well hang bird feeders in bear territory, and if there NOT out of there reach, all your a doing is making a meal for a bear, and this time of yr, with limited food, there easy targets!

MY suggestion to your friend up there is, maybe hang a pulley system from deck to a tree out by the water, UP high, then can stand on deck fill, and pull them out up and over things at the half way mark between deck and water.

I started hanging mine like this at my place(LOTS of bears there) and since doing so, have only had 1 female that was smart enough to use the rope and pull feeder to deck, but she is also smart enough to OPEN the feeder without breaking it LOL

but she only did this a few times before finding she didn't like most of the bird seeds in the feeder, rather eat better things I guess? but she was the ONLY bear in about 10 yrs now to figure the pulley system out, saved me from replacing a LOT of bird feeders too !!

but cannot blame a bear for being a bear, they need 20,000 calories a day on average, thats a lot of eating every day,
guess they feel its nice to find a pile of calories in a feeder , placed so nicely for them HAHA!??