Bear Cam

Thought some of you might be interested in keeping up with Lilly, a momma black bear that gave birth yesterday to her new cub. I think it will be interesting to watch these two as the cub develops. The live cam is at http://www.bear.org.

You tricked me Bill, I thought it said "beer" cam, just kidding. This could be fun to watch too.

on the topic of bears, and not to sound too naive, but i will be hiking the area alone at the end of march and know enough to try and stay away if i happen to see any bears in the distance, but do you locals recommend any sort of personal protection when hiking these woods?

You won't see much in the way of bears here in March normally (they are still asleep), and you don't really need any sort of protection from them anyway unless you plan to sleep with food in your tent (not a good idea). They are mostly afraid of people. I would not worry about them...

thanks, no i will only be day hiking, no overnight issues.

Hey Tim, when are you going to start offering a bear photography workshop? Seems like I remember they like to hang out around your place quite a bit. Just a thought...

I'd love to get some bears shots. I'd love to just see one in the wild!

Bears are pretty wary creatures, typically you can't just go tromping through the woods and run into one. I haven't seen one in a while, but I did shoot one (not with a camera) when I was 11. It came within about 5 feet of me and never realized I was there. A little scary for an 11 year old.

Hey Bill, there may be a lot less bears around here this coming summer. One of the neighbor families killed six bears on the opening weekend of bear season not too far away, and there was at least one killed just a few hundred yards away from our cabin during deer season. The same neighbor family counted more than 20 different bears on "bear cams" at a different property location, and they are planning to move their bear hunting to the new property later this year. We did have a really active bear summer last year, with at least 15-18 different bears in our yard, including two sets of triplets. Some really beautiful cinnamon bears, including cubs and at least one giant male. That was the second year we had a really active bear summer out of 12 years here - the other years we would see/hear a few bears, but not very often, and mostly during the night. We have a lot of bears in Arkansas - in fact we used to be known as "The Bear State" just like California until market hunting nearly wiped them out. But even with all that activity, chances of seeing a bear are nearly zero unless you are here 100% of the time. While working on the wildlife book I had one, and sometimes two different tripod-mounted cameras set up all the time. I do know a place on the other side of the river where you could go on opening day of bear season and get lots of photos though!

Before I moved out here I saw a total of about three bears in Arkansas, and all but one of those were just bear butts! But now I have seen dozens of bears around the state, including down in the swamps - actually The Big Woods area is a great place to see bears. In fact there are so many in the White River Wildlife Management Area that they are trapping them and moving to another WMA. Still the chances of finding one in your viewfinder are pretty slim, unless you are there specifically to photograph them and have lots of time to do it. Guys who are real wildlife photographers have it rough, and spend most of their time like weathermen - failing. All in all my time as a "wildlife" photographer the first five years of my photo career back in the 1970's was much more productive money-wise - of course back then a "bare butt" was a little different (I shot sorority party pictures)...