composting the right way and still having issues. And so that's just a good guys for it. If you do everything the right way, there's a one out of 80 chance that you're still going to have a bear and that's just from my numbers. And so the right way to do it is to chop it up small, throw it in, put browns on it, mix it up. And when I say browns, put a bunch of browns, like three to four. And when I say browns, it's either dried grass clippings or leaves or pine needles. And so what that does is it covers up the smell. It helps it decompose faster and the mixing is super important as well. Layering is okay, but mixing it is much better. Get a pitch fork or something and you mix it. You can get a tumbler, but depending on the size of the tumbler, most of them won't accommodate that much brown. But they can, they can. A lot of it depends on how often you turn it. And also chopping up pieces small and putting them in the freezer will help the decomposition process because small pieces have more surface area, more opportunity for the bacteria to get in. And then freezing it will be an additional thing on top of that. So the gold standard would be chop it small, freezing it. And that helps break down the cell walls, just help it break down faster. So chop it, freeze it, throw it in, throw the browns on and mix it. And you probably only have to mix it once a week, once every, once every couple weeks. So yeah, 79 out of 80 people who, who, who I've been like, talked to about compost or been to their home, they are not, they're not doing that. They are just throwing food out, which is not composting. It's, well, I guess it will compost eventually. So it is composting, but when you're in bear country, it's not composting, it's feeding a bear. So, so keep that, keep that in mind that that is really important. And when we get to the Q and A, I, I could like, like for example, at my house, I use worm compost in my basement because I have bears and I don't want bears in my backyard. So I compost in my basement. So there's like a bunch of little things, there's a bunch of like weird and cool ways to compost if you're really all about it. Like, like, I guess, I guess I am. So, so that's compost, that's trash, that's bird seed. So pretty much the other things, buildings, the only real way to protect a building is with a, I mean, you could do an electric fence, but buildings are big. So really the best way is with a nail board, which sounds really cruel. And, and that's why I like to call it a bear unwelcome mat. It's a little, it's a little nicer. But at the end of the day, it is, it is cruel, but not cruel to the point where it's going to injure the bear. The idea with all these, all these techniques that I'm going to talk about next are we don't want to injure the bear. That's absolutely the last thing that we want, but we do want to cause a discomfort and a little bit of pain. Because again, that's the only way we can deter these bears. I wish we could have some sort of positive reinforcement technique to learn, to teach them that the woods is a better place to be, but we don't have that. So the only thing that we can do is teach them to not be at our place. That's the only tool that we have. So enter the bear unwelcome mat. So if you have a bear that's like to get into a certain window or maybe you have a corner of a shed that's really flimsy, you take a, you take a three quarter inch piece of plywood and you cut it out to the size of the area you're trying to protect. And you stick nails up, up through it in a two inch by two inch grid all the way throughout. And by the way, we have diagrams of pretty much everything I talk about are examples of all this stuff on our website. If you just Google, if you just Google living with black bears Vermont, it'll, all that stuff will come up. And if there are specific resources that people are looking for, you can just type them in the chat and I'll make sure, I'll make sure I send them to Rosie. And do we have a, will we have a list of the folks that attended and we can, but anyhow, if some, if some, yeah, if somebody wants to, if somebody wants something specific, perfect. Perfect. That, that sounds great. And so, so you stick nails up through it, but you don't stick the nails up too far. You only get, you only get nails that are maybe an inch and a quarter long, inch and a half long, because you don't want them to stick up more than a, more than about a half inch, because then that could actually get too deep on the bear. And the bear would still be, still be fine. That's going to get too deep and that could cause a little bit of a longer term injury. Whereas if you only get that nail through about a half inch, it's going to get, the equivalent to us would be, would be like some paper cuts, some, which are going to heal in a day or two. Same thing would happen to it, like it's going to hurt, but I'm going to be perfectly fine. And that's, that's the idea. That's going to teach me not to hold paper that way. And it's the same way it's going to teach that bear, not to go into that, go into that chicken coop or to go into that shed where that trash is. And so that's, that's the idea. And that's really the best way to protect, to protect a building. Anything beyond that, so we just start talking about livestock now. So, so the goats, right? And the chickens and all this stuff. The best way is with an electric fence. And the same thing with beehives as well. And electric fence is the really gold standard for anything. So all the things I talked about so far, trash, compost, bird seed, you know, buildings, houses, whatever. If you, there are electric fences that, like that have a ton of voltage and can go a long ways. It all depends on what kind of converter you have. And I'm certainly not an electric fence expert. I know what I know from, from this job. You know, I'm not, you know, I don't have, I don't have any beehives of my own or anything like that. I only know what I know from my eight years of experience. But in general, you want between 4,000 and 6,000 volts, which is around, which is, which is a lot of power. And so you're looking around and, and jewels is also a unit they use. So you're looking about a 0.7 to one jewel if that unit makes any more sense to you. That's what you're looking for. And ideally you use the net style fencing because that'll just cover more surface area. So the net kind of electric fencing is much, is much better. Oftentimes you see it around chicken coops, that kind of thing. And, but, but if not the net, then the four strand, four strands is ideal. And the more strange you have, the better. Again, because it's more surface area, you cover the better. And if you're having active issues, like if the bear is already somehow figured out how to get through your electric fence, one, make sure your fence is working correctly. You know, make sure it's got the right amount of voltage to deter a bear. But sometimes a bear, I've seen, I've seen a bear. And again, these are, these are the very determined bears. But I've seen a bear dig under an electric fence. I've seen bears just put down their head and just, and I say seen, I've seen the damage that comes from this after. I've seen bears just barrel, put their head down and just barrel straight through it. Because they learn like, oh, I've got, I've got a thick hide. I've got, I've got fat. I've got cover, I'm good to go. Once they do that once, even if accidentally, they're like, oh, I can do this again. So then how do you get them off of that? So the best way is by baiting the, baiting the electric fence. So you can do that with either a bacon strip on it. I like the tin foil method. So you want to do this with the fence off, but you put, but you put either bacon or the tin foil on, and then you either slap bacon grease or slap peanut butter on, and then you do that on each side of whatever area you're trying to protect. And that'll get the bear to come up to it, come up to it and sniff it, come up to it and lick it. And that's going to hurt. That's going to hurt the bear. Again, not going to injure the bear. This is not going to, this is not going to kill the bear. You know, we've never had, we've never had that happen. And so, but it is going to teach the bear quite a lesson, which is the goal. Again, I wish we didn't have to do this, but this is the only tool in our tool belt. So that is the goal is to teach that bear that if you, if you come, if you come here, something bad is going to happen to you. And so that's really the only way to deter that bear at that point. If it escalates beyond that, well that's a situation where I definitely need to come and check it out, because then we need to get very specific on what this bear is doing and how it's causing, causing this damage. And, and so, okay. So we talked about buildings, we talked about domestic animals, we talked about compost, we talked about bird seed. Those are really the, the big things that, that we, we come across. Now, we get, lia, excuse me, legality wise. So the laws around, the laws around bear, you know, some people immediately call me and ask me, well, can I, can I shoot the bear? That's not most people, but some people do call me and that's immediately what they want to do, even for getting into something like trash. The answer for the most part is, is no. So whether, no matter what it's getting into, you can't shoot a bear at a season. There are exceptions. There are exceptions to, to this. The exception is, we call it exigent circumstances. So if you or a family member, basically if a, if a bear breaks into your home, or even if it's outside of your home and you see a bear attacking, attacking your dog or attacking a goat, you can certainly, you can certainly kill that bear, right? Because at the end of the day, it's not what we want, but at the end of the day, you got to protect your family, you got to protect your animals. And again, all very rare, like we're only talking about a handful of instances in the state where this, where this happens every year. But sometimes this does get to this point. And I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm guessing, I'm thinking it's about probably eight to 10, probably eight to 10 bears that get killed in defensive property every year, maybe, maybe a bit more. One of the, one of the big ones is, is beehives. And part of the reason is that bears who get into beehives are very persistent. Because that, just like the bird seed, that is a high calorie dense, delicious food. And once they know what's there, they will just, they will not stop. They will not stop. So, so those small percentage of bears that will, that will dig under, that will put their head down and barrel through those are unfortunately the ones that have to be, that have to be shot. So that, so those are some of the exceptions. So if you have something like beehives, or if you have something like a building, if you've done what we call reasonable non-lethal measures, if you've done what you can do, everything you can do to stop that bear, well then you're okay to shoot that bear. If you catch that bear getting in again, you can't just shoot any bear you see, you have to catch the bear in the act. Some people like to take that as carte blanche, like, oh, I see a bear walking 100 yards away from my, from my beehive, I can shoot that bear. No, no, no, no, no, no. Now you can't do that. You got to catch the bear in the act of doing it. And so those are some of the instances when you can shoot a bear to protect yourself or to protect those things once you've done what you can do to prevent the bear from doing it. The exception to that is trash and bird seed. There's really no reason to shoot a bear ever. And I say no reason, you can't legally do it for getting into trash or bird seed. Because those are very simple things. We're not talking about anyone's livelihood. Trash has no value, the bird seed other than what you spent in it has no value. You cannot ever shoot a bear, for getting into your trash. And I say this, because almost every single year, at least one person, almost one person does it. I'll give a quick example of, of this is two years ago. You know, this might have been just last year. Somebody pretty close to here, I think this was Weitzfield. I think the Weitzfield warden, warden might have been off, but an individual who had been talked to about this previously shot a bear for trying to get into his, his trash. This gentleman walked outside with his shotgun with the intent of just scaring the bear off. But then the bear, with its cubs, the bear had cubs. The bear hopped off the trash can and started to walk towards the individual. The individual was pretty close to his home. He could have just walked inside, but the guy kind of panicked and he shot, and he shot the bear. And he eventually, so it was an interesting situation because he called the warden, but he tried to lie to the warden, saying that the bear attacked him and then it was, it was completely unprovoked. And luckily, the better half, the wife, talked some sense into him and told him to tell the truth. And so he eventually told the truth that the bear was just barely hopped off the trash can. He was in no danger and he just got, he got nervous, he said. But who knows what is, no one will ever know what was going on in his head except, except for him. Unfortunately, it orphaned two cubs. And so what we do in those situations is we caught the cubs or sadly, we only caught one of the cubs. So what we do is we set out bait for them, catch the cubs and we bring them down to, to the Kilham Bear Center, which is in Lyme, New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the other bear likely died because we couldn't, we couldn't catch it. It ran off and it had no mother to care, to care for it. So these are the consequences of if you break the law and you, and you kill these bears unnecessarily. And so that's kind of a cautionary tale of, of, of know yourself, you know, don't just go outside with a firearm if you, if you think that don't put yourself in danger, essentially, don't put yourself in that, in that situation. And then you'll never have any issues. Because when we, because when I talk about scaring a bear away, and actually this is probably a good transition, aside from protecting all of this stuff, scaring a bear away, I see it's 7-11 now, I've talked way more than 20 minutes, sorry, I'm about to, I'm about to stop after this. And so scaring a bear away, if you see a bear on your property, what I tell people is, that's great, take a, take a picture, they're really cool. But if you've got something that the bear is looking, looking to get into, you scare that bear away. And when I say scare that bear away, I mean, you yell at that bear, you do what you need to do, make that bear think, think that you are a person on fire and that you're going to catch that bear on fire if they come anywhere near your home. And I'm not, I'm not exaggerating, because I have people tell me that they yell at the bear and I, and I asked them to give me an example of what yelling is, they feel kind of silly doing it, but they, they're not yelling, they're not, they're not, they are not yelling. And so when I say yell, I mean yell. And if that doesn't work, I mean pick up something and throw it at the bear. I had to do this just this, just this summer, I was at, I was at a friend's house and, and, and one of my friends, she left a, she left a burrito bowl out on the deck and, and a bear came and one of the friends got up and was like, is that a bear? And me, I just got up, I was like, here we go. And so I walk outside on, on the deck with the bear, again, the door, the door's right here. And so I can just, I can easily go inside. I yelled at the bear, really yelled at the bear, but this bear been doing this for a long, a long time, clearly, not at this house, but at other houses and just stood there. So I had to yell even louder. So the bear, bear ran down at the, ran, ran down outside the deck. And, but the bear just stopped when it ran outside the deck. And luckily my buddies had come to help me yell, but the bear still went go. So then we had, we were grilling, which probably also attracted the bear. And so I picked up the spatula and I threw it at the bear. And I think it might have bounced and then, and then struck the bear in the butt. Again, didn't hurt at all. But that was enough. That was like, okay, the bear and the bear took off after that. So don't be afraid to try to really teach these bears a lesson. I don't mean hurt, I don't mean injure them. I don't mean take your 22 or a small caliber rifle and shoot them. No, I mean, I mean, as whatever you believe in, whatever you believe in, scare the living bejesus God into them. Like make them believe that if they come to your house again, something really, really bad is going to happen to them. And I'm really over exaggerating that because I, because when you see a bear, if you don't want it at your house, you have to really make that, like put on your best act, acting hat and just, you really have to make that bear believe that that bear does not want to be at your house. And there's also other methods that we can talk about. I've recommended paintball guns to folks, which again, sounds, sounds cruel, but a paintball gun, teaching a bear to not be at it. I mean, people shoot people with paintball guns. And so if it doesn't hurt us that bad, it's not going to hurt a bear that bad, right? And when I, again, I say hurt, I mean, temporarily injure. So, or not, I'm sorry, not temporarily injure, temporarily cause like a bruise. And that's the idea is that we do these things now to say, it sounds, it sounds weird, right? We do these things to save the bear's life because if the bear continues on this path, it will continue down a bad path. It will continue to learn to associate people with food and these bears will become bad bears. And unfortunately, it will only results in one way. And I absolutely hate that. So it's crazy to say, but I say shoot bears with paintballs, throw spatulas at them, to save them. It's a weird thing, but that's what we have to do. And but ideally, it never comes to that point, right? Ideally, they, if we can stop it at the front, stop the bird seed, stop the trash, if we can stop it at the front, then we never get to that point cause they will always be absolutely terrified of us when we even, when they even see us. So that's the goal. That's always the goal with these bear incidents. So that's my, that's my 20 minute chat that looked like it went 45 minutes, but, but I think that still leaves good time if people have specific questions about anything I said or if they want to ask about maybe any particular situation that that they had, I can give specific advice. So yeah, we could do either raised hands or Yeah. And Steve, if you've got, if you've got a story, if you think it'll be, if you think it'll be beneficial to the, to the group, I'd be happy to hear it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's a, well, good. That's good. Yeah. No, that's a, that's a good story, Steve. I think the only thing that surprises me is how persistent you were because like I said, most people would have went inside like your wife suggested and you probably should have. Your wife, sounds very, wife sounds very smart. I get it. I get it. Sunflower seed's expensive. But no, yeah. Yeah. No, and you're, and you're absolutely right. And I think that's, I think, I think you know, you know exactly that now is that, is that if, if that bird seed had never been there, if that sunflower seed had never been there, well, then yeah, that bear never would have been that persistent. But who knows, maybe it wasn't just you. It's very likely that other, other neighbors were doing the exact same thing. And, and that's, that is a big part of this is getting the neighbors on the, on the same page. So yeah, thanks, Steve. Yeah. And, and what, and I don't know, Rosie on the, on the, I don't know if you put this on the website. Did you put my contact information on there? Or? No, but I can't. Yeah. If you want to put it, put it on there and you can even type it in the chat if people, if people want it. So I can give you my, my cell phone just so you can type it in there. Yeah. 802-793-6629. So that makes the question when do you want to get contact? Yeah. You know, it seems like it might be under reported. You know, when I go to work in the morning, you know, six out of the seven trashes are knocked over on the side of the road. And I'm sure you're not getting calls about everyone. People just pick up the trash and, you know, off they go. So for data purposes, when do you want to get notified? Yeah. No, that's, that's a, that's a great point. So we have, we have a good tool on our, on our website. And again, Googling this stuff, Googling this stuff will get you there. You know, reported black bear sighting Vermont, it'll come, it'll come right up. So a lot of this stuff is pretty simple. We like to have as much data as possible. So if you have, if you have issues, you can report it online. You can certainly where it reported to me, but I'm going to go online and I'm just going to do that, do the same. I'm going to do the same thing. So, so for some reason, if you're not comfortable with the computer, if you'd rather me do it, certainly call me, but probably a better use of resources if you have, because you have the information. So to just, call me. Yeah. There we go. Perfect. Yeah. And so, and so what I will do is I will do the same thing. What I'm talking to all you folks about now, I will spend 30, 30s, sometimes 40 minutes on the phone talking to somebody about their specific, about their specific issue. And then once they tell me about it, then I'll put it, put it in online and occasionally I'll do site visits as well. And that's typically when there's some sort of high dollar value damage or say it's a situation that's close to a daycare or close to a school or something that involves kids who, who, well, all kids, you know, they just might not know better. They might just see a bear and decide to approach it or they might not have enough wherewithal to try to scare, scare the bear away, which is really even children if children stood their ground and tried to scare the bear away, most bears would go away. And for those, for those still here, that's another important thing that I hadn't talked about is that when you're telling folks about how to behave around a bear, never run away. Never run away. You don't need to stand your ground. You know, you don't need to, you don't need to throw, throw a can of off at it, like Steve did. And you don't have to stand, stand your ground in that way. But when I say stand your ground, I mean don't run away, slowly back away, but yell at the bear. Make sure the bear knows, knows where you are. And then, and then, you know, just retreat back to your home. Retreat back to your home or retreat back to your car. Whatever, whatever safe place is. Yeah, and make, exactly. Yeah, and make yourself big. Absolutely. And that's, that's another big one. And so, so yeah, contact me when it rises to that level where you're getting a little bit nervous. Maybe, maybe the bear's, maybe the bear's getting a little too brazen. Maybe it's causing some sort of high dollar value damage and doesn't have to be high dollar value. You know, it could be even getting a chicken, right, or damaging the corner of a shed. Because once it starts down that path, you know, I liked, yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna get worse. That's starting down. Now, now we got a bear who's past the gateway drug phase and it's getting into some, to some hard stuff at that point. And we want to, we want to, we want to stop that. We'll, we'll just watch that again. Yeah, and so, so I, just from up on the marker. Yep, exactly. And, and so, and what I can do is I can find the, the link and I can either send it to you. You send it to me and I can put it on the website. Perfect. Yeah, so I'll send that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the Google. The Google. Yeah, go ahead Steve. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question. So, so me personally, I've never come across a bear, a bear with, with cups, right? So everything I hear is either from, everything I know is either from other wardens or, or biologists or from the bear, or from, you know, bear rehabbers or whatnot. Or from people in their personal experience. But what I, what I can say is, you know, one of the, you know, one of the attacks that we had, that we had last year was an individual who was walking. And as far as I understand, I was not the warden who was responding. But from reading the report, as far as I understand, a person was walking their dog, dog was off leash, dog, dog all of a sudden came back through the bushes and mama bear was in tow. And, and ended up, and ended up, you know, trying to get the dog, but the woman got involved and, and the woman wasn't, wasn't severely injured, but the woman got away just fine. And I was personally involved, I did investigate an incident on my first year, down in Danby, Vermont, where a forester was in the, in the woods, and he had, it's common practice with them to have his dog, dog with him. And, and he had his, he had his dog and the dog, again, the dog unleashed. So a lot of this is a lesson in leashing your dog, even if you think you're in an area that's, that's, even if it's your own land, you know, by the town, by the town lodge, you probably don't have to leash your dog, as long as it's under some sort of voice control. Is that, would that be right, Rosie? Land or only? Yeah, so you wouldn't be in any sort of violation. But it's a good idea for the bear reasons, specifically, but also for deer as well, because they can't legally chase deer or moose. But specifically, since we're talking about bear, it's, so keep, keep your dogs on leash as best you can. You can have a long lead, the dog will be perfectly, perfectly happy. Because this is the thing that you're risking if, if it's not. So, so these bears were basically minding their, their own business, kind of like the example I just gave. But so back to the forester is that this, this, I don't even think the forester saw the bear at first. The, the dog noticed the bear in two cubs. These were yearling cubs. So yearling cubs have then gone, they were born one winter and then they go through a whole second winter. They basically learn how to, again, hibernate, finger quotes. They learn how to hibernate with the mom and then they're on their own. But they don't get kicked on their own till, till summertime. So this was in, this was in spring or early summer. So, so the bear chases after the two cubs. Two, the two yearling cubs, they hightail it. The mom does not go after, does, the mom does not go after the bear. The mom does not go after the cubs. The mom beelines it straight for the guy, straight for the forester. And we're talking from like 100, 150 yards out. And the thing's not stopping. Thing doesn't make a noise. Thing's not stopping. And, and that's, that's a bad, that's a bad sign. So a bear, if a bear just starts running at you without making a sound or any animal without making a sound, that's a good cue that's something bad is about, about to happen. Again, again, that's, that's a very, very rare. This is a very rare instance. But generally, people get really nervous when they hear a bear, when they hear it clackage jaws, when they hear it woofing. If it's making noise, it's trying to intimidate you. It has no interest in fighting you or hurting you. It wants you to just walk away. That's what it's trying to do. This bear made no noise, charged this person. Luckily this forester had a firearm on him and ended up shooting and killing the bear. And the bear dropped about six yards from him. And luckily the yearling cubs were old enough and they were about to be kicked on their own anyway. The yearling cubs are perfectly fine. So I don't know if that answers your question, Steve, but in a nutshell, it is best to avoid that situation if you can, but you can't predict that. You can't predict what bears you're going to run into in the woods. So when you come across a bear, assume it's a female with cubs, but you're going to act the same way anyway. You're going to act the same exact way. You're going to make yourself big, loud. Keep your eyes on it, slowly, slowly back away. It's going to be the same protocol either way. And I think the only lesson that I've learned over my eight years is if you are walking with a dog, keep your dog on a leash. And I can think, I think of at least, is at least three instances like that that I can think of that involve the dog. Yeah. It can, it can, but if we're talking about a mama with cubs, that's not going to happen. The mama's not going to leave. And you making yourself big with a mama in cubs is not to say, hey, I'm bigger than you. Get out of here. It's to say, it's to say, hey, I'm here. I'm leaving. And I say yell at it. Like you're yelling it. Bear, hey, hey, get out of here, bear. And you're leaving. You are never going to be able to scare away a mama with cubs if the mama believes that the cubs are thread. Well, I shouldn't say never. Never say never avoid saying always. But that's going to be a much different situation if you come across a year, a yearling cub who's still very, very skittish, right? Which will again be different if you come across a big male who's the king of the jungle and nothing's ever bothered him in his life. So kind of brings me to a point that I wanted to make which was every bear is different. Every situation is different. Every bear is going to have a different experience just like all of us. So what might work with one bear? Some people say they put bleach in their trash and that's always worked. Well, that might work, but we don't recommend it because ammonia works better. Right? Cat litter works better. And so every bear is different. And that includes mama and cubs. That includes big males. That includes little bears. And so when we're talking about all these things, you're really going to have to play a game of chess with these bears and you could go to the highest level of intervention. You know, you could use ammonia. You could get the critter-gitter critter-gitter here. You could, you could, you could get an electric fence. You could do it, you could do it all right from the get-go. But generally I recommend that people start with the lowest level intervention and work your way up. But really it's all about your personality as well. If you're just an all-in kind of person and you want to make sure that your stuff is as safe as possible. Again, there's no solutions only trade-offs. You'd have to spend more money up front, more time up front, but in the long run it'd be much better for you. There isn't better for whatever you're trying to, trying to protect. Come on, I thought people would have specific examples of- Bill, I live in Berlin and I'm going upstairs to Alistair's apartment. Yeah. So, and we have no shed, no any place to put our garbage. Mm-hmm, yep. So, you know, I'm, I'm a good composter. I throw my stuff in the freezer and then I take it off to some place to get it composted. My neighbor downstairs not so much. And, you know, they don't recycle either. Yeah. They're not cleaning out their cottage cheese containers or whatever. But of course, because I'm the upstairs neighbor near the road, I'm the one that's got to pick up the garbage when it gets screwed across the yard. Yeah. So anyway, I started doing the kitty litter thing and I started putting my cat litter in her box. And she was upset because I was using and I'm like, well, you know, you have two choices. You can either let me put my kitty litter in there or you can start dealing with your trash on your own. Fortunately, that neighbor no longer lives there. But anyway. Yeah. So the kitty litter has worked. I mean, you know, obviously, you know, the cat gets cleaned out frequently, but you know, you'll layer it and it works. So a cat litter is probably better. Yeah. But cat litter works. Yeah. Because it does have ammonia in it. And what was the what was the trash situation at that apartment? Was there a dumpster? No, it was just the toasters. Just the toasters. Toasters, you know. So we had four toasters to recycling. Yeah. And was that included in the rent? It was included in the rent. Okay. Yeah. And sometimes with that and and apartment buildings can be tough because you have to convince the landlord to do something. Well, I had a property management company. Okay. I talked with them and they're like, well, you know, tie it up. Is it a bungee cord? And I'm like, yeah, that isn't gonna work. Yeah. I mean, this was a mama bear with two cups. Yeah. We saw them. Yeah. I put out a game camera. So, you know, I knew it's like, okay, we gotta, we gotta deal with this. Yeah. Otherwise, we're gonna be here all the time. Yeah. And if anyone knows someone who lives in an apartment building or if you live in an apartment building and you're having issues, yeah, you gotta work with the property manager or the or the landlord. I mean, you can always try to, I mean, apartment buildings are tough because you can just leave the trash inside. You know, consolidate your trash as best you can. Don't bring it out until the pickup until the pickup day. And but in an apartment, that's gonna be tough. I mean, and it's track. Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna smell. Composting helps with that. It's gonna make sure that the trash doesn't smell as bad. But still, if you don't want trash just in the bathroom, right? So really the best thing to do and what I recommend to folks, a relatively inexpensive thing for most landlords to do is to build some sort of steel cage. Like, use chain link fencing. Again, a bear could break into it if they wanted. Either a steel, a steel cage enclosure that just has a simple, simple latch, something, you know, maybe just a carabiner that a bear likely won't be able to defeat. You know, with just, you know, in each post will be concreted into the ground. Or even something like, something, ideally built something out of, other than pallets, but some sort of equivalent wooden structure that has, again, a clip on it just makes it more difficult for the bear to get into it. That plus ammonia would likely help. And, but yeah, apartment buildings are tough because you gotta get the landlord on board. My, one of my counterparts, Katie Palmer in the Hardwick area, she has a trailer park, which is again managed by a property manager and the property manager, it used, they used to be dumpsters but now they've gone rid of the dumpsters and now they're all individual toters and basically residents there are just very upset. They don't know, they don't, and they have, they have bears and so they don't have really any solutions because that property manager really isn't really willing to, to work with them. And so that leaves us as law enforcement and, and the residents as in a real weird spot because us as law enforcement, you know, we can order somebody to contain their trash or contain their bird seed but if it's the property manager's fault, I really need to get the property manager a ticket or, or a letter but I can't really do that because they're not the ones, it's not there. So it creates a very, a very awkward position and really the best thing to do is to get all the tenants on board and, and, and either, I don't know, a petition or you can, and you can certainly contact me as well or somebody, one of my counterparts and we can talk to the, to the property manager. We've had some success with that but at the end of the day, it's, it's the same thing as trying to convince Cassela or Myers or some of these other waste haulers to go to the, to the bear, bear-proof dumpsters. It's just, we can make suggestions, we can tell them what we believe is best but private entities are private entities and, you know, and, and yeah, that is a delicate situation. Well, the situation resolved itself because my landlord now lives downstairs and he lets me do it. Well, there we go. There we go. And some of this stuff is a self, is a self-correcting problem and it will self-correct just because if somebody has a, a close running with a bear, well they're probably, it's probably going to teach them that they need to clean up their act, right? However, what damage is going to be done in that meantime and what kind of damage is going to be done to other folks because of what that bear has learned before that person learned their lesson, right? And so that's, that's what I'm concerned about there but yeah. So we'll see if they come down here. Yeah, we'll see. Because last spring we did okay. Yeah. There's another warden who covers, who covers Berlin and, and that's another thing as well. If you, if you folks lose this phone number, all of my, my number is public, that cell phone. That's, that's, that's this. This is a great map on a fish and wild life. Exactly. Yeah, that gets me, that gets you to this phone number right here. I have it on all the time. I'm on call 24 seven. Just if you have a bear issue, please don't, if it can wait till morning, please just don't wake me and my wife up at 2am for something that's not an emergency, please. But, but yeah, that's my, that's my cell phone. And, but if you lose it for some reason, if you just google contact, if I'm on game warden. Yeah. Yeah. It'll bring you into, bring it to our website. You can even call 911 and they'll give you the number. Exactly. We dispatch through our state, through state police. We lease or, or not exactly sure how it works. But, but anyhow, state police essentially helps us and they dispatch for us. So, so 911 goes to state police and then gets you in contact with us with a local warden if there is an emergency. Absolutely. Yeah. So, do you have a question? Do you? No, I was, I got bear, beehives, bear hives. Yeah. And I got the four strand rigid wire and I baited it before and that really ticks the neighbor's dog off. So, so they've learned real quick not to go around my bees. Yeah. But I got a trail cam set up and had a big male bear walking by well over 300 pounds didn't do any damage to the bees or must have, you know, sense the fence and they just moved on. My issue is, is late fall, early spring. When I have snow, I've got my bottom strand six inches from the ground and everything's going to short out. So, and it's a solar charger because it's far away from the house so I take that in for the winter time and I've got a mail strap to secure the beehives during the winter time over their cozy blanket. Unfortunately, haven't had any issues with them. But again, that's quite an investment for somebody. I mean, bee equipment is going to be expensive anyway and then you add another three, four hundred dollars for electric fence. It gets quite expensive. And a couple of years ago, we started doing quail and we raised them in a hutch similar to a rabbit hutch and they smell, they got seed all over the place. I know it's only a matter of time and sure enough, one day, daylight, bear come walking up by Jason off all around it. It runs away. I gave you a call. You offered some great information. I skimped on the critter-gitter and got the cheaper ones that you were talking about and they didn't work or they work too well, but they don't shut off. Okay. Yeah. You know, something walked by at two o'clock in the morning, my wife freaking out, thinking it was a bear and it was just a flying squirrel and it goes off until you shut the thing off. So I'm going to get a picture of that. Yeah. And I can include a link. I can include a link to this as well because this- Do you want permission for those? No. No, no. This is just something, not even every warden has these anymore, I guess, but I got issued this when I started. So this thing is like 10 years old now. If not more, they're made in America or at least they're assembled in America. I don't know where the parts come from and that's part of the reason why they're expensive. But you can't get them on Amazon. You can only get them from this person's website. And so they're, I don't know, very, very good. Yeah, sounds good. But does the state offer any programs to help protect whether it's bees or chickens or goats or anything or is it all just knowledge based? That's a great question. And one thing before I forget, the difference between this one is it's not just motion sense. From what I remember from their website is that this is also, this detects not just motion, but I think it's infrared as well, which is why it's more expensive. So it's not going to get sense. It's not going to get. The wind blows and it goes off. Yeah, that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. Yeah, so that's that. So programs, there's really no programs that I know of. There are programs out there and we can reimburse if there is damage after the fact. And but there's there's teas that have to be crossed, eyes that have to be dotted there as long as to again, make sure that you've got electric fence to make sure it's up to up to up to snuff, so to speak. And but you're talking about more preventative programs. Like is that what you're kind of talking about? Like like maybe giving somebody money for an electric fence or something like that? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, obviously there would be have to show a need for that. Yeah. I mean, if you could afford to be equivalent. I would afford to. Yeah, and that's certainly and that's certainly and that's certainly part of it. But but yeah, money is absolutely, absolutely a factor, which is why we kind of have that part of the reason why we have this tiered tiered response to things. And but yeah, whether you're talking about that or whether you're talking, I was having a conversation with with with somebody the other day that there are organizations out there that have an interest. You know, we don't we certainly don't the my employer, the department certainly doesn't align with everything that they everything that they align with. But they try to do a lot of good things. One example is protect our protect our wildlife. I don't know. Again, I'm they don't agree with everything that the department agrees with, but they but they have an interest in protecting wildlife. So if you have say, you know, I don't know if a Beehive situation would be would be appropriate. But let's say you have a neighbor who's maybe they're on social security. They have, you know, maybe they just don't have the money or the funds to even buy ratchet straps, right? Or to even, you know, maybe they just maybe maybe funds can be gathered from some of these nonprofits. Or just through donations through the community, or maybe just neighbors being neighbors can put something together. But dance, but to answer your answer your question, there are no state programs for for that. Pretty much what I what I do is I've offered so I loan, I loan this out. I've loaned out ratchet straps before. I've offered to build things for folks before, you know, bear simple things like bear and welcome. I'm not going to go and build a whole structure, but something simple. Yeah, exactly. Is there any talk of the bear population and carrying capacity? And, you know, are we exceeding that? Or are we just making things easy for them? You know, is there, you know, I know some states have like a spring bear hunt, you know, I know that hunting with dogs is, you know, the hot topic issue. When I was having issues with the bear on my house, I was trying to have bear dogs and say, hey, you want me to come up and run the bear off? And I was like, oh, no, there's a lot of cars and neighborhoods and that's not a good idea. Yeah. But, you know, are there, you know, are the bears exceeding their territorial? Yeah. I mean, are they just, you know, pushing each other out of the woods? Yeah. Or are they just finding easy stuff to get now? That's a good question. I'm sorry. I know we're running late. No, it's okay. No, it's okay. I just want to make a, yeah, how long do we schedule this for? I don't know. Okay. All right. Cool. And so, I'd like to be home by nine. Yeah. Okay. All right. That sounds, that sounds good. No, I am going to answer. I just want to, I'm going to write a quick note to myself because you got me thinking about something, you know, I'm talking about people who maybe can't afford or maybe don't have the ability to build something. If they're only options to either seek, help from a non-profit or seek help from a neighbor. And maybe I can talk to my biologist. I don't know if there are any grants. Like for example, I know I think we've used some federal funding and I shouldn't say that. I don't know exactly where the funding comes from, but we've hired technicians to help people with this kind of thing. Mostly what I'm doing now, education, outreach, handing out flyers, that kind of thing. And but I wonder if there's a more of a preventative program that we could get into accessing some of those, some of those funds. So I just want to want to write myself a quick note. Grants for prevention. Okay. So population. So right now, we're hovering. Last, last time I heard the biologist talk was last year. So my numbers might be a little behind, but we're hovering right around, around 6,000 bears, which is pretty much as much as, as much as we want. That's right. 6,000. Okay. 6,000, which, you know, all state of mind really doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like that many. The problem is they have giant home ranges. And again, not a biologist, but we're talking, but we're talking, they can walk, walk eight, nine miles, miles in a day if they really, really want to. And of course, males generally have bigger home ranges because they're, you know, they're looking for more food in there, especially in the breeding season, they're looking for, looking for females. And so, so we're hovering right around 6,000 bears, which actually is the, the top. But what we've seen over the last 15, 17 years, maybe, maybe a touch more is it's actually fluctuated around there. It's gone from like 4,500 to 6,000, 4,500 to 6,000, based on part of its hunting pressure, of course, but also food, food availability. And hunting pressure is definitely part of it, right? Hunting helps manage, manage the population, you know, keep them at a sustainable level. And of course, you know, brings good meat to, to folks' table. And you know, people don't like to eat bear, but it is good if you prepare, right? And if you take, if you take care of it, right? You can't hang it like a deer because, because the, as bears, bears have a lot of, a lot of fat. A bear have, have a lot of fat on them and they can spoil, spoil the meat pretty quickly. And so there's a lot, so there's a lot of benefit to the management there. I just got to throw in that plug. But, but as far as the population goes, so we are, basically, we're waiting and seeing, right? Because what we've done now is, I think it's the last three years, we've, we've hit record harvest. You know, for the number of bears that, that hunters have killed during, during the bear season. So we've talked about implementing a spring season, but our biologist is hesitant to do that. She wants to give it a couple more years and I don't blame her because, because after the, the record harvest, and when I say record harvest, and it sound, and it sounds like a lot because it's close to a thousand bears a year. We're, it's a 900, 980 something, but just under a thousand. So in the 900s for the last three years. And that sounds like a lot considering we have 6,000 bears, but bears, but bears typically, the females typically have, have two, sometimes three. I've heard reports of four. So, what we, what we know is that population is super healthy. So over the last, so that those record harvests have not put a dent in the, in the population. So it's still super healthy, super, super abundant. Right. And so we're going to give it a couple of years before we decide if you want to do anything else. What the data has shown is that typically extending the season, a longer season is typically how you manage the, the bear population instead of adding an additional season. So, or adding an additional, I shouldn't say an additional season because that would extend the season. But, but say versus adding an additional bear for, some people have thrown that idea out there as well as do we add an additional bear. So we're not, we're not there yet. We're going to, we're going to wait and see. But based on the pattern, we think it's going to eventually go back down. If it doesn't go back down, if we start inching towards 6,500, 6,600, if it keeps going up, then yeah, the biologists and, and the big, so we have this, we have a wildlife management team that discusses these things. They advise members of law enforcement and members of the other biological team and they discuss these things. And we do, we do a big game plan every 10 years, which involves bear. And so we're coming, well, I guess we're in, I guess it's every decade. So we're in year five of that. And so pretty much we're, I don't think we'd give it five years, but probably another year or two. And again, not the biologists, but from, but from conversations I've had with her and, and, and she's, she's very good, very knowledgeable. And so I imagine we're going to give it another year or two and see what the population does. But those talks are happening if it continues on this, on this upward trend. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a good question. Oh, good question. Is this being such a small area? Yeah. Is it even worth it to kind of relocate them for it? Yeah. Good, good question. Yes. Yes. They just come back. And so, so, so a lot of people ask that, well, can you just, can you just move it? You know, I even had somebody when I was covering Berry City for a spell before we had the new warden there. I had someone even tell me that there should be no bears. She even extended it to, to no foxes, no coyotes. There should be no animals in Berry City and you need, you need to remove them all. And she told me she was going to complain to my boss and complain to the city. And, and I never heard anything of it. So I don't know what happened. It, exactly. So, and so, and I really like to harp on this idea that we are not separate from wildlife. We are, we, everything we do affects. Yeah, exactly. It's about coexistence, right? And, and the more we separate ourselves from wildlife, the more we're going to start to have those types of ideas that they don't belong here. Well, no, we all belong here. It's about coexistence. And so, and I'm sorry, I started rambling and I forgot your question. Relocation. Thank you. We will do that on occasion, but it has to be a very specific instance and it's pretty much up, it's every time it's up to the biologist. I think maybe we try it once a year. And a lot of times what we'll do is we'll either do a hard release on site and a hard release is what we'll do is we'll actually, we'll recruit. Sometimes we'll ask, ask someone who hunts bear with dogs. We'll ask them to come and, and to scare the bear away. But we'll also use air, air horns, paintball guns, you know, we'll use those things. So we catch the bear on site and release it on site. But we teach it that, hey, if you come here again, something really bad. Something really bad is going to happen to you. And there are some states that, that have teams that, that have warden teams that do this basically full time during the spring and the summer. Just because that's, that's the technique that they, that they've decided to, to use. And I think that can, can work. We don't have any specific, as far as I know, we don't have any specific data on that here. But what we do know from, from other states and from some, some, at least anecdotal things that we, that we've seen is that, so when we have relocated a bear, and actually this state is mostly from other states and, so when we do relocate a bear, and I say we, biologists, state, state game, fishing game commissions, fishing wildlife commissions, it goes back. It goes back. And it creates, it creates a complicated situation because we often don't know if it's a mom with cups. We don't often know if it's, if it's just a lone male. If we know it's a lone individual, that is the time when my biologist will consider it. And oftentimes only if it is a, a younger animal, a yearling, that probably can still learn its lesson. And, and is at the point where it's been kicked out by its, by its mom at that point. It'll probably, because it hasn't established its range yet, it hasn't learned all the bad habits. There's a chance that that bear might be able to be relocated and accustomed to somewhere else. It's a rebellious teenager. Yes, exactly. There was a chance for that, for that bear. The problem is we can't do that. We can't do that for every bear. And there's a lot, there's a lot of reasons for that. There are some states, I think even New Hampshire does it a bunch. And, and, but New Hampshire is not a big state either. The reason why we don't do it here is because, A, we know it doesn't work, but B, let's say we did do that. We can't, we can't bring all the bears to Pennsylvania. We can't bring all the bears to New York. We can't bring them to New, to New Hampshire. So, and we only have so many big words in this state. We've got Greenmount National Forest. We have some federal, we have a bunch of federal land up in the Northeast Kingdom. But we can't bring, and we get, we get, I think, I'm sure I'm, I'm not going to get these numbers right, but we're into, we're into close to like 15, 1600 bear complaints a year. I think our record year was in 20, 2022, I think. And, but anyhow, a lot of bear complaints and a lot of these people ask us to relocate the bear. So if we, if we took, so if we took, but yeah, exactly. Let's say we took half of those. If we took 750 bears every single year and put them in the same pieces of land, the only piece of land that we could relocate them, those areas would just be inundated and they would just, they would just tear each other apart and then there, they would just be absolutely havoc for those spillover towns. It would just be, yeah, it just would not work. I think some of these bear states can get away with it, but it, and honestly, I think the states that do do it, it's a big public relations thing. Yeah. Because people like the idea, it's the same reason people legally can't do this, but people like to, you know, trap the raccoon that's in their, that's in their garage and move it elsewhere. And, but you legally can't do that. And there's a lot of reasons. Raccoons can carry rabies and a lot of times it happens during the spring. They have babies in the spring, right? So then you orphan those babies so that creates a situation where, oh, I don't, I don't want these, the mom's gone. What do I do with these babies? The babies can't survive without the mom. So it's kind of, it's, it's like, it's like that, right? So, okay. What else? Anything else? I answered all the questions. I can't believe it. Certainly given us a lot of permission. Yeah. No, it's, I didn't know I'm going to, going to laugh. There's a lot of things up with ammonia when the quail come. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah. And then there's a lot of little, there's a lot of little things like that. Like, like, I talked for 45 minutes and I honestly wasn't even, I was trying to keep it short. Like, there's like, there's a lot of little things like, like things that people say will work. I've heard of people putting, putting out like balloons that are filled with hot cayenne pepper and you put a little bit of peanut butter on it and then the bear comes and bites it and then the bear gets a face full of cayenne pepper. And I've heard some people say that works, but some people say it just, it just draws the bear, draws the bear in and it doesn't really learn its lesson. Right. That's what I get worried about. It's like baiting the bear, that the peahawks is like, I don't want to attract the bear. Yeah. You know, if they're not there, and that's why that's, that's the worst case scenario. So that's when you got a really persistent bear that that bear is not getting shocked and that bear needs to get shocked. And also game cameras are absolutely fantastic. If you have a problem bear, or maybe you don't even know what's a bear, maybe it does a raccoon, maybe it's just a giant raccoon. Someone, someone called me today and said that there was a raccoon dumping over a 40 pound block off of their trash container. And they said that they double strapped it with ratchet straps and they said a raccoon is getting into it. I don't believe it. He swears it's a raccoon. And so use trail cameras. Use trail cameras to find out, okay, how is this bear defeating my whatever it is? You know, the more information you, it really is a chess game. It's a chess game and just, and just hopefully you don't lose too much money in the process. And if you do, let's try to nip that in the bud. If you start to lose money, whatever it is, beehives, chickens, yeah, goodness forbid, you know, building damage, that's, you can call me. And you can even call me. There's nothing wrong with a phone call too. Like, like if you, if you want to submit a bear complaint, but you don't know, or if you have a neighbor or somebody who just doesn't, doesn't know, you know, like the things that we talked about, how to secure the trash, how to, how to put away the bird seed, or, you know, hope everyone knows how to put away bird seed, but you know what I mean. Yeah, I am more than happy to have those simple, simple convo, conversations. Yeah, anytime. Yeah. Like I said, I talked to you a couple of years ago and it was outstanding and very useful. Oh, thanks. Yeah, no, I'm very, yeah, yeah, to my best. Yeah. No, I'm very interested in talking about, and talking about this, because I just want, I really do believe that if I could snap a finger and if everybody in East Montpellier, if everybody in Vermont could just do one thing and just either put their trash away or if they had their trash outside, dose it with ammonia, I bet our bear calls would just go down by half at least. I shouldn't say half, because it's 46%. So maybe a little less than half, but yeah, there's just simple things that everybody can do. And I think these really, these really, I think it comes down to these bear complaints. I've only really started to tick up in the last few years. And I think we think it all started since COVID. And so we don't think it's so much because of the population, but these bear since COVID, so many people were home. They were producing more trash, more compost. We are now into a situation where multiple generations have learned that, oh, I get food from people. So that's our current, that's our current biologist theory. That's more of a learned behavior and not a population thing. Again, we're going to see what the population does, but we're pretty sure that's a big part of it. Because ever since 2020, everybody, everybody was at home, producing more trash all the time and the trash was at home. And so we will see. Time will tell. But I'm full of little tricks. So if you get stumped, give me a ring. Sounds good. So if you can just send me the information that you want me to have. And you'll put it on the website. I'll have the teleminister put on the website and I'll put it on the platform so it at least gets out there. Cool. So that people know the thing and find it. Yep, that's great. Awesome. Yeah, that's all I've got. One more thing before you leave, just take a picture of that so I can get one. Yeah, sure. Thanks, everybody.