Barbearians at the Gate
Hi, I live in Grafton county.<p>Bears killed my chickens and frequently loitered around the coop when I replaced them and strenghtened the structure of the coop. They also clamber up trees to steal bird food if we leave it out past the time that the game wardens recommend that it be left out.<p>I have in fact filed reports with the game wardens when they show up on my property during daylight and nothing has ever happened (sorry fans of North Woods Law).<p>Bears steal my garbage every time I leave it out after a certain time of the year. They drag the bags through the woods leaving litter behind them until I clean it up. So after the bears wake up I have to keep garbage in my basement.<p>I have friends over the border in Vermont who say that the bears don&#x27;t bother him and his neighbors that often because they shoot them more frequently so they become more person shy.<p>This quoted paragraph is absurd:<p>&gt;He diagnosed a kind of xenophobia: People are often frightened of black bears for no good reason. Sure, the creatures are big—they can grow to 500 pounds or more—and they’ve got sharp teeth and claws. But according to Fish and Game’s public-education campaign, “Something’s Bruin in New Hampshire,” which is intended to “enhance public tolerance towards bears,” the animals “do not typically exhibit aggressive behavior.”<p>Yeah, I&#x27;m a xenophobe because I don&#x27;t like having to spend a half hour or more cleaning up after a bear adventure or replacing broken bird feeders and replacing dead livestock. I&#x27;m irrational or just a dumb hick if I don&#x27;t want my dog to die if he gets in a fight that he can&#x27;t win with a black bear. It&#x27;s not &#x27;phobia&#x27; when bears live on your land or right next to it and frequently raid your property: it&#x27;s a rational prudence that comes with living near wild territory.<p>That document mentioned also is nothing about increasing &#x27;public tolerance for bears&#x27; and everything to do with teaching people what to do to limit the damage that they do to your property and your animals. You can read it yourself here, like I did before encountering this article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wildlife.state.nh.us&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;documents&#x2F;samples&#x2F;somethings-bruin-july-aug-2015.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wildlife.state.nh.us&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;documents&#x2F;samples&#x2F;somethin...</a><p>You have to go out of your way to find hobos and &#x27;poor rural stock characters&#x27; for this minstrel show in text in Grafton, which has a median household income of $58k and lots of affordable land. The county is also pretty big as far as this state is concerned and contains many more towns than just the one detailed. There are also bear hunting permits you can get that ration how many people can hunt it in any one season and overall the state does a good job in controlling the population without the hunting getting out of control.<p>A libertarian can easily go door to door all day long here and never meet someone who even knows what the word &#x27;libertarian&#x27; is supposed to mean. It has nothing to do  whatsoever with the bear issues which are tricky but mostly under control. The bear hunting season is short but it does a lot to keep the population under control. Vermont has exactly the same issue with bears and they address it in a similar way.