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At about 7:10 a.m. Clearfield Borough Police officers received a call about a 462-pound male black bear roaming around. The bear had been in the neighborhood for quite sometime before the first call came in. Many residents said they believed the bear was someone dressed in a gorilla suit playing a Halloween prank at first.
The bear was located in a large maple tree at the home of Chris and Jackie Wechtenhiser at 1010 Daisy St. Officers tried to have residents return to their homes to see if the bear would climb out of the tree on its own. The bear did leave the maple tree but ran up a large spruce tree in the rear of the property, across the street from the Bionol Clearfield ethanol plant, and could not be lured down.
Police contacted the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which sent officers with tranquilizer darts to attempt to drug the bear and get it out of the tree. They missed with their first shot. The sound of the gun caused the bear to climb even higher in the tree.
Members of the Clearfield Borough Volunteer Fire Department were called to bring in their aerial ladder truck, which was used to get Game Commission Officers Mike Steingraber and Dave Carlini closer to the bear while Officer John Wyatt watched from the ground. The officers tranquilized the bear, which remained in the tree for about 20 more minutes.
Wyatt said a tranquilizer dart is not very accurate, so it's difficult to get a good shot from a distance.
As the tranquilizer began to take effect, the bear began to slowly climb down the tree but it was still about 20 feet up when it fell.
With the bear subdued, Wyatt, Steingraber and Carlini checked to make sure it did not injure itself during the fall and pulled one of its teeth to determine its age. They also measured it's 56-inch chest and used that measurement to determine an estimated weight of about 462 pounds. The bear was given a tracking tag in its ear along with a "do not eat" tag.
"Since it's less than 30 days until bear hunting season, we want to make sure if anyone happens to shoot this bear while hunting, they know not to eat its meat," Wyatt said. "It takes about 30 days for the bear to metabolize the (tranquilizer) drug from its system."
The bear was loaded into a trailer and Wyatt let some of the residents and their young children take a look at it before it was taken to the Moshannon State Forest and released.
"This was a good outcome," Wyatt said. "The bear could have easily run into the highway (Route 322/Bigler Avenue) and been hit. He'll have some bumps and bruises from the fall. We thought at first it may have hurt it's front leg because it was holding it up before it went completely under (from the drugs) but then he put it down and was walking around fine. The drugs tend to start from the rear of the animal and work their way up towards the front."
Police and Game Commission officers were assisted by the Clearfield County Sheriff's Department, the Clearfield Borugh Fire Police and The Clearfield Borough Volunteer Fire Department.
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Reported by Kimberly Finnigan, staff writer, E-mail: kfinnigan@thecourierexpress.com.
