Two bears may be roaming Tuscarawas County, wildlife officer says
Doug Wills, chairman of the Tuscarawas County Republican Party, had an encounter with a black bear on Friday evening.
Wills, who is seeking reelection to the Ohio Republican Party Central Committee, was putting out a campaign sign on Dover Zoar Road just south of Zoar around 8 p.m. after a rain storm.
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He got into his pickup truck and turned onto Middle Run Road when he saw the animal.
"I looked up the road and I thought, that looks like a bear," he said. "First I thought, it's either a bear or a cow. I thought, that's a bear. That's a big bear. So I moved closer to it, and it kind of came towards me. It wasn't quite sure where it wanted to go. It wasn't quite sure it was liking me getting a little closer to it.
"I was trying to take pictures of it through the windshield. After that rain it was kind of steamy. It stood there in the road for a little bit and then it decided it was going to lumber up over the hill."
Wills is one of several Tuscarawas County residents who has spotted a black bear in the last couple of weeks. There have been sightings in Dennison and in the Bolivar and Strasburg area.
Michael Budd, Tuscarawas County's wildlife officer, said wildlife officials believe there may be two bears roaming through the area because of the volume of sightings.
But he noted that the animals can cover a lot of ground quickly, so it's possible the sightings are of the same bear. Bears have up to a 120-square-mile radius of habitat where they live.
"They can cover a lot of ground, but we've got a ton of reports," he said.
Bear sightings in eastern Ohio are not uncommon.
"We get this every year," Budd said. "We get a lot of bears that come over from Pennsylvania and West Virginia that come up through Ohio. They're almost all juvenile male bears. They're looking for a mate.
"If they don't find a mate, usually they end up circling back to where they came from."
There are hardly any female bears in Ohio, he added.
Black bears are not a great danger to humans.
"Certainly you wouldn't want to go up and try to pet one. They're more afraid of humans than we are of them," he said. "They're going to try to avoid people at all costs.
"I describe them as a big overgrown raccoon. They are very similar in the ways that they act. They like to get into things. They're curious, and they definitely will eat just about anything. Any available food they will grab."
Budd advised residents to be careful when putting out their trash and consider doing it on the morning that it is picked up. However, he hasn't received any reports of bears getting into trash this year.
The animals are a state-listed endangered species, so it is illegal to kill them unless people are defending themselves from attack.
Budd asked that residents who see a bear report the sighting at wildohio.gov. There is a place on the website to report sightings and upload pictures. People do not have to give an exact address for the sighting.
"We really need people to do that because a lot of my sightings are basically through the grapevine," he said. "I'm not getting people directly calling me or reporting it directly to us. We do need that data."
This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Two bears may be roaming Tuscarawas County, wildlife officer says
