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A Sweet And Salty Way To Test The Bear Population


Doughnuts and bacon, just sitting out in the open, in the middle of the woods…

It’s a “beary” unusual sight.

“It’s a great time to be a bear in Michigan,” said Greg Rynearson, with Cops and Doughnuts.

Every 5 years, the Department of Natural Resources performs their Bear Hair Snare survey.

“So across the whole region of the Northern part of the lower, we have over 250 bait locations set up like this one where we have bacon, doughnuts, and some raspberry scent that’s surrounded by barb wire,” said Katie Keen, with the DNR.

But it’s not just any bacon and doughnuts.

These bears are getting the best of the best from Northern Michigan.

900 pounds of bacon hand cut from Ebels General Store in Falmouth.

“The bears get to eat the best bacon in Michigan, how about that, they love it,” he said.

And 400 dozen doughnuts filled and frosted from Cops and Doughnuts in Clare.

“They took all kinds of sweet rolls, jelly rolls, everything like that, doughnuts, frosting, glaze, all that gooey love, the part that adds to your belly and I think the bears like that,” said Rynearson.

“Well we needed some bait, and bait is something an animal isn’t typically getting, if they were to come across some bacon or some donuts, they’re more than likely to come by and check it out to see what it is,” she said.

The treats are hung from trees.

“Our hope is, as the bear is trying to reach for or even gets to the bait they might snag or brush up against the barb wire,” said Keen.

DNR officers carefully check the barb wire for hair.

“And then we can take it back to our lab and down the road have it analyzed for DNA,” she said.

She says the Bear Hair Snare helps the DNR manage the population, and issue bear hunting licenses accordingly come fall.

A job DNR officers don’t mind at all — especially on beautiful breezy days like today

“So we don’t always get a chance to get out in the woods and do wildlife surveys like this, so this is kind of one of those things that gets us back to what we all went to school to do and to help manage wildlife and to be in the field and be in the woods,” she sad.

And the local businesses had fun with the sweet and salty project too.

This is Cops and Doughnuts’ first year involved.

“We like working with all the different branches of government, you know, we’re cops, we ‘re a branch of the government, so we thought, let’s just donate them and let the bears have a good time with them,” he said.

Ebels has participated for about a decade.

“Dad’s just taking the jowl off the hog,” said Mark Ebel. “We’ll take that jowl bacon and add some searing salt, which is right here and then we’ll add some phosphate to it, which is right here, then good old brown sugar so we put that together and roll it around, let it get happy,” he explained.

Equally happy, if not more, will be the bears.

“The love is just being carried on not only with the people with the bear of Michigan,” said Rynearson.

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