We had a visitor to the corn silage bags a few weeks ago: a northern Wisconsin black bear. Judging by the size of its claw marks and pictures from a neighbor's deer camera, he's probably about 300 pounds. He was definitely going for the corn silage, but luckily the damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. He clawed open a hole about three feet from the end we were feeding out of (stupid bear, why didn't he just dig in the opening? Then he bumbled past a covered pile of haylage and a bag of haylage to rip open the end of another corn silage bag. We will be able to salvage most of the corn silage, but if he had tore into the middle of the bag it would have been a different story.
The DNR came out that day and set up two traps. Basically, they are culverts with a screen and coffee can of bait (cookies and other sweet goodies) one one end. When the bait pail is pulled on the door on the other end drops. Apparently the bear didn't find anything yummy enough to stick around for. He hasn't been back to the bags since, but he has been messing the the neighbor's deer camera on a regular basis. If we catch him, I'll post more pictures.
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