A customer friend of mine has a destructive bear that seems to break big scaffold branches of trees just for the exercise. I fear what the bear will do with his Methely plum when it begins to ripen in a week or two, although it could lead to a permanent solution to the black-knot problem.
We are under an hour from NYC, so I’m looking to see if the Dept of Fish and Wildlife, it that’s what it is, might consider this a nuisance bear.
Actually, it seems to be in the jurisdiction of the NYDEC.
I’ve often wondered about adding a hot pepper “tea” to a spray tank with a sticker. Too late in the season and I guess it would stay on the fruit at harvest and cause issues. I don’t react much to hot pepper so spaying it wouldn’t be to bothersome to my system. Maybe even spraying around the base of the tree might discourage some animals?
Only non-lethal thing that comes to mind for me is an electric fence.
Bear meat is surprisingly good. Spring bear is really lean, only good for grinding but makes Excellent hamburger. Fall bear makes Excellent roasts and if you’ve never had pie shells made with rendered bear fat you haven’t lived.
I have never once had anyone taste bear meat that didn’t love it.
Just mpo, but problem solved.
I’ve heard that, but be aware of the risk of trichinosis.
Just treat it like pork, same thing. They’re both omnivores and both carry trichinosis.
It has a, “different” flavor, but it’s not, “wild”; just different. Deffinitely Not a Harsh flavor like an old mule buck but not a bad flavor. Really quite nice.
Honestly had I realized how good bear meat was I would have been hunting bear instead of deer to put easy, cheap meat on the table. (Northern prairies there’s pretty much a black bear behind every tree)
My favorite’s will always be a moose roast or smoked elk ribs and antelope liver(If you like liver, antelope is pure candy, when young I would carry a 1 burner coleman stove, alum pan and some olive oil in my daypack, would cook the liver while parting out, drooooool.)
But ya, bear meat is good. Very good, and there’s Lot’s of them.
Electricity is said to work pretty well with bears
The way it works with nuisance bears is they tag them the first time. If they are tagged they are put down the second time. They usually dont get tagged for broken branches unless it is someone very important whos branches they are breaking. If it was me i would make a bunch of boards with nails in them all around the fruit trees. They step on the board they wont want to put their weight on their foot.
I thought a bear “unwelcome mat” was made from the first trouble bear placed outside the front door. 
Smokey says wipe your feet before entering.
you could plant other fruits along your property line to entice the bears to eat that rather than your trees, aside from that build a cinder block fence to keep them out.
As I wrote, this bear isn’t after fruit… yet. It is just getting some exercise breaking big scaffold branches… maybe for the fun of climbing the trees. One of the apple trees he’s done damage to doesn’t even have a crop this year and in my experience bears are only attracted to fruit once it is almost or completely ripe.
I already suggested the “unwelcome mat” idea to my customer. It would require an awful lot of plywood and does anyone know if it would even work. A smart bear could push the boards away if they aren’t well anchored.
It seems like an electric fence surrounding the orchard is the only practical solutioin.
Bears are smart, playful, bull-headed and extremely agile. Reasonably high electric fence is probably the only thing that will work.
My grandmother used to tell stories of how she saw bears get over 2,5m fences into strawberry patches and evade barbed wire at several levels. In the end her and others who shared the community garden got resigned to leaving the gate unlatched and closed by gravity, so the bear could get in and out and raid the fruit without demolishing everything (in pain and ager) and inviting deer to join the party. That was back in the day when electric fences were expensive and only used for bull pastures around here.
When I saw that mat, I right away thought back to years ago when I had to lift my elderly neighbor out of her climbing rose bushes after she fell into them. The unwelcome mat might almost be slightly more hazardous to the home owner.
Not recommended for tottering seniors, anyway. I can’t imagine accidentally falling into one, and my client is an avid tennis player in good shape. The problem is the scale of the job. If he wants to solve the problem he should install an electric fence with the strongest legal charger. It wouldn’t need to be solar powered so he could use two chargers, one with a powerful intermittent charge and one with a less powerful constant charge to keep out even starving squirrels. I’ve seen them electrocuted with a strand of constant charge close to the ground. We get a lot of dew here.
In My experience, you can chase them away like I do a lot. I put bells on the fence and in the trees and sleep with the door open. They are easy to scare away, but they come back. Even gun shots won’t deter them for long. Usually they won’t come back the same night but some do. Electric Fences work, but some figure out to dig under or get around them somehow. I’ve heard that they are getting more savvy about electric fences and that they don’t work as well as they used to. I have it around one orchard and it keeps almost all of them out, so it is worth trying and probably the best option. My fence is not great and going for a double strand would probably do better. And then there are dogs. If they don’t mind listening to them bark all night at everything, which is why I don’t have one.
I think SkillCult mentions in one of his videos that he was somewhat successful in deterring them from his apples with blindingly strong lights hooked to motion sensors.
That works really well in my area (north-central NC) against racoons and other small-ish mammals. It’s also cheap and safe to make. Just wear gloves while making and applying it… And goggles. It doesn’t affect birds at all (they can’t taste capsaicin, poor things) and easily washes off the fruit. I’m not sure about bears though. There are some articles about the topic from the USDA through the Wildlife Research Institute.
I made a spray out of habanero seeds years ago and made a very, very hot spray with it. Turns out my squirrels were into very spicy food… kept coming back for more.
If it really worked we’d all be using it, I think. But I can only speak for the squirrels in my region. .