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By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock Nova SUIT Writer
Though the most frequentlyheard complaints concern deer, orchardists in the county are also disturbed about the damage they are seeing caused by marauding bears.
“They’ve taken three out of this orchard so far this year,” Charles Foster said Monday, as he watched Game Commission trapping specialist Jerry Blank remove a bear trapped Sunday night.
Mr. Foster’s orchard, located high on a hill off Rt. 631 near Huntly, seems to be a favorite dining spot for the bears, and his apple and peach trees show the damage. He admitted that “the orchard is in a bad spot, surrounded by mountains.”
Older trees have limbs broken and dangling, and claw marks are visible on the trunks where young bears have actually climbed into the trees to reach the ripe fruit. The smaller trees are often broken clean off, and their recovery as a fruitbearing tree is questionable, the veteran orchardist said.
Even the largest trees, whose limbs are more difficult to snap, have all the fruit within reaching distance stripped off. The bears eat only the ripe, prime fruit, Mr. Foster added. If a fruit is hard or bitter, they drop it on the ground and go back for more succulent pickings.
Game Warden Jim Bankston said that the three bears trapped in Mr. Foster’s orchard represent half those captured this year in Rappahannock - plus one killed by a car outside Huntly on Rt. 522 last week. Two were trapped after they tore up bfeehives, one was stealing corn from a com crib, and the other three were orchard raiders. ■ Warden Blank removed another bear Monday, this one trapped on Leon Hutcheson’s farm on Jenkins Mountain off Rt. 211. For two weeks the bear had feasted on Mr. Hutchethe
ripeivJuci^^fi^jljjHisZ^ife ’ pointed out’numerous unripe fruit lying on the ground, one bite taken and then discarded.
“We tried everything,” Mr. Hutcheson said, “even rock music” played on a portable radio left in the orchard overnight. For two weeks the bear ignored the trap, which was baited with ham scraps. It chose, instead, their ripe nectarines. He said that Warden Bankston was, on Monday, going to issue him a permit to shoot the marauder.
But finally, Monday morning Mrs. Hutcheson said she awoke to their dogs barking and the most aw(See
BEARS, page 18)
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