Finally, after dasy of waiting, a person contacted the Bear Center through an e-mail, and stated he that had passed up Jo and her cub and Ursula and her two cubs - bears whose GPS locations showed them at his bait - but he didn't mention Lily or say whether or not he had killed Hope. Later on he admitted to killing Hope. e
While this seems to imply that this person was not looking to kill young bears (as in cubs), and that he was kind enough to pass up shooting a sow with cubs, it is standard hunting ethics that you do not shoot a female game animal that still has her young with her, because the young still need nutrition from their mother (as in milk), and guidance (so they learn how to survive) on how to live in a harsh wilderness environment.
So, this hunter did not do anything heroic when he passed up sows with cubs, he just followed one of the rules of hunter ethics. But, he did turn around and shoot a yearling female bear.
If this hunter had talked to Dr. Rogers in the past (Dr. Rogers says he has talked to this hunter in the past), he knew that the area he wanted to set up in was within the home range of at least three radio collared bears, not just two radio collared bear, but two female radio collared bears, which each had cubs, and one of them having a yearling cub. If he got enough information from Dr. Rogers, he would also know that there were also 1-2 other yearlings in the area, both of which were males, and three adult males. He also probably knew that hunting ethics frowned on killing female bears with cubs. That left him with the possibility of killing three adult males, two yearling male and one female yearling (because Hope was not wearing a collar.
So – lets look at some facts as we know them. And do some deductive reasoning:
A hunter admits to shooting a 1-year-old female black bear near the feeding stations with Lily and Hope's home range. He claims he did not know it was Lily. As I outlined in my last post, no matter what some people say, I think there are way too many indicators that show this to be a purposeful killing. I just do not see how - with all the publicity this has received, in hunting publications, including magazines and newspapers, in this blog, on 3-4 pages on Facebook, including the Lily the Black Bear page, Lily; Bear with a Bounty page, and my own Protect Minnesota's Research Bears page, and on several TV stations in Minnesota - that this hunter either did not know he was setting up within Lily and Hope's home range, where the bears most likely to come in to a bait station, would be Lily with her cub, and Hope, a one-year-old bear; or that this hunter could not tell that Lily was a female.
So – taking all that information into account we can conclude:
that - any hunter(not necessarily a black bear hunter) would know that the units around Ely contained bears that were being researched, and that those bears were accustomed to humans and food scraps more than most bears, and that the bears most likely to come into a new food source were juveniles (1-3 year olds), because juveniles are not with their mothers (who might warn them away from a new food source, or they might have trouble finding food because they are not with their mother),and that the probability of a one-year-old bear coming into a bait station in that area would be Hope was high, and that the probability that any female yearling to come to a bait station in that are was extremely high.
