An man in northeastern Saskatchewan feels like he is at war with black bears after one committed a late-night break-and-enter and another damaged a nearby cabin.
Bud Jardine, 80, was combining a field until 2:30 a.m. CT on Sunday when he returned to his home in the rural municipality of Torch River, north of Nipawin, Sask.
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He found a screen ripped out of his window and the glass shattered.
“It’s a war every so often with these bears,” Jardine told Global News.
Without cell service in his yard, he drove until he found reception in a nearby hill range and contacted a conservation officer.
Jardine returned home, where he lives alone, and waited in his truck for the bear to leave his house.
“I said ‘now what? He’s got the guns, he’s got the phone in the house,'” he said.
The unruly ursine left the house before the conservation officer arrived, so together, Jardine and the officer covered up the busted window with plywood.
Jardine finally made it to bed at 5:30 a.m. after he laid out a vacuum cleaner, pots and pans to serve as an audible alarm system if the perpetrator returned.
“I took precautions and got the guns ready and went to bed,” Jardine said, suspecting the bear might return.
He awoke two hours later to the sound of the four-legged intruder pulling off the plywood.
The 80-year-old leapt out of bed and fired through the window, striking the bear, but not killing it.
“I got dressed. I put some shoes on to go find it. There was blood all over the deck,” he said.
He followed the trail of blood, but never found the animal.
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Later on Sunday, about 90 metres west of his house, he spotted a different, uninjured bear and two yearling cubs breaking into a nearby cabin.
He opened fire again and killed the second bear.
Two months earlier, he had another run in with a black bear – when it was banging on his picture window and climbing on his barbecue on his deck.
Jardine opened his door, got down on one knee and fired a single fatal shot.
“Kids grow up thinking these bears are these friendly little things, you know? They’re very, very untrustworthy.”
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