Classic: Maine's Black Bears This Yankee Magazine Classic is
from December 1978 Also, read a photographer’s account of his
2007 visit to Maine’s black bears. There can be no talking now.
The hearing acuity of a black bear mandates silence. Somewhere
in this spruce forest in northern Maine dens a three-year-old
black bear. He wears a collar equipped with a powerful radio
transmitter that betrays his den site. Roy Hugie, listening to a
pulsing loud and clear in the earphones clamped to his ears,
knows the bear is near. Hugie is a 32-year-old big game research
biologist with the Maine Fish and Wildlife Department. For three
years he has monitored black bears in Maine. His is the most
extensive bear study ever carried on in New England, one of the
most extensive, for that matter, in the country. There are 17
bears denning this winter wearing three-pound collars that will
tell Hugie where, when, and possibly why they den where they do.
In addition, another 200 bears roam the forests with ear tags
firmly in place.