Photo by Dennis Deck
Photo by Dennis Deck
Who defaced this tree? [ View Answer ]
Black bears will rip the bark off the base of a tree and scrape the inner bark with their
incisors. Sometimes you can see their claw marks in pieces of bark they have ripped off.
Here you can see the mark left by the incisors. In this particular area, hemlocks were the tree of choice. In other areas within our region I have seen them use Mountain Hemlock and Lodgepole Pine.