For at least two years, a Michigan black bear traipsed around the forest, a blue barrel lid wrapped around its neck, as state wildlife experts tried to track it down.
The bear was first spotted on a trail camera as a cub back in 2023, but it remained elusive. It occasionally turned up on other trail cameras, but disappeared just as quickly.
The uncomfortable saga came to an end this spring, according to a press release chronicling it, when a resident in Montmorency County spotted the 110-pound bruin on a trail camera roaming his wooded acreage and alerted the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
With the landowner’s permission, the DNR set up a cylindrical trap and lured the bear inside. Once captured, staffers were able to sedate the animal and free it from its plastic burden before it woke up and was released back to the woods.
“It’s pretty incredible that the bear survived and was able to feed itself,” state bear specialist Cody Norton told The Associated Press. “The neck was scarred and missing hair, but the bear was in much better condition than we expected it to be.”
According to the DNR, the blue lid matched those used to cover large 55-gallon barrels, which are popular among rural landowners and hunters to hold grain and feed used to attract bears.
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Though Michigan permits bear baiting, the law limits the use of bait containers to private land and requires that any openings be either under one inch or over 22 inches wide. In this case, while it’s not clear how or where the bear got the lid wrapped around its neck, the opening did not comply with local bear baiting laws.
“Container openings of a certain size can result in bears and other wildlife getting their heads or other body parts stuck in them, leading to injury or death,” Norton said in a statement.
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