Host Chester Moore discusses a bear that was discovered near Bay City, Texas, more than a decade back in an interesting show of Higher Calling Wildlife, which is sponsored by Texas Fish & Game.
This image was taken during a pig chase by a reader and featured a fresh black bear being killed by the dogs in a live oak tree. But how did it arrive it?
It is most likely a man because young men frequently travel far to begin looking for partners, but ( male or female ) how far did this a journey?
Let’s say a bear crossed the Sabine River into the Blue Elbow Swamp, which is located practically at the confluence of the Pineywoods and southern lake, and then it entered Texas from Louisiana straight at my home town of Orange. The Louisiana route would also be made easier to access thanks to this.
By car, this is 155 yards, which means that the bear would pass through Houston’s heartland if you saw the blue range. It is obvious that was not the case. The fifth-largest bay system in the country would be crossed by the right path. That was absent as well.
The dog would have to travel through the southern prairies, make its way around the Galveston Bay advanced, and down to Bay City at some point, or cross Interstate 10 or enter the wider spaces of the Sabine south of Interstate 10 in Orange.
What if the bear was from the Trans Pecos region, say there close to Big Bend in the Lajitas region? That’s a 651-mile drive for us and a 472-mile straight shot by air ( or bear ), which travels across all kinds of territory, from cities to hunting leases to wildlife refuges to perhaps international borders.
Some may argue that this bear was a prisoner keep that was released, but that is highly unlikely. Another possibility is that this bear was born somewhere in the center, perhaps in the Hill Country, where sightings have increased recently, or even in the western Pineywoods, or possibly along the coast anywhere.
Did you know that along the Texas beach bear hunting was possible as late as the 1980s? A 1979 looking regulation book that had a keep season in Chambers County and others from the years before that are included in my personal collection.
This issue of Higher Calling Wildlife will provide more information about this tale.
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