Hunting Washington Forum

Big Game Hunting => Bear Hunting => Topic started by: bow4elk on May 25, 2010, 03:35:34 PM

Title: Fresh Peel
Post by: bow4elk on May 25, 2010, 03:35:34 PM: Went on a hike Sunday to set a couple cams and found this fresh peel 10 yards in front of a tree I normally have a camera on. Dang. Would have been neat to get pics of some peel-n-eat action.
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: machine on May 25, 2010, 07:20:10 PM: cool find.Ive seen lots of peeled trees but nothing fresh like that.
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: bonecrusher on May 25, 2010, 07:25:24 PM: found one like that on my hunt this year. it was in April and was so fresh i kinda looked around when i found it to see if i was alone. i really need to get a trail cam, Ive got some killer spots
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: epq21 on May 25, 2010, 07:48:00 PM: Look out some of them bears are kleptomaniacs... :chuckle:
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: brew on May 25, 2010, 08:17:59 PM: just my 2 cents on the matter but i ran into basically the same thing last spring on my bear hunt and it turned out to be porcupines. I got into an area with my spring tag that had a lot of "bear peels" and hunted it for a week or so. I didn't look close at the trees until i wasn't seeing any bears and then i noticed that the marks on the trees were very close together (like beaver teeth), not spaced apart like bear claws or bear teeth (like your pics 4 and 5). only noticed the "peels" on hemlocks so that was another indicator. Not saying that these aren't bears but don't waste time on them like i did because of the quill pigs. just trying to help cuz i'm no expert.

good luck
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: runamuk on May 25, 2010, 08:19:27 PM: Quote from: epq21 on May 25, 2010, 07:48:00 PM
Look out some of them bears are kleptomaniacs... :chuckle:

lol there is one hunter who has some great footage from a cameras trip around the forest in a bears mouth :yike: they are serious klepto's who knew :dunno: :chuckle:
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: billythekidrock on May 25, 2010, 08:32:39 PM: Quote from: brew on May 25, 2010, 08:17:59 PM
just my 2 cents on the matter but i ran into basically the same thing last spring on my bear hunt and it turned out to be porcupines. I got into an area with my spring tag that had a lot of "bear peels" and hunted it for a week or so. I didn't look close at the trees until i wasn't seeing any bears and then i noticed that the marks on the trees were very close together (like beaver teeth), not spaced apart like bear claws or bear teeth (like your pics 4 and 5). only noticed the "peels" on hemlocks so that was another indicator. Not saying that these aren't bears but don't waste time on them like i did because of the quill pigs. just trying to help cuz i'm no expert.

good luck

Those are definately bear peels. You can tell by the teeth spacing in the cambium as well as the large "slats" of peeled bark.

As you found out, porky tooth marks are closer and the bark chips will be much much smaller.
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: billythekidrock on May 25, 2010, 09:20:05 PM: Quote from: bearbaito6 on May 25, 2010, 09:07:44 PM
Yeah those were made by a bear, looks like a couple weeks old though.

Yep. They look dry and have a bit of color to them.
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: brew on May 25, 2010, 09:38:03 PM: they are close together...if you took your index and middle finger and put them together and raked the tree that is what you'ld get. I cant see how a bear would "bite" the tree and not leave a canine mark. A bear has 4 teeth in between his canines, not two. all i see is two bite marks and to me that is a porker, not a bear. If you are confident in its status rock on and I'll buy you a steak dinner after you kill it. As i've said before i'm not an expert.

brew
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: billythekidrock on May 25, 2010, 09:51:35 PM: They don't "bite" the tree. They open their mouth and scrape up and down. Very seldom will you find many canine marks. If you look at a bears mouth they actually have six teeth between canines, but due to the contour of the their jaws and the opposite contour of the tree you have a very small amount of space for them to contact.

Like I said before, look at the large slats of bark. It is a dead give away.
Title: Re: Fresh Peel
Post by: STIKNSTRINGBOW on May 26, 2010, 09:04:29 AM: As BTKR said, Porcupine damage is different..
I am no expert, but when I cannot be hunting, I have been researching.
I was curious about this, because I had someone say that what I was finding was porci damage, but it actually is different, smaller bark chunks, smaller scrapes, and they are actually eating the wood of the tree more than just scraping.
Also usually climb the tree instead of ground level damage...
A bear bites, or claws off the outer bark, opens his mouth and scrapes up and down on tree until the sapwood gums up his teeth, it is more like he is using the tree like a tooth brush more than actually biting in to it.
when he has a bunch of crud stuck to his teeth, he licks it off of his teeth, he doesn't actually bite the tree to eat the wood.. :twocents:

This is what Porcupine Damage looks like...