Locating Black Bear in the Fall

Finding black bear this time of year can be relatively easy if you're in an area where black bear roam. Because bears typically den in the winter; they need to build up their fat reserves, meaning they spend most of their time from now until winter eating heavily. In knowing that, one simply needs to know a bear's favorite foods to put it to use.

Bears consume large amounts of berries in the late summer, whether it be blackberries, blueberries or raspberries, among others. Locating a berry patch that a bear has been to is the challenge; but knowing whether a bear has been there or not is easy; the bushes/brambles will be all tore up, with much of the foliage missing. Come early fall, apples, black cherries and wild grapes will begin to fall, which are other staples of the black bear diet. Shortly after; acorns will start to drop, providing yet another great food source to keep an eye out for. As with any animal, black bears prefer white oak acorns, but will consume red if the supply of white is limited. Also on their diet is beech and hickory nuts and the occasional small mammal.

To determine what a bear is eating; one must analyze what is found in the bear's scat. Here is a great compilation of various contents of bear scat, which may be helpful. Once you figure out what a bear is eating; the quest to find these food sources becomes key. Here, in Upstate New York, one needs to look no further than along shore lines of many of the various Adirondack lakes to find berry bushes, while apples can be located on long-abandoned farmland. Other than these, locating food sources is simply a matter of putting in the time to walk the woods in search of food sources; ie. oak and black cherry trees. Oak trees, as well as black cherry, can often be found on the lower half of north and east-facing slopes in well-drained soil. While black cherry is often more tolerant of wetter conditions, the mast productivity decreases as soil moisture content increases.

If you're in an area with relatively fresh sign of bear but are unable to locate the food sources; using a predator call may be to your advantage in attempting to see the bear. The sounds of dying cottontail, fawns in distress and the like typically spell out an easy dinner for a hungry black bear. While bears consume mammals as only 10% of their diet; they are more than likely to come to the sound of a dying animal, as bears do not hunt other animals, rather scavenge on the weak and dying, as they also are not overly fond of the smell/taste of rotting flesh.