Hello everyone! We’re excited to report some of us in Tom Miner Basin have been exploring different angles this summer. Range riding continues to happen, but we are also piecing together our first year of a scent deterrent study with hope to better understand grizzly bear movement and behavior. The ultimate question would be: Can we use any scent deterrent in the future to deter grizzly bears and other large carnivores from livestock locations.
Bears live life through their nose. They are solitary animals who prefer to avoid encounters with other individuals. They depend on scent communication to let others know they are around and to decipher who else is in the area. Bears have scent glands in a variety of places including their foot pads, the nape of their neck, and between their shoulder blades. A common way of communicating is by rubbing their back against a tree which others bears frequently encounter. As they do this they will typically urinate and bite and claw the trunk. Frequently visited trees are usually along a game trail or road, at a creek crossing, or an intersection. It looks like bears are dancing as they shimmy up and down a tree trunk, and some say they are scratching an itch, but in reality, they are communicating. Popular rub trees can be identified by finding chunks of hair, smooth or mud-covered bark, and large gouges taken out of the wood by their teeth and claws. Bears will not only use trees to leave their scent behind and have been seen rubbing on man-made structures as well.
Another common method of scent communication is called a stomp trail. This is when bears (typically males) will make enforced footprints and create a short trail in order to secrete scent from their foot pads as much as possible. It looks like they are doing the twist or a “cowboy walk”. These are typically found next to rub trees and can be identified by larger patches of bare dirt where vegetation has been stomped into the earth.
We have been spending time actively searching for rub trees and stomp trails around the basin, this summer. Remote cameras have been set-up at a dozen sites so we can determine who is visiting, and how frequently. As we get a better idea about who is in the area, our next step is to add dominant male grizzly scent to popular locations and see if the frequency in visitations shifts. We will also be observing their behavior as they encounter this unknown grizzly scent. Our hope is that visits become less frequent and that bears (males and females alike) avoid these areas, keeping in mind variabilities such as seasonality- breeding, hyperphasia, etc. If found to be successful, this scent could be used near livestock to encourage avoidance.
So, how are we collecting this dominant grizzly scent? The Grizzly Encounter has partnered with us on this research and agreed to collect urine and scent covered logs and woodchips from their captive bears. A 400 pound, 1 year old Kodiak and an 18 year old, 800 pound grizzly are our selected participants for this study. We know very little about the social structure of bears, and there is a lot which we will never fully understand. However, data collected around these large/older and unknown grizzlies scents introduced to local basin bears to a new smell that makes them think twice. We’re excited about this endeavor and will keep you posted on any updates!
While we continue our same (and yet different year to year) work around supporting resiliency in our rural community and building upon the work we’ve done in the past centered in healthy, shared landscapes, we work from a place of observing and learning from our natural environment so that we might better understand ways of thriving in a greater natural system.
Taking the time to understand large carnivores like grizzlies through studies like this one will help us better understand how to share our spaces with them and avoid negative interactions.
Thank you to Casey Anderson and the staff at Grizzly Encounter, Bart and Max the grizzly bears, Louise Johns, Andrew Stein, and Montana FWP for your help and guidance with this research.
Blog by Blakeley Adkins