CODY — With trail cams and boat crews, Wyoming Game and Fish is continuing to monitor the Shoshone River area around the Paul Stock Nature Trail aftera grizzly was hazed from the area over the weekend.
At the popular Cody trail, you can still see the sign: 'Grizzly bear tracks spotted on October 13' and Game and Fish says the adult male grizzly was in the area eating Russian Olive.
"Around Cody, the river corridors are spots where bears are going to be either traveling through or hunkering down as in this particular case with this bear," said Phil Quick, a large carnivore biologist with Game and Fish. "We see that virtually every fall, though not always a grizzly coming into city limits.”
Quick says the bear was successfully hazed from the area on Saturday back into the Rattlesnake Mountain/Trail Creek drainage area, but biologists are keeping an eye out to see if the bear comes back.
“We’re going to continue to monitor closely, we have game cameras set up in all the thickets where the bear was feeding and we’ll let the public know if we encounter the bear or find out if its presence is there again," Quick said.
The Paul Stock Nature Trail is a two-mile trail that runs along the Shoshone River on the north side of town next to a neighborhood.
Sandy Kirchner lives in the neighborhood and regularly walks her dog down the trail.
“I feel pretty safe," Kirchner said. "10 ½ years I haven’t seen one and I walk the dog a lot. It’s a little bit unusual for them to come close to town, but not probably way out of the ordinary. It’s their habitat.”
Dennis Beaudrie has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years and also regularly walks the trail.
“Over the years, there’s been a bear here and there. The rivers are a corridor for them," Beaudrie said. "We always carry bear spray when we walk. Nobody’s ever been attacked.”
Quick says bear activity in the fall is at its highest level as bears are in hyperphasia mode, which means that they're packing in all the calories to prepare for winter hibernation.
