A young female black bear evaded local law enforcement and wildlife authorities for two days as it wandered in and around Worland, raiding dumpsters and garbage cans.
She was finally treed in a resident’s backyard on Thursday afternoon, shot with tranquilizer darts and captured.
The bear was first spotted at the local golf course, Worland wildlife photographer James Yule told Cowboy State Daily.
He dubbed the bear, which weighed about 75 pounds, “Par 5.”
“She was out at the golf course for a day and then she decided, ‘To heck with this, I’m going into town to party,’” Yule said. “She spent a couple of days running back and forth and was in every single dumpster."
At one point, Par 5 evaded capture by going way back into some Creekside weeds and “lying down in some cool swamp water,” Yule said.
Authorities tried hazing the bear out with noisy “whistler” charges fired from shotguns, but that didn’t work, he said.
‘She Might Be Given Another Chance’
Washakie County Sheriff’s Office deputies “were able to guide the bear into a tree in the Crimson/Cardinal area of Worland,” before it was tranquilized, according to the sheriff’s office.
After it was captured, Wyoming Game and Fish personnel took custody of the bear, the sheriff’s office stated.
Yule was on site when the bear was captured. He said he was told by Game and Fish agents that the bear will likely be released back into the wild, though it might have been previously captured in the Sheridan area.
"She might be given another chance because she’s a breeding-age female,” Yule said.
An inquiry sent to Game and Fish about the bear’s status on Friday wasn’t answered by publication time.
Bears getting too used to human-provided food sources, what wildlife agencies call “food conditioning,” is one reason why bears are sometimes captured and killed.
That was the case with another 3-year-old Wyoming black bear, which was killed by wildlife agents last month in Grand Teton National Park after it repeatedly obtained human food and started approaching people in the Jenny Lake area.
Yule said he hopes nobody hand-fed Par 5 during her adventure in Worland.
“Once somebody hand-feeds a bear, it will start walking right up to people expecting to get more food,” he said.
‘She Thought It Was A Cave’
Worland resident Ron Goyn told Cowboy State Daily that he came home for lunch on Thursday and found the bear lurking in his backyard.
“My dog just blew up barking, viciously in the house, by my sliding glass door,” he said.
“I’m glad I had that door closed, because I glanced out there, and there was this black bear, just standing on my porch,” he said.
The bear started wandering about the yard, showing great interest in Goyn’s chicken coop.
“Apparently, she thought it was a cave,” and tried going inside, he said, adding that thankfully, his chickens were behind a fence and were unhurt.
The bear clambered over his fence and ended up in his neighbor’s yard, where it was treed by deputies, he said.
He added that he called Yule to come over and take photos.
Yule said the police tried shooting the bear with a tranquilizer dart, which made it drowsy, but didn’t knock it out. Then Game and Fish agents arrived and darted it again, which did the trick.
“When the bear fell asleep, it got wedged in a fork in the branches,” Goyn said.
Yule said that a cherry-picker lift was brought in from a local business, and a Game and Fish biologist and sheriff’s deputy used it to reach the bear and heave it out of the tree.
‘Kind Of A Strange Deal For Worland’
Goyn said the drama with the bear in his and his neighbor’s yards lasted about three hours before Game and Fish finally hauled it away.
“It was kind of a strange deal for Worland,” he said.
There are occasionally black bears in the general area, but one coming into town is highly unusual.
"You hear about bears every once in a while along the Bighorn River,” he said. "There’s a lot of good natural resources for them along that river."
Contact Mark Heinz at mark@cowboystatedaily.com
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
