“He yelled, ‘Why didn’t you wait for me?’” she recalled. “I said, ‘Every man for himself, pal.’”
By the time two Stowe Police Department SUVs showed up, the juvenile bear was gone. “Yogi,” as May calls him, had climbed back out the window through which he’d entered. He hasn’t been seen since.
Suzanne Szermer indicated where a bear came through one of their windows earlier this summer in Stowe, Vt.Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The Boston Globe
Such encounters are increasingly common in Vermont, where the black bear population has surged over the past eight years, according to the state Department of Fish & Wildlife. In 2025, the last year for which figures are available, an estimated 7,500 to 8,900 of the creatures roamed Vermont — roughly double the target population the department has set for the state.
That’s led to a corresponding rise in human-bear interactions, including home invasions and vehicle entries. Prior to 2018, the department rarely logged more than 200 incidents a year. Nowadays, there are typically more than 1,400. And this year, early indications suggest the state could reach or exceed its annual record of 1,700.
Nowhere is the problem worse than in Vermont’s ski towns, where prime bear habitat overlaps with a glut of vacation homes, restaurants, and overflowing dumpsters.
“The bears have figured it out,” said Jaclyn Comeau, a wildlife biologist and the black bear project leader for the department. “It just seems to be a consistent recipe for high numbers of human-bear conflicts.”
In recent summers, Comeau said, Killington and Stowe have been “neck and neck for the title of who’s struggling the most to live with bears.”
This year, it’s Stowe.
Downtown Stowe, Vt., where there has been a rise in human-bear interactions.Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The Boston Globe
Locks on the dumpsters behind Stowe Cinema.Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The Boston Globe
Since June 1, state game wardens have responded to at least 40 bear incidents in Stowe, which is nestled between two mountain ranges and surrounded by state forest.
“We’re down here almost daily,” said Lieutenatn Robert Currier, who oversees wardens in the region. “Which takes us away from other parts of our mission.”
It’s also created divisions in town — and a circular blame game.
Some fault business owners for failing to secure their dumpsters. Others cite short-term rental guests for leaving trash outside. Many say the town should do more to address the problem. Business owners say they feel targeted by activists. And seemingly everybody gets mad when law enforcement kills a problem bear.
“We’re kind of at a fever pitch here in Stowe,” said Brenna Galdenzi, who lives in town and leads the statewide advocacy group Protect Our Wildlife.
Earlier this month, Currier drove his truck around the backroads of Stowe, not far from where Yogi entered Louis May’s bedroom. The area is speckled with multimillion-dollar homes featuring views of Stowe Mountain Resort — most owned by trusts and LLCs and many available for seasonal or short-term rental.
“We’re surrounded by bear habitat right now,” he said, pointing to the densely forested landscape. “There’s not a lot of human traffic up and down through the day.”
At the height of deforestation in Vermont during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, bears retreated to areas like this, according to Comeau. As the forests grew back, so did the population of bears.
“It’s this huge conservation success story,” she said.
A bear ate from a poorly secured dumpster in Elmore, Vt.Sam Chambers/Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department
Damage to a kitchen in Stowe, Vt., after a bear entered the home in 2024.Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department
But now that there’s a critical mass of reproductively active female bears — with a diverse food supply ranging from beechnuts to acorns to berries to corn — it’s been difficult to get the population under control.
Last year, hunters killed a near-record 1,022 bears in Vermont, according to the Department of Fish & Wildlife. Another 116 were fatally struck by vehicles, and 45 more were killed during a human-bear conflict, either by law enforcement or a member of the public. Still, the population continues to grow.
Some have learned to swipe birdfeeders, raid chicken coops, and open car doors — behaviors a mama bear can pass on to her cubs during their long adolescence.
“We’ve really been teaching our bears for years now about all the foods they can get in our backyards and in our town centers,” Comeau said.
Black bears are generally uninterested in humans and rarely hurt them. But over the last eight years, as the population has grown, the department has tracked six injuries to people, most resulting from a surprised bear seeking to evade a dog or human.
It could get worse.
In a near-miss this June close to Sugarbush Resort, a bear climbed on the roof of a truck and tried to reach through its partially open window to steal chicken nuggets from a 10-month-old girl inside, according to records obtained by the Globe.
The girl’s father, who was working on a pool nearby, tried to scare off the bear with his colleagues. He grabbed a 9mm handgun from the cab of the truck and fired a warning shot. When the bear still wouldn’t budge, he fired twice more and the bear limped away, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. The child was uninjured but in “extreme distress,” according to a warden report, and her car seat and stuffed toys were damaged.
In Stowe, the incident that changed everything came in early June, when a bear broke into the kitchen of The Matterhorn Bar & Restaurant, an après-ski joint just downhill from Stowe Mountain Resort.
A bear entered The Matterhorn Bar & Restaurant in Stowe, Vt., in early June and ate frozen chicken patties. The walk-in cooler was a mess when it left.Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department
When Stowe Police Corporal Jamie Bunavicz arrived on the scene, the 200- to 300-pound bear was “laying down near the dumpsters consuming an entire jug of sauce from the walk-in cooler,” according to a police report. Officers had encountered a similar situation there a week earlier. A state game warden instructed Bunavicz to shoot the bear if it entered the restaurant again.
“The bear then proceeded to enter the walk-in cooler and start rummaging through the frozen chicken patties,” Bunavicz wrote in the report, prompting him to fatally shoot the bear as it exited the establishment.
The episode provoked outrage in the community, according to Police Chief Brooke O’Steen. She was inundated with phone calls, emails, and social media posts from those faulting Bunavicz for pulling the trigger, even though he’d done so at the direction of the Department of Fish & Wildlife. One person showed up at the police station and said they “wanted to string the officer up,” O’Steen said.
Others blamed The Matterhorn, which had a reputation for tolerating bear visits, and threatened to boycott. The bar’s owner, Charlie Shaffer, declined to speak with the Globe, but he previously told Seven Days newspaper he was “horrified” by the situation.
“If I had been there, I would have put myself between the bear and them,” he said of the cops. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t know why they did it.”
The incident prompted O’Steen to rethink her department’s approach to ursine interactions. Previously, her officers would respond to most bear sightings in town and try to shoo the creatures away. Now she asks herself, “Did the bear commit a crime or not?”
Town Manager Charles Safford said he’s not surprised Stowe has become ground zero for bears in Vermont, given that it’s home to 40 restaurants, 1,000 hotel rooms, and another 1,000 short-term rental units.
Damage to a Vermont home in 2022 after a bear sought to enter it.Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department
“We’re a mountain town,” he said. “We have a lot of food.”
Last year, the Select Board updated its ordinances to require homes and businesses to keep garbage contained in dumpsters and to quickly pick up any messes. Those who failed to comply would be fined.
Galdenzi, of Protect Our Wildlife, thinks the town hasn’t gone far enough. She believes it should require businesses to use bear-proof dumpsters and perhaps help subsidize them.
“I think voluntary compliance isn’t getting us where we need to be,” she said.
Galdenzi has also tried public pressure. Another group she cofounded, the Stowe Bear Project, has been posting on social media and writing on a town listserv when its members have observed overflowing dumpsters behind local businesses.
“I don’t think Stowe wants to be known as a town that kills a lot of bears,” she said. “And that’s what our reputation is turning into. If a lot of tourists found out, I don’t think it would be well received.”
Such tactics infuriate Mike Buananno, the second-generation owner of Stowe Cinema.
“They’ve never actually come and spoken to me directly, but they feel free to write about me online, which feels very high school,” he said.
He’s also peeved at the police, who have issued him and his business two tickets this summer for violating the updated ordinance, totaling $300 in fines. He said he’s planning to take the town to court.
Buananno’s family has owned the local movie theater since 1972, but he’d never seen a bear there until two years ago. Now, a mama bear and her three yearlings visit the dumpster out back nearly every day.
“It doesn’t matter how much reinforcing you do of the dumpsters, they figure out how to rip the lid right off,” he said. “The town’s answer is to write citations.”
Mateo Fernandez, 18, sells tickets at the theater, makes popcorn, and takes out the trash. He’s run into a bear out back half a dozen times this summer.
“We’ll sometimes have to, like, throw a rock to try and scare it away,” he said. “But he’ll just kind of look at us and then go back to it. Doesn’t care at all.”
Buananno said he’s considered buying a bear-proof dumpster, but they’re expensive and difficult to operate. He thinks the town should help pay for them — and tamp down the rhetoric.
“Stowe is a great community. We want to stay a community,” he said. “We don’t want to be divided by negativity around bears.”
The Department of Fish & Wildlife has been trying to educate Vermonters about the steps they can take to reduce bear encounters, including taking down birdfeeders in the spring, securing chickens with electric fencing, and keeping garbage enclosed. But it can be difficult to reach short-term renters and other tourists.
The department has also proposed two changes to its bear-hunting rules to curb the population: lengthening the season by several weeks and allowing hunters to take two bears a year in some parts of the state, rather than just one.
Protect Our Wildlife opposes both proposals.
“We cannot hunt our way out of the problem,” Galdenzi said.
But Chris Bradley, president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, thinks a larger bear harvest could be part of the solution.
“Effective management is not always pretty,” he said. “Yet it is part of our landscape and it’s part of our heritage and tradition.”
As for Louis May and Suzanne Szermer, they’re taking their recent encounter with Yogi in stride.
“I mean, whaddya gonna do? You live in Boston or New York or Chicago, you’re gonna have rats,” Szermer said. “You live in a rural area, you get rural issues.”
“They’re bears,” said May. “They were here before us, weren’t they? I think they were.”
Suzanne Szermer and Louis May sat on the deck in front of the window that a bear broke into earlier this summer in Stowe, Vt.Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The Boston Globe
Paul Heintz can be reached at paul.heintz@globe.com. Follow him on X @paulheintz.