Photos: Bear with lid stuck around its neck finally freed after 2 years
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) – In 2023, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' field office in the northern county of Montmorency received a tip about a young black bear with a container lid stuck around its neck.
Biologists kept an eye out for the bear after seeing it on a trail camera. The bear, then believed to be a cub, was hard to track, however.
“The bear would prove elusive over the next two years, occasionally appearing on other trail camera photos but then disappearing after a day or so,” the DNR said in a news release.
Finally, late last month, the DNR was contacted again by a homeowner in Hillman, about 230 miles north of Detroit, who saw the bear on their trail cameras.
“With the landowner’s permission, state biologists set up a baited enclosure trap and caught the animal safely on June 2. After anesthetizing the bear, they cut the lid off its neck and collected body measurements and other data,” the DNR stated.
The good news is that the bear weighed 110 pounds, which is considered a healthy weight for a 2-year-old bear. It did, however, have notable scarring and an abscess on its neck. The bear was allowed to roam free once the anesthesia wore off.
Cody Norton, a bear/furbearer/small game specialist with the DNR, said the incident is a reminder for people to follow the state’s bear baiting regulations. Norton says they don’t know where the lid came from, but it is similar to 55-gallon drums that hunters use to bait bears or store other materials that attract bears, like chicken feed.
Bear baiting is legal in Michigan, but bait containers can only be used on private land, and holes on the containers must either be less than an inch or more than 22 inches in diameter.
“Container openings of a certain size can result in bears and other wildlife getting their heads or other body parts stuck in them, leading to injury or death,” Norton stated. “It’s important to remember that the opening diameter is more important than the size of the container.”
There are an estimated 13,000 black bears in Michigan, with only about 1,700 in the northern portions of the Lower Peninsula. Most of the state's bears are believed to reside in the Upper Peninsula.