Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to Waugh Mountain just north of Cotopaxi, Colorado around 80 miles south of Denver. This particular part of the Pike and San Isabel National Forest displays steep and rugged mountains covered in pine and fir trees predominantly. There are pockets of willow, aspen and various berry bushes wherever water is present. The mountains are packed with deer and elk but authorities are uncertain about just how many black bears live in the state of Colorado. Colin McClelland was from a very outdoorsy family. His father was a licensed outfitter in Colorado for 13 years and Colin was a lumberjack and camped on Waugh Mountain because he harvested timber from nearby timber stands. Colin had been working out of this area for several years and had had a rash of bear problems for the last three. He called the Colorado Division of Wildlife last year when a bear broke into his camper and consumed all of his food. Lately, he had been having bears show up around his RV at night and scratch and sniff around his camp. Colin was smart enough to know not to leave anything that might attract a bear outside, but his camper was full of his own food as well, so he thought that is what must bring them back. Colin didn’t know this but four nuisance black bears were sedated, ear tagged then relocated to Waugh Mountain since 1988. Now authorities know that one was run over and killed in the road, hunters killed 2 during hunting season, but one bear simply disappeared. This is the ideal situation for the wildlife management authorities. They don’t exactly like killing bears, even nuisance bears, as it is better to give them a second chance in a more remote area and allow nature to take its course. Any new entrant into prime bear territory will have to fit in with the established bear pecking order and may die if it doesn’t do that soon after being released. Colin hadn’t been feeling well the last few days and was taking some pretty strong flu medicine to help him recover. Harvesting lodgepole pines was tiring work and being sick while doing it made it even more tiring. On top of that, Colin had had several run-ins with local black bears. It was fairly normal for him to hear them sniffing around at night, but they had become more aggressive and more frequent in their visits. It almost seemed like they accepted him as part of their surroundings and now they were just going to treat him like they do every other animal. The respect boundaries would definitely have to be re-established, but first he would need to recover from this flu. On Friday, August 13th, 1993, Colin prepared dinner over the stove in his camper, he thought about how he would have to climb back on top of the RV and sleep up there again. He had to do it the last several nights due to all of the bear activity at night and he didn’t feel safe inside of it. His friends had recently loaned him a rifle big enough to handle any bears that might give him problems, but he was sure they would move one once they figured out that he wasn’t going to feed them, or bother them. He just wanted to be left alone to do his work. After eating dinner, Colin felt too sick to try the climb to the roof so he decided to take the flu medicine and sleep inside the RV. He loaded up a decent dose of flu medicine and promptly crawled into bed. Hopefully this would be the last night that he would be sick and losing work. As Colin drifted off to sleep, the aroma from the dinner he cooked wafted gently up the valley, through the trees, and into the noses of bears in the area. A 240 pound boar black bear had had a particularly hard summer and hadn’t been able to put on the weight he would need to hibernate soon, nor the mass he would need to battle larger males to court sows for breeding. He had wandered through Colins camp before looking for something easy to eat and admiring the delicious aromas emanating from that giant metal box. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-08-14-mn-23782-story.html https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1993-08-15-9308150530-story.html https://more.ppld.org/SpecialCollections/Index/ArticleOrders/170382.pdf https://coloradocentralmagazine.com/bear-encounters/ https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/fatal-bear-attacks-are-rare-in-colorado-but-possible https://www.shotgunworld.com/threads/slugs-for-big-black-bear.225267/
By: Scary Bear Attacks Title: Bear Rips Camper Door Off And Eats Young Logger Sourced From: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDb2QTYYHUI
