LETCHER COUNTY, Ky. (WYMT) – A Letcher County couple is working to repair damage after a nearly 300-pound bear made several visits to their back porch.<\/p>\n
Sandy Napier said the bear first came to the property early in the morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe night before last, it came down about 2:00 in the morning and got everything out of my freezer I had on the back porch, just left us a rack of ribs,\u201d Napier said.<\/p>\n
Wednesday morning, Napier said the bear returned, this time causing damage to the home.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout 11:30 something woke him up [her husband] and then I woke up when he got up and he [the bear] flipped the freezer over again and there wasn\u2019t anything in it, and then he started sniffing around,\u201d Napier said. <\/p>\n
Napier said the bear put his paw on the window causing it to break, and that is when her husband felt he needed to shoot it. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe feels so bad about it, but it was either him or us I guess,\u201d Napier said.<\/p>\n
Napier said this is not their first encounter with a bear on the property.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had trouble with bears for the last three years. You can\u2019t put nothing outside. We\u2019ve got big metal garbage cans. You can\u2019t put anything in it that even smells like food because they\u2019ll come down, and they\u2019ve stole our garbage and took it away,\u201d Napier said. \u201cI ain\u2019t putting nothing on my back porch again. No freezer or nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wildlife officials it is illegal to shoot bears unless there is a threat to safety or property damage. They also said bear sightings often increase this time of year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really that time of the year. You know, here at the end of April going into May, weather\u2019s been a little warmer this year. So definitely a time where everything picks up and you know, folks in the mountain counties got to kind of remember what they dealt with last summer,\u201d said John Hast, Bear and Elk Program Coordinator at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife.<\/p>\n
Hast said bears will be searching for food sources, and those in mountain communities should prepare. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe number one thing is just not having any of that available for them. And that could be your garbage you sit out the night before trash pickup. It could be food scraps in a compost bin, it could be dog food on the back porch. So, anything like that really about mid-April you got to start thinking about keeping it secure,\u201d Hast said.<\/p>\n
Officials say not to approach a bear or feed it if you see one. <\/p>\n
Bear populations are more common in the mountain counties, particularly those bordering Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Bear activity is expected from April until September or October.<\/p>\n