Current score after last night:

Bear........2 Me...........2

I plan on winning the next round.

New 50 MILE charger and only 25' of wire.
I'm going to set his hair on fire :)

ok guys I think you all are trying to prevent mother natures instinct here, a bear is just trying to eat , its drawn to your feeders by its nose, it cannot help itself
they need 20,000 calories a day to live, seeds in a container help them add calories faster
anyone that shoots a bear due to bird feeders is taking things to the extreme, as your the one causing the bears to show up, a bird feeder to them looks like a bear feeder to them??
don't want bears don't have feeders?
or don't live where bears are?? its part of life when you have them??


I have feeders too, and LOTS of bears
my feeders are now up HIGH 14+ ft, I ran lined between tree's and up off the top of my deck
to date (several yrs now) I have only ONE bear that has figured out my pulley system
a female, she will climb up my deck, and on her hind legs can JUST barely reach the ropes, and will get a tooth on it, drag it DOWN< then grab with paw, and pull about 2 ft before she runs out of room, takes her about 30 minutes to get the feeder to her mouth
BUT there is NEVER any sees left in the feeder by dark, I run SMALL feeders, fill in the AM< empty by dark
she has never damaged a feeder yet either, a LOT of work for nothing , I get a kick out of watching her do this, about 2-3 times a week LOL
I can always tell she's been here, as she is the only one to do this,
had 9 different bears this spring here, that I could tell apart, either size or tags

here is a honest 600 lb male

and a 350 lb female

the big male has been courting this female for the past 3+ weeks now, she's been playing hard to get I think, she lost about 50-+80 lbs in the past 3 weeks too, staying a head of him!
I ran his tag info, this how I know his weight, and she's been a rather regular here about 10+ yrs now and few litters of cubs, ran 2015's cubs off to hook up with this male



moma side view






V




V's front feet




both








and just for giggles
I seen this a while back
so never underestimate the will and desire of a wild animal LOL

i set up a rig like yours with a hot wire and ground to keep the coons out of a tree that had a feeder. Coons were climbing down the cable that held the feeder. That charger killed coons DRT.

I solved my problems by taking down the feeders. The birds really don't need our feed. Its just we like to watch them. Also you don't want to get bears interested in your yard and house. Or a nasty surprise can happen. Like them coming on the front porch and looking in the kitchen window. (gas barbecue grill on the porch and the recycle barrel).

Wild animals can be a real PITA but then, I moved into their back yard. Not the other way around. That hot wire should work good. It will be interesting to see how they act around it. I had a friend that put electric fences around his garden one year to keep the animals out.

My system IS a pulley system. They can't reach the feeders. Except this last bear, who evidently has figured a way past that metal piping and is climbing it.

He touches that wire and it'll set him on fire........

Might be like that bear that John Candy shot in the Great Outdoors! :D

I have bears - lots of them. Only had my elevated cable bird feeder system tore down once in the 6 yrs there. I fixed that.
And I have honey bees - total of 4 bee hives. That has been kept safe by a 5 strand hot fence. Works just fine. First strand of wire is 4 to 5 inches off the ground. Keeps the coons and skunks out. And one can tell when a skunk was there and got zapped.....

So far so good. And I have pictures of bears standing at the fence looking in. So far so good.

JW

The guys with bee hives in the area also fence them. Its the only way. When we first bought the property, there was an area that just needed cleaning up and I put a small orchard in. To keep the trees safe from deer, I fenced the whole area, just about an acre. I went 8' high and started 5" off the ground. Every wire was hot until it got to 5', then every other was a ground. All wires 8" apart. It worked REAL GOOD and no problems with the trees.
When the trees were large enough to make it without the fence, I remove it and gave all the wire away to a friends boy, who for 4H was raising calves. He had a charger so I sold mine in a garage sale. Yup, I needed it and had to buy new, again.

Bear hasn't been back, but if he does, the game camera might catch the "moment" LOL

:biggrin:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pdM9YOYrcbs

That is exactly why my power comes down from above. ;)

When I was working in Breckenridge Co, we had an old sow that learned how to roll up garage doors to the dumpster enclosures. She would sit down in front of the door and use her paws to roll it up. Waste Management drivers were too lazy to slide the latch bolts. There was an old boar that would just reach under regular swinging doors and break the door to get in. G & F would live trap them, ear tag them and move them a 100 miles and let them loose. In 2-3 days they were back home.