Around 70 spectators were treated to a rare sight Monday evening when Idaho Fish and Game Senior Conservation Officer Rob Morris was dispatched to West Ketchum to tranquilize a bear holding fast to the upper reaches of a tree.
In an interview Tuesday, Morris said that the male black bear, approximately 2 1/2 years old, had been reported to the Ketchum Police Department a number of time over the past few days after going through trash cans and back yards in residential neighborhoods.
"The bears are hard to budge once they get a taste for garbage," Morris said.
Morris said he was called around 5 p.m. after a Ketchum police officer had "hazed" the bear, which involved shooting rubber slugs at the backside of the bear to make it leave under its own power.
"This is a pretty common method to provide negative reinforcement," Morris said. "However, it's usually just a temporary solution to put the fear of God into the bear so he moves out of the neighborhood."
However, in this instance, rather than take off for the woods, the bear chose instead to clamber 30 to 40 feet up a spruce tree, located near the intersection of First Street and Third Avenue.
Morris said he arrived at the scene around 6 p.m. and managed to hit the bear with a well-aimed tranquilizer dart.
This dart proved insufficient, though, and the bear merely climbed further up the tree.
Morris's second shot missed, as the dart deflected off a branch, but was able to score another hit with the aid of the Ketchum Fire Department's ladder truck.
Raised up in the bucket, Morris was able to get close enough to knock the bear out with the second dart and then get a rope around its foot and over an upper branch, thus making it possible to help lower the 125-pound bear out of the tree.
"Normally we wouldn't tranquilize—it's really just a last resort," Morris said.
Members of the fire department stood below with a tarp to ensure that the bear didn't fall heavily to the ground.
After securing the bear in a trap, Morris drove the bear around 50 miles away from Ketchum, northwest of Fairfield, and released it back into the wild.
"It was in good shape when we let it go. He was alert and just walked off the truck back into the trees," Morris said. "It went as well as possible under the circumstances with so many people around in a heavily populated area."
