We think Jack is heading out to call it another year at the age of about 24. After my last look at him yesterday as he headed off at 2:44 PM, I suspect he rested a while before going to a place about a mile away where he has stopped almost every year for eight years as he heads out. He was there last evening at about 7 PM. We’ll be waiting for a call from another common spot about five miles away if the people there are home, and the next spot about 10 miles away after that. Then no one knows where he goes beyond there for the winter. He reverses those visits in the spring. We’ll see what we hear over the next couple weeks. The spot about five miles away holds a good memory of his visit some years ago. It is a picture that hangs in the Bear Center of Jack sharing his food with a chipmunk that is comfortably stuffing its cheeks by Jack’s cheek inches (maybe 4 inches) away on one side and his paw an inch or two away on the other side. They were comfortably ignoring each other and calmly eating.
Kimani with her 2 female cubs
The next question is about RC who is Shadow’s oldest surviving descendent at 23. Will she have cubs this winter? She was supposed to have cubs last winter but didn’t. We thought maybe it was because she had mated with Spanky, but we don’t really know at what age black bears stop having cubs. We know of a couple that had their last litters at 26. Shadow set the known record at 28. But how many stop earlier than that? Will she have cubs this winter at 24? What makes us wonder is that pregnant females are the earliest to den. Her mother Shadow sometimes denned up for the winter in the last week of August when she was pregnant. RC showed up today which seems counter to being expectant. I couldn’t help take a picture of her today because the light was right to show her eyes nicely, and she was standing there quietly looking at me. Click. She was also showing the distinctive white check mark on the right side of her chest that gives her the name RC that stands for Right Check. If she has cubs in the spring, we’ll learn that some pregnant mothers den in October, or maybe that some mothers stop having cubs at 21 even though she seemed to be in the height of her productive life with a litter of four.
At this time of year, we don’t expect to see pregnant females still up and around. Instead, we see mothers with cubs. They are among the last bears to call it a year. So today we were not surprised to see 16-year-old Bow and her two cubs (Bertha and Bentley) and non-clan mother Kimani and her two un-named female cubs (that posed as a family standing against a white pine, their comfortable place to eat). Elsewhere, 15-year-old Lily and her three cubs and 13-year-old Jewel and her three cubs are still safe and being seen.
Thank you for all you do,
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center