Anne Woods says she couldn’t quite believe her eyes when she saw a massive grizzly bear near her house off Highway 582 west of Didsbury last week.
“I looked out my dining room window and there he was,” Woods told the Gazette. “I did a double take and I yelled to my husband and his son to come in. I thought if I say it is a bear they are just not going to believe me. So I said, ‘You just have to come here.'"
“The bear wasn’t doing anything wrong. He wasn’t hurting anything. He didn’t rip up property. He just wandered around eating the dandelions and trying to figure out where he should go.
“We are on an acreage and we are surrounded by farmland. He was never actually in my yard. He was along the fenceline on the east side of our property. He is a beautiful, beautiful animal.”
After watching the bruin for some time, Woods decided to try for a photo.
“I didn’t approach him,” she said. “I was very cautious. I have a decent camera with a good telephoto lens. I took the picture behind round bales. There were round bales between me and him and a fence. We didn’t want to disrupt him.
“We were trying to get a photo to see if there was a tag on it. I never did see a tag on him so I don’t think he is tagged.”
Judging by the animal’s size and the large hump on his back, she said she believes it is a male. She estimated the animal weighs more than 300 kilograms.
Woods contacted Fish and Wildlife and Mountain View BearSmart Society to report the encounter.
Seeing a grizzly bear that far east of Highway 22 is very unusual, she said.
“My husband has lived on that property for over 20 years and never seen a sign of a bear there,” she said.
Woods says anyone encountering a bear should use extreme caution and put safety first.
“The message is don’t approach and keep an eye on it,” she said.
As for the bear, Woods says she believes he has moved on.
“I think he has wandered off. We haven’t seen anything of him,” she said.
For more information on what to do if you encounter a bear, or to report a sighting, see mountainviewbearsmart.com.
