For years, the Gallagher family has welcomed crowds of visitors to their seasonal corn maze and pumpkin patch near Clark, Wyoming.
But there are other visitors showing up with growing frequency — grizzly bears hungry for corn.
“They like to come down here into our sweet corn field. Every summer, we end up getting grizzly bears,” Bridget Gallagher told Cowboy State Daily. “Every year, there just seems to be more and more of them.”
She and her husband Cecil open Gallagher’s Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch for about a month each fall. This year, they wrapped up operations Sunday — with no reports of grizzly trouble.
That could be due in part to a new five-strand, 9,600-foot-long electric fence surrounding the corn maze and the adjacent attractions. It was finished a few days after the maze and pumpkin patch opened Sept. 27.
Electric fences are great bear deterrents, Wyoming Game and Fish Large Carnivore Specialist Dan Thompson told Cowboy State Daily.
“We're pretty excited about that fence in the corn maze and hoping it helps things for the future,” he said.
Along with Game and Fish, the project was backed by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, USDA Wildlife Services and Defenders of Wildlife.
‘The Corn Is Really Thick’
Gallagher said she and her family were relieved to see the fence go in.
The sweet corn field where grizzlies go to feast is about a mile away from where they set up the corn maze and pumpkin patch. So far, nobody has been mauled or charged by bears.
But taking precautions seems like a much better idea than waiting for something terrible to happen, Gallagher said.
“We just had a single strand of electric fence before,” she said.
Their property is near the Montana state line, right at the base of the Beartooth Mountains, about 30 miles north of Cody.
Grizzlies typically show up in August, coming down out of the mountains to gobble the sweet corn. They like it when it’s fresh and soft, Gallagher said.
“As the corn ripens and hardens a little later on, they seem to lose interest in it,” she said.
So far, the Gallaghers and their employees haven’t had any direct confrontations with grizzlies in their sweet corn, but things have gotten spooky a time or two.
“The corn’s pretty thick. You can’t really see even six rows over,” she said.
“One time we were in there, and the dogs were acting kind of weird,” she said. “We found a patch where a grizzly had been bedded down, and it was still warm. It must have heard us coming and moved off right before we got there.
“Ever year, there gets to be a little more bear activity. There’s too many of them, that’s the problem.”
Fencing Works Well, In Certain Circumstances
Electric fences are a great way to keep grizzlies out of trouble, but it’s a limited option, Thompson said.
“Electricity works extremely well for grizzly bears but it’s unrealistic to assume we should fence the entirety of corn in Park County, hence the localized nature of the sweet corn and corn maze as that's a different human safety risk,” he said.
“We have done dozens of fencing projects in cooperation with USDA Wildlife Services around apiaries, chicken coops, fruit trees (and) gardens primarily throughout northwest Wyoming, but also other parts of the state for black bears,” Thompson added.
There’s no doubt that grizzlies are on the move, he said.
“Nothing is drawing bears out of the mountains,” Thompson said. “Bears have expanded beyond those mountainous, remote habitats where there are more options for securing attractants and fewer options for bears to find easy foods.”
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
