I just saw this story on Boston’s Fox 25 news about the Massachusetts black bear population. In summary, the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife, Amherst College, and UMass, Amherst are collaborating on a research project called MassBears. Their website includes an interactive bear sightings map.
Most notable is that they now estimate the Mass. bear population to be almost 5,000.
I knew it had grown since I started hunting in Mass. in 1959 when the population was thought to be about 50 bears. Back then, almost all of them were confined to the Berkshires and towns that border Vermont, like Colrain. At that time, and for many years thereafter, the annual bear kill was 2. By contrast, the 2020 bear harvest was 325.
As a teenager, I once saw bear tracks in the snow in Maynard, Mass. while running my trapline on the government land, where of course, I was not supposed to be.
It makes sense that a bear would be there because it was the biggest piece of woods and swamp for many miles around, and it had access to the Assabet River drainage. It also had about 90% of the local deer population. I knew that the military base’s cook would sometimes poach a deer for the mess hall. I saw the evidence while trapping.
Picture a land in transition, much like VT and NH were in the 1960s–abandoned farms and fields with lots of new growth, and of course apple trees and cranberry bogs.
The government took the land by eminent domain for the war effort in the early ’40s. I still think they should have given it back to the families when they abandoned it. Instead, they gave it to some state agency to turn into a green space. That should have been their second option.
For part of the munitions facility, they took over 100 acres from the farm across the street from my childhood home. They paid the farmer something, but nothing close to what it was worth. I hear there is a mall there today.
As a side note, as a teenager, I got caught in there by the colonel himself, Col. Peoples. He was very woods wise because he was a hunter from Iowa. Instead of throwing me to the wolves, he drove me home and asked if I wanted to go bird hunting with him.
The next Saturday morning, he picked me up with his bird dog. He lent me a beautiful double-barreled shotgun. I want to say that it was a 20-gauge L.C. Smith. It had an English-style stock. That is, the stock was straight, rather than having a pistol grip. A quick internet search will show you that that gun would be worth up to $10,000 today!
As luck would have it, we did not flush many birds. I guaranteed him birds if we went onto the government land. He refused. “If we can’t get them here, then we just aren’t going to get them today,” he said. The day before he caught me, I put up a flock of 18 ruffed grouse. To this day, that is the biggest flock of partridge that I have ever seen. Even that did not tempt him.
Col. Peoples was a great guy. I know that he would be pleased with how I turned out, and he would love where I live today. I can’t help but wonder what he would think about the mall and all the black bears in his old stomping grounds.
WLAGS
WLAGS 