Do Bears Poop in the Woods?
A couple of days ago the dogs and I noticed this poop on the trail below Circle Bluff. I would definitely say it was a bear poop other than the fact that it was a preposterously prodigious pile of poop for the size of bears we have in these hills.
I was sitting on the deck looking at the hills and thinking about this poop. I was trying to talk myself out of this actually being bear poop, so I asked Grok what it was:
"This is black bear scat (Ursus americanus).
The large, loose, irregular pile packed with undigested seeds is classic for a black bear that has been gorging on ripe berries. In late August in the Coast Range around Gales Creek, bears are in hyperphagia (the pre-hibernation feeding frenzy) and eat huge quantities of whatever berries are available—Himalayan blackberry, salal, huckleberries, and others. Their digestive system doesn’t break down the seeds well, so they come out in big, wet, seed-filled masses that can look a bit like a mashed-up cow pie.
Gales Creek / Tillamook State Forest country is good black bear habitat, and this size and contents rule out the other common possibilities:
Deer and elk produce pellets (or wet clumps of vegetation, not seed-packed blobs).
Coyote or fox scat is usually more tubular, twisted, and tapered.
Raccoon droppings are smaller tubes, often left in latrines.
The seeds you see are leftover from the fruit the bear swallowed whole. Bears are important seed dispersers in these forests.
A couple of practical notes:
Don’t touch it with your bare hands (parasites are possible even if fruit scat doesn’t smell as bad as meat-based scat).
This means a bear was in the area recently. Make noise on the trail, keep food secured, and give any bears you see plenty of space.
Pretty cool find—bears do a lot of the work spreading berry plants around the woods."