Black Bear Bites: Touch Something Wild

Well, you can.  Look no further than the utility poles in your neighborhood.

If you live in a place where black bears live, autumn is a perfect time to wander along your road and see if any black bears have left their marks on your community’s telephone poles. The poles are easily visible and accessible when the surrounding plants have lost their leaves.

Black bears communicate to other bears in their area by leaving their scent through bites and scratches on trees and utility poles.  The poles seem to be a favorite surface to mark.  Perhaps it is the soft pine or the creosote saturated wood that these bears find irresistible.

Bears mark their territory in the spring, shortly after emerging from their winter dens.  It is their way of communicating with each other.  They mark the pole by turning their head to the side and biting into it with their upper and lower canine teeth. These bites can be deep enough to splinter the wood. They have scent glands in both their paws and mouth and they often turn and leave more of their scent by rubbing against the poll and/or  clawing the pole.

This wild sign is surprisingly common if you just know what to look for.  Look at the polls on your road for horizontal grooves, often with splintered wood.  Look closely to see if you can find any fur left behind by the bear.

And when reach up to touch the mark, or feel the strand of fur, just think—you are touching a bit of something wild.