ST. IGNATIUS, MT \u2014 A St. Ignatius resident had an up-close encounter with a black bear near Rod’s Harvest Foods in the middle of the day, and local police say the sightings are becoming more frequent earlier in the day. <\/p>\n
Roland Mitchell was heading to the grocery store when he came face-to-face with the bear.<\/p>\n
“I turned left to face the mountains and around the corner comes this black bear.”<\/p>\n
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Black bear spotted near St. Ignatius grocery store<\/p>\n
The bear approached Mitchell before turning around, then ran across the street toward Rod’s Harvest Foods. <\/p>\n
“This is the first time I’ve seen a bear in the middle of the day in town,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
St. Ignatius Police Chief Jason Acheson said monitoring surveillance cameras has taken on new significance this time of year.<\/p>\n
“We seem to see the same 3 or 4 and we’re seeing them in broad daylight now. It does seem to be a little different this year as far as the activity and presence of them,” Acheson said.<\/p>\n
Despite the increased sightings, Acheson said the bears have largely been well-behaved.<\/p>\n
“With the exception of getting into garbage cans, they’re pretty polite and use the sidewalks frequently,” Acheson said.<\/p>\n
Mitchell said he has noticed over the years that the bears have learned where to find easy meals from open garbage cans around town.<\/p>\n
“After a period of time it became a shopping center for them. Basically all they’re after is food,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
Still, Mitchell said the bears are simply part of life in St. Ignatius.<\/p>\n
“St. Ignatius is such a wonderful place. Even with the bears, we just blend right in,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
As the town kicks off its biggest event, “Good Old Days,” this weekend officials are reminding everyone to stay bear aware.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. IGNATIUS, MT \u2014 A St. Ignatius resident had an up-close encounter with a black bear near Rod’s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":928452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[302454,374438,13668,374439,159,374440,67,132,374441,68,837],"class_list":["post-928451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-black-bear-sighting","tag-good-old-days-st-ignatius","tag-montana","tag-rods-harvest-foods","tag-science","tag-st-ignatius","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-urban-bears","tag-us","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116902995405177794","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}