A Frenzy of Black Bears It’s Hyperphagia Season at Minnesota’s Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary By Cheryl Lyn Dybas Photography by Ilya Raskin Dust, winds and waters. Bears and people. All swirl together on an August afternoon at the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary in Orr, Minnesota. A dry spell has turned dirt roads into arid trackways. Hints of autumn’s cool breezes blow from the north. Stealing beneath jackets, they run chill fingers up spines. The 500-acre sanctuary, where you can observe black bears in their natural habitat, is some 50 miles from the Canadian border, as the bear roams. In a summer season there, staff members see 300 to 400 different bears. Last August, Ilya Raskin and I visited the sanctuary, a rare place for bears. Biologists call late summer hyperphagia season, the time when black bears go into an overeating frenzy to build up their fat reserves before hibernating for the winter. Acorns and other bear treats, such as raspberries, are at their peak in the northern forest then; for female bears, successfully having cubs in spring depends on finding enough to eat the previous summer and fall. Bears may spend 20 hours a day foraging, consuming 15,000 to 20,000 kilocalories in a 24-hour period, scientists have discovered. The weight a bear gains is regulated by the fat reserves it accumulates— once those reserves reach an adequate level, a biofeedback mechanism returns the bear’s appetite to normal.
Inside the Magic Circle From May through August, more than 80 bears at one time frequent the sanctuary. They forage for food in an open meadow surrounded by northern spruce-tamarack, or boreal, forest. The meadow is referred to as the Magic Circle; there the bears nose around in hollow logs laden with nuts and berries left by sanctuary staff members. 16
AUGUST 2022
NORTHERN WILDS
“We’re continuing a tradition of feeding bears that started decades ago,” says Stephanie Horner, Vince Shute Sanctuary director for the 2021 season. “We don’t suggest others do it, however.” Black bears in the wilderness are just that: wild. Decades ago, Horner explains, “logger Vince Shute, who has now passed on, lived in this clearing.” Shute and fellow loggers once shot bears that came into their camps looking for food. Then they realized: to stop break-ins at the cabins, all they had to do was share their food, especially if it was berries or nuts. From that time, loggers and bears lived side-by-side. Eventually the logging camp closed, and in 1995 the land was formally dedicated to the bears under the auspices of the American Bear Association and its Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary. “This past spring [2021], we had to hit the ground running,” says Horner. “The bears showed up a month or more early, in April.” Cheeky, the sanctuary’s dominant male, was among the first to appear. Bears lose 30 to 50 percent of their weight during hibernation, “so it’s common for them to arrive looking quite lean,” Horner says. But Cheeky was far from starving. “In November and December of 2020, there was an unusual warm-up followed by an early spring,” says Horner. “That likely made a lot of the bears’ natural foods available longer in the fall and/or earlier in the spring.” On summer afternoons and evenings, the public is invited to visit the sanctuary to watch bears like Cheeky. The Magic Circle is visible from a raised, 25-foot-high boardwalk. Bears and cubs often climb trees inches from the platform, paying little attention to gawking human onlookers. Last year, the sanctuary hosted more than 17,000 human visitors. “People learn that bears follow their own path, whether to food or another bear or a
