A Journey of 100 Miles Begins with a Single Dart

District wildlife manager Justin Krall and some of the crew,
with two bears loaded in the culvert trap for transport.

The four bears were getting big and bored, maybe with some tendencies toward bad. What had been hungry cubs in 2017 were now hefty sub-adult males, weighing around 160–170 pounds (~75 kg).

They had spent months at the wildlife rehabilitation center, eating, sleeping, climbing tree trunks, eating, wrestling sumo-style, eating, splashing in stock tanks — but now it was time to go!

Their human contact had been kept low — the rehab center is not a zoo — but now came more humans, two of them with CO2-powered dart guns. PPFFFTT!

The couple who run the center were there, of course, plus me as additional stretcher-bearer.

We lifted each tranquilized bear onto a stretcher, where it was weighed,  micro-chipped (as with pets),  ear-tagged (all this is wildlife-research data), and vaccinated against sarcoptic mange. Here is the one I called "Stumpy," the smallest at about 125 pounds, waiting to be loaded with his companion. 

Then they were loaded into trailers (which are actually "live" bear traps themselves) for a long ride up into the Arkansas River headwaters, into areas where the drought is not so severe. At last came release, two in one place, two in another.

Looking over the upper Arkansas River Valley

"No long goodbyes," says district wildlife manager Kim Woodruff, who made this last video. That these bears gallop away from humans is a good thing, for them. Now they have their chance.