I Live With Two Grizzly Bears | BEAST BUDDIES

when you have there's there's no vacation these are wild animals they are apex carnivores and they rule the roost [Music] I've had an interest in bears since I was a boy I never thought I'd get a bigger 30 years ago I had been sick had a neurological disease was paralyzed at a young age and when I got back on my feet and I had this opportunity to get a bear I thought you know it's just to be my therapy I'll hang out with it in the woods and that's how it all began I started off with one bear Brody he would take 9 1/2 gallon calf models at a time started off at 8 pounds at a year old he was 400 pounds a year and a half his 550 pounds so i bottle-fed him for 3 years when you raise a bear you become the surrogate mother and they won't leave your side and they go through a lot of separation anxiety it's a lot like a human being most definitely when they're young they see you as their mother I clearly remember the first time I realized that a bear isn't a dog there's a 60 pound bear cub that may sound silly but most people think that they take a wild animal and they love it and they treat it just right that somehow they will get it to surrender its natural instincts and that'll never happen you can never tame a bear you can train one but you can never tame one the two bears I currently have a bob and screech they're littermate brothers around 7 years of age and they came from a park in Georgia it was a tourist attraction and they went out of business and prior to going out of business a friend of mine had called me and said hey they've got a couple bear cubs they don't want I didn't pay for them they were given to me people asked me if I rescued them and to me that's kind of an overplayed word I took him I've raised them and I've loved and I try to give the best life that you can give a captive there who knows what their favorite event when I started handling bears it was just interact with them nothing commercial but I realized it's going to take a lot of money to facilitate this hobby so I try to marriage a hobby with a profession I started doing commercial TV shows live appearances you don't play play and it evolved into the educational presentations where the animal itself can benefit and people can benefit so I can hopefully save the lives of people and ABARES that's where I'm at now no bear likes to be surprised but if you surprise a brown bear and they perceive that as hospital you being a threat to themselves they're young they're food source and oftentimes these guys try to kill you because they're trying to eliminate that perceived threat that's why they tell you to play dead if you're out in the backcountry and you're attacked by a brown bear I've always been reluctant to tell people that they are pets because they don't meet the traditional definition of a pet most people don't have pets that can kill them but it comes with the territory these are wild animals they are apex carnivores and they rule the roost the main thing when you have them in captivity is to keep from being bored you know you see the neurotic behavior the pacing what they call stereotypic Sue's oftentimes these guys have a lot in this habitat that's one thing we don't want we don't want pacing we don't want them going nuts I feel my main focus right now with Bob and screech is to use them to educate people on how to behave in their country to save the lives of people and of bears as habitat is shrinking there's less area for the Bears my main focus is just trying to keep people alive and keep bears alive when you have bears they take up all your time there's no vacations I've had bears 30 years and you're always thinking of you know whether it's getting food building new enclosures there's no down time this isn't an animal that's a low maintenance animal I worked on a program called project grizzly was trying to take Bob and screech to captive born captive raise bears to see if it was possible to release them into the wild the problem with a bear in the wild is if it loses his fear of people and becomes habituated or if it associates people with food and becomes food conditioned it's usually marked for death the question was can you take these captive born animals and make them afraid of people and get them to stay away from people and the experts that we had involved some said that unless you use aversive conditioning with pain like oftentimes they'll use water bullets and rubber bullets and pepper spray and bear dogs and lots of different things to just make them scared to death of human beings but I wouldn't do it my bears were well cared for and protected but what we pretty much determined was unless you implement that type of aversive conditioning you're not going to get these guys in here humans you're a good boy muddle your claws I love them but I watched them boy I make sure that I keep my mind where it should be knowing these animals I wouldn't say to turn on me turning on me and my opinion would be it coming out of left field a bear attacking me for absolutely no reason can't put your finger on a bow so ever but I know darn good well if I go in there with a hamburger I better bring it up for the whole class or I am gonna get hurt there's no surprises to that people ask me what does the future hold for bobbin screech I've made arrangements if something were to happen to me that they could go somewhere but their future at this time is just to stay with me I know some people would think that that's not healthy for them but once they've built a bond with somebody it's kind of hard to break that bond you you

Channel: Beastly

Views: 1,031,478

Rating: 4.9242301 out of 5

Keywords: amazing news, amazing stories, amazing story, amazing, barcroft animals, barcroft tv, documentary, Barcroftmediaanimalstag, Beast Buddies, grizzly bears, bear cubs, Paoli, Indiana, bear handler, Jeff Watson, Georgia, Bob and Screech, bears, bear, wild animals, Barcroft Animals, education, big bears, grizzly bear, 241532, May 2019, brown bear, black bear, captive bears, bear habitat

Id: PJXOkal6roA

Length: 6min 1sec (361 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Britavit]

This guy has this situation down. Loves the Bears, but has an extremely healthy respect for what they could do. Not enough dangerous animal handlers/owners/public have this, hence the abundance of clips on Live Leak!

[u/casimir_th]

cool video. TIL when eating hamburgers you can't just eat one. Jokes aside, he really protrays bears as they should be portrayed

[u/Avtoelectrik]

Beautiful bears.