Hi Dave,been a while since you been on.
Is there any chance a griz could lose a couple toes fighting with other bears.
From some of the vids I have seen they use their front feet to push the other bears,and the feet are often near the other bears mouth.

Hi Boco, yea had a busy season. Spent most of the year in the bush. Yes its for sure possible for a griz to lose toes in a scrap. They live a rough life. Low berry year here so they were hungry.

Hope all is well with you and yours. Did some work on a hunting camp out at Roberts place in September so got to have a good visit with him.

Assuming they really did come across 4 bears missing toes, their whole theory of this being caused by bears with a trap on their foot is is a flat out lie.

If a bear were to leave a trap site with a trap attached to its toes, AND, if that trap stayed on long enough for lack of blood flow to lead to necrotic tissue and the trap falling/slipping off…….then where would the bone chips come from?

The only way for bone chips, or fragments, to be present is for there to have been cutting or crushing trauma.

All good here,sounds like you had a great summer.
Good to see you back on.

If they're making it up what's their end goal? Doesn't seem like they're really trying to stick it to the trappers. Don't get mad I'm not an anti!

4 is way too small of a sample to draw any conclusions IMO. And how many were X-rayed ? How did they X-ray them ? Easy to poke holes in this article

They mentioned maybe canceling trapping season during the month of November.....best month for marten when you are targeting the YOY....

Our wolverine season used to run through March 10th. Then they did a study. The biologist collected carcasses for a few years, then convinced our wildlife board to recommend closing the wolverine season at the end of Feb. to reduce the chances of trappers catching lactating females. They bought it and shortened the season. After the dust settled a few of the board members decided to find out how many of the carcasses she collected were lactating females. She had insinuated there were some. Turned out not to be true, but we lost a very productive two weeks. Some trappers in the southeast wont see a wolverine track until the end of Feb. when the males start to travel. Those guys are now out of luck...

I’m throwing the old BS flag too.

Aren’t most marten footholds like 1.5 size?

Really?

If they’re making it up, what’s the end goal? The end goal is anything that can damage public perception of traps.

Honing a Solution
Most fur trapping is done in winter when underfur is dense and guard hairs are long. Given that grizzly bears hibernate for the winter, trappers should generally be able to avoid accidently catching bears. However, some trapping seasons open in late fall, such as the marten season in much of British Columbia which opens November 1 and extends to February 15. Reducing the overlap between the bear active season and trapping seasons is one solution to reducing the loss of bear toes and allowing trappers to not lose their traps and have their sets destroyed. This solution has been previously used in southeast British Columbia used to avoid catching and killing bears in neck snares set for wolves, an issue first documented by the Flathead project.
We summarized the den entry and exit dates for 61 animal-years in the Elk Valley to assess when bears were denning in the fall. We found that the median den entry date (i.e., the date when 50% of bears had denned) was November 06, and the 95th quantile of den entry was November 22, revealing a critical 3-week period of overlap between active bears and the trapping season. We found no overlap between den emergence and the end of the trapping season; thus we focus on fall trapping as the source of the issue. Shifting the start of most trapping that overlaps with, and could attract bears, to December 1 would essentially eliminate this overlap.

Indeed, such a change to the regulations was proposed in 2019 but was not implemented. Much of the trapped landscape within the Kootenays is in rugged mountainous terrain and many trappers, especially in the west Kootenays, reported that they were effectively unable to access their traplines for much of the winter beginning in early December due to high avalanche risk and associated safety concerns. The trappers reported they did most of their trapping in early December or before, and that shortening the season to December 1st would remove their ability to harvest marten from their trapline. As a result, provincial biologists implemented a condition on all active trapping licenses within the Kootenay region stipulating that, beginning in 2021, all body grip traps set for marten during the month of November must be enclosed in a box with an opening no larger than 3 1⁄2 inches. This narrowed entrance was thought to be narrower than most bear paws. The updated licenses also recommended using these enclosed boxes when setting similarly sized killing traps for other species on dry ground prior to December 1st. The efficacy of the modified enclosure in eliminating bear toe loss has not yet been tested, but these modified marten trap boxes are believed to be sufficient to ensure grizzly bears are not able to access a set trap if implemented by all trappers. Given that there is more uncertainty in the effectiveness the modified enclosure approach compared to a change in seasons, we recommend that compliance and efficacy is monitored to ensure this intervention is effective and uptake is high. Such monitoring would allow for adaptive management and changes to the approach as needed and ensure a successful outcome for bears and trappers alike.

Body grips, not foot traps. Bears running around with traps on their feet is not a good look. I don't think they're making it up.

The pictures show illegal traps on the feet-not aihts approved marten traps-something stinks with the claim.

I agree

I agree with that too. Still I'm not convinced this is all made up.

This is not made up, and been happening long before the study started. Before the closure of Grizzly bear season in B.C.no of people shooting bears with
traps on there feet in the spring season, have seen pictures from the study area of bears with traps on there feet as well as some out of the study area.
One interesting set was of the bear with trap on his foot and could tell toes were in bad shape later on bear was caught again on camera with toes missing
was a few guys hoping to draw a tag and look for that bear and seems he was taking in the last year there was a season. We have seen grizzlys out all
winter months in this area of southern B.C. as well.
There is other changes that should be made to trapping methods in region 4 of B.C. as well

Its the real deal I have marten trapped in the Southeast corner Of Wyoming for Marten above the ranch for years and pinched more that a few black bears in marten traps and had them pull the trap. I had one prowling the ranch for about a month with the trap on his front foot limping. Next year he came back close to the house and I could see plain as day two toes missing in the print and saw him several times. No limping but he did lose the toes in a 120 and im certain of it. I have got my fingers in victor 120s and it is a quick ouch but the longer its on it cuts off the circulation and fingers swell and turn blue real quick. I soon started to anchor traps with 1/8 inch snare cable to very secure anchor points and found it works great, the bears pull out of the trap. Lets put in in perspective though the bears the researcher found were alive. Also I would venture to guess more die of other causes at a much higher rate the boars will even kill their off spring. Is it a big deal, yes and no. I doubt it makes a big difference in the bear population but its bad press and just another nail in the coffin for trappers. I have also read and seen in the Wyoming game and fish web site accounts of grizzly in the western part of our state with conibears on the front paws and an uproar from the anti trappers, yeah we have them here. Im in my 80s and have seen things change for the worse against trappers, do as good as you can to keep trapping going.

Antis are too stupid to know that only aihts approved traps are used for marten in Canada-the pictures of the bears with traps had brand new looking traps and illegal traps at that.
Hoax.

A bear can rip the door off a car to get a bag of chips He can remove a piece of wire from his toe.

Now that the coyote market has dropped, the last moneymaker for trappers is marten - thats the target.They like to hit us in the pocketbook.

Yup trap enough and see all kinds of crazy stuff.! It seems rare but viable to me. Also seems it could be quite easily and painlessly resolved.

Denial is not always the best solution.

The idea that a wooden box with a small hole is going to stop a grizzly ( or a black bear ) is laughable. I've seen them rip the doors off cabins, and even go right through the walls. Leave your marten boxes out in the off season and see how many you have left intact by fall.

At the other end of the spectrum, rumors abound that "migrants" coming across America's southern border are missing toes from trappers like me setting "leg traps" on roads/pipeline easements/sanderos.