Bear Baiting

Proving yet again that even a highly educated surgeon (from Boise) can be a total moron: this morning while hiking in the forest with the girls I encountered one of my "weekend neighbors" on his ATV, in camo jacket, two big 40 lb bags of dog food riding in carriers on the front and back of his noisy vehicle.

He baits bears.

I guess the camo jacket was so the bears wouldn't see him coming.

Bow down to the mighty weekend warrior hunter.

He does this every spring, much to the annoyance and irritation of those of us who live here year round. This guy rarely uses his house here. I guess to prove he's a man, he comes up to hunt. But he can't be bothered to actually go out and find "game." He tosses this dog food out on Payette Forest land, barely inside the forest boundary, to attract the bears down close to his house.

And my house. And neighbors' houses. To us, our pets, our livestock.

Apparently he truly believes only bears will eat this dog food.

What about the wolves, or coyotes, or skunks, or raccoons, or...? What he manages to do is bring all of those forest creatures closer to destruction, because they'll expect easy food, look for more food nearby, and end up in "negative interactions" with we humans and our pets, which will be their death sentence.

Wish a bear would eat this guy for lunch. Wish some skunks would set up a nest under his house and spray every time he comes up here.

What a stupid, lazy, idiot.

I'm also irritated by the way his ATV chews up those sections of forest road just now free of snow and so muddy and easily rutted. But why should he care; apparently he believes that the public forest is his private little hunting preserve.

This is the same guy who invites his equally moronic buddies up to hunt. One of them nearly got himself killed when, around midnight in a driving rain storm last spring, he pounded on the door of my neighbor, whose husband happened to be out of town. The guy stood on her porch in full camo, holding his rifle, while her dogs went ballistic inside the house. The guy's incredibly lucky she didn't shoot him, he scared her so badly. After she finally convinced him to put his weapon down, she told him no, he couldn't come in and use her phone, then gave him directions to the driveway of our moronic bear-baiting neighbor. This "brilliant surgeon" left his buddy out in the forest, in the cold rain, apparently unworried about how he'd find his way back. What a guy!

I went to the forest this morning, seeking peace. I didn't find it.

(Photo: When confronting him, I was holding the girls' collars and so didn't have a chance to get out my camera. After spilling the dog food and as he came back out, I took this photo from a side road.)