Finnish dogs in German bear hunt

German and Austrian officials called in Finnish trackers
While most of Germany is fascinated by the World Cup, a small corner of the country is watching a very different drama unfold - a bear hunt.
A brown bear has killed 20 sheep in the Bavarian Alps since crossing the border from Austria a few weeks ago.

The bear, known both as Bruno and JJ1, has defied German and Austrian hunters, and now a team of Finnish trackers with huskie dogs has joined in.

Bruno is the first brown bear to appear in Bavaria for some 100 years.

But even if they get Bruno, his brother JJ2 is at large in the Italian Alps, the BBC's Ray Furlong reports.

The fear is that if Bruno meets humans, he might attack them. The idea is to shoot Bruno with a narcotic.

Four specially trained Finnish dogs, which first had to be sheared because it was too hot for them, are sniffing for traces of Bruno. They have GPS positioning sensors on their collars.

Bruno's mother - who is blamed for his savage behaviour - has another three cubs.

Hello;
I've read the posts on a German forum and you'd swear they're in pursuit of Dracula. If this is indeed an Italian bear, they are apparently very shy and wary of humans, according to researchers. After all, they have managed to survive in densely populated Europe for centuries. Around here, we get young bears showing up in unusual places, like the bakery of a supermarket all the time, and it's no big deal. Tthe bear gets tranquilized and moved, or destroyed. End of story.

Grizz

"savage" bear ?? He's an Italian so just bait the trap with some prosciutto or salami !! By now he's tired of the sheep diet.Why are Germans so afraid of bears ? Isn't the coat of arms of Berlin a bear ?

Take care mete
As Italian I can get touchy for jokes on Italian. Even if it is a bear

Stefano, It's just that I was thinking [from my Italian background] what would entice the bear. Prosciutto was the first thing that came to mind . I could make him [even in my sleep] a nice meal like osso buco with risotto alla Milanese, but then the poor bear would have to fight you for it !!!!

Doesn't seem right, first bear in 100 years and every one is hunting it down, wolves were gone fromWyoming for almost that long ane we brought the damn things back!!No one cares how many sheep and cows they eat.

Well, it's obvious that the Finns will never get him either unless they bait the trap with something decent. If osso bucco isn't acceptable, perhaps some fettucine Alfredo and a bottle of pinot grigio and a bowl of spumone will work. They need to quit treating this paisano like some kind of Frankish barbarian.

I'm also a bit surprised that one single bear can't find place in Germany.

Don't know who those guys after the bear are, but we have a couple of very experienced bear hunters, who often help officials for killing/tranquilizing bears and wolves. I believe we have some 70+ bears and 50+ wolves with a GPS collar around.

BTW, the dogs those guys have taken to Germany most probably aren't huskies. Rather laikas or norwegian moose hounds or jämtlandish spitz, but not any sled dogs.

" The hunters are optimistic but this bear is a marathon runner" Anton Steixner Agriculture Minister for Tirol Austria

OldSarge,
you are going to have a diplomatic accident as Mr.Berlusconi had joking on Finnish reindeer jam vs Italian traditional cuisine. With finnish of course

Mete seems to know two of the top recipes in Milanese area, but by my experience and knowledge honey and meat and something like this is enough to prepare a bait for brown bears.

And it is of Italian origin because it born in Italy, but its mum and dad are from Slovenia, for this reason I think that it can also have different preferences about food.

Maybe some Slovenian friend can describe some recipe to prepare a bait for the bear.

And Sarge, please, we, people (and bears)of northern Italy do not love the "paisa'/paisano" words. I do not know if something like this appen in USA, but there are 1000km between Milan and Sicily, and northern people has a mind and a way of think more near to Swiss and German and, even, French people than to the one of southern peolple

Stefano - he is lost due to Italian cuisine - after all why would he return to Slovenia - to well mellowed (rotten) donkey or horse (the best meat bait there is ) after all above described goodies, unless he doesn`t like the restaurant or its servants ?

Stefano,
Hah! As one who is two generations from Apulia, I am unoffended and will discount my grandfather's feeling that anyone from north of Rome is a German, anyway.

Mouse93, It will be interesting to understand if JJ1 prefers italian meals, because its birth, or Slovenian because its ascendants.

Sarge,

I'm beginning to think that he wants only to go to see soccer mundial competitions. But it is late to play in the Italian team vs USA one.

And Sarge don't joke German wear birkenstock with short sock on not suntanned legs and eat wurstel und Krauts and drink a lot of beer.....oooohhh well sometime I do the same except wear birkenstock with short sock on not suntanned legs. that is too much for me

This will provoke a diplomatic crisis with German members ...... LIFE IS SOOOO DIFFICULT

If your grandfather is still alive, please bring my best regards to him, even if from Milan a lot of kilometers north of Rome.

In America it's not difficult to catch our black bears . Check www.foxnews.com in the video section and see how we use a "hammock trap" to catch a bear !

Mete,
JJ1 is a Brown Bear and even if young and not completely developped, its already three times, or maybe more, bigger than a black bear.

I think tat an hammockis not enough

Steve,
You'd be surprised. Even though the "book" weight and size of the black bear seems small, here in California where they don't hibernate but keep eating all winter they can get really big. Several are taken each year over 250 kg and I met a biologist once that swore he knew of one that went over 330 kg. The real difference is in the greater carnivorousness of the brown and the size of its armory (claws!)

Sarge, Mea culpa.
This is one negative television effect, with the pubblicity of how big, immense and sometime more, the brown bears or, if I'm not wrong, the grizzlies are. And JJ1 is cousin of these bears.

I really though that black bears were normally more near to 100/120kg than the double or three time that weight.

Maybe an explanation of my bad information is that probably I'll never hunt bear.
Too little bears in EU, and for this reason expensive or very expensive. It is not in my close programs to hunt in NorthAmerica, for a lot of reasons, and even if I love USA I never had occasion to get there.
Well also today I learned something new.
Thank Sarge

In PA in recent years the biggest black bears have weighed 360-390 KG [official weights ]. The one in the video looked like one on his own for the first time which means 1 1/2 year old and would weigh about 68 KG. Hunters typically get bears weighing 110-200 KG. I had a young one actually knock on my door a few years ago, but since I'm bigger, heavier, and meaner I chased it away !! It's quite common to see bears in my area.

I suspect that in the case of both the Pennsylvania and California black bears, we are looking at overweight, overfed, underexercised suburbanites . . . like me, perhaps. Certainly the normal run of American black bears do, in fact, weigh in about 100-120 kg. Likely those in that range should taste better than some giant greaseball of a bear. I just wanted to make sure that it was known in Europe that some black bears get a lot bigger.

Canadians bait them with oatmeal ! Note agai this is a young bear. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5097124.stm

Good afternoon,
Yesterday you were speaking about some exception, as happen also between humans. I can say that I know some of these exceptions, remaining on weight argument. Ok I feel better, my info were correct for the normality.

If we were speaking about kudus, they should had trophy over 65". A dream for all the African Hunters.
If we were speaking about Elephants, we were speaking of the one whose tusk weight were 235 and 226 lbs and over three meters long....

Ok, but I wish remember to you that we are debating about the European version of a grizzlie, and not so far by their cousins as dimensions.

Mete, interesting the article that you linked.

I remember hunting in Minnesota one time and I was trying out a 243....

A local came chugging up on a tractor, and asked if I had run into the angry black bear that was running around the place????

NO I said... thinking he was just trying to mess with me...

He told me that the thing had chased him on his tractor a few days before... Dept Of Natural Resources had estimated his weight in the 500 to 600 lb class....

after he left, I came across the tracks of a very very large bear... so he was not kidding me about it....

I promptly went back to the truck... put the 243 back in its case and pulled out the 30/06 with the 220 grain round noses.... and finished my hunting day with that rifle instead....

O.K., lads, have at him!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5115138.stm

Now I know how to defeat the German soccer [futball] team. Dress the opposing fans in bear costumes !! LOL LOL

The bear was shot this morning - in Germany.

Fuhrmann

Yes, fuhrmann is correct. Not much in the news, but Bild says it was shot at 04:50, Waidmannsheil, Dom.

Bild Newspaper

Wikipedia

After several attempts to catch "Bruno" alive failed - even with a team of bear hunters from Finland with five dogs, which in the press are named either as Karelian Bear Dogs or Elkhounds, JJ1 was shot at the Rotwand mountain (see Miesbach (district)) near lake Spitzingsee in southern Bavaria in the early morning of June 26, 2006.

Sorry to hear that !

Here's a little more info. Apparently he weighed in at 220 lbs. Not particularly big but he was young.
Hunters kill 1st German wild bear in 170 years
Official: ‘Rabbits are also deserving of sympathy’; animal lovers decry killing

Updated: 2:30 p.m. CT June 26, 2006
SCHLIERSEE, Germany - Bruno, the brown bear who sauntered into Germany through the Italian Alps and eluded pursuers in a month-long mountain odyssey, was shot and killed Monday, to the dismay of many animal lovers.

The first wild bear to be seen in Germany since 1835 was shot by government-sanctioned hunters in an Alpine meadow in the early morning, putting an end to a sometimes humorous saga that has made headlines around Europe, even in competition with the World Cup.

Bruno was part of a project to reintroduce bears in northern Italy, but he roamed into Austria and Germany. In recent weeks he regularly popped out of the woods to make brief but brazen appearances — on one occasion, plunking down for a rest in front of a police station in the Bavarian lakeside resort of Kochel am See. But a pack of crack Finnish tracking dogs was sent home in defeat after failing to corner him so he could be tranquilized and sent home.

The shooting brought immediate condemnation from environmental groups and some politicians, and Bavarian environment minister Werner Schnappauf — who gave permission for the bear to be killed — received death threats.

The 2-year-old bear had dined on sheep, killed rabbits and broken into beehives.

‘No other solution’
Officials said it was only a matter of time before the 220-pound Bruno attacked a human.

"There was no other solution," Anton Steixner, an official from the Austrian state of Tyrol, told reporters.


"Even animal rights activists should understand that this bear killed sheep and tore into rabbits purely for pleasure," Steixner said. "Rabbits are also deserving of sympathy."

But Tony Scherer, mayor of Schliersee, the Bavarian town near Spitzingsee lake, where Bruno was killed, disagreed.

"The death penalty has been abolished," said Scherer. "This bear didn't do anything bad — for me it is absolutely unnecessary for him to have been shot."

Bruno was killed instantly by a single shot from 150 meters, officials said. They would not identify the three hunters involved in the 4:50 a.m. shooting, citing possible threats from animal lovers.

Evaded captors for weeks
The 2-year-old bear was spotted in Bavaria in May. DNA samples from hair he left behind were used to identify him as JJ1, part of the project in Italy.

Bavarian authorities gave permission for hunters to kill the bear, then backed down in the face of the ensuing outcry and decided to try to capture him.

But the bear kept ahead of his pursuers.

On the weekend, Bavarian officials said they would reinstate permission for hunters to shoot the bear on Tuesday. After the bear was killed on Monday, however, they said informal permission had been granted starting Saturday.

‘It won’t bring Bruno back’
The head of the German Animal Protection Federation said his organization was considering legal action.

"I am horrified, indignant and sad — for weeks it was apparently impossible to catch the bear; the permission to shoot him is barely given and he is already dead," Wolfgang Apel said. "We will examine all legal avenues, even though it won't bring Bruno back."

Franz Maget, a top member of the opposition Social Democrats in Bavaria, urged that Schnappauf resign.

"Bear-killer Schnappauf has failed as environment minister and should hang up his hat," Maget said. "The permission to shoot him was a mistake and possibly violated the law."

To be put on display
In Austria, the animal rights group Four Paws denounced the shooting and called for a police investigation.

But Schnappauf's deputy, Otmar Bernhard, said that while Bruno's death was "regrettable," it was the "only solution."

"He walked past hikers, hikers walked past him — that is extremely dangerous and not acceptable," Bernhard said.

Bruno was to be dissected by veterinarians in Munich later Monday, and then prepared to be put on display in Munich's Museum of Man and Nature, Bernhard said.

There is a huge brouhaha going on at the moment about the "poor bear" having met his destiny. Every man and his dog has an opinion about what SHOULD have been done differently. Environmentalists, journalists, self acclaimed experts - you name it... The hunter(s) who fired the fatal shots have received death threats... Ah, life in urban Europe...
- mike