Bear Freed From Icy Minnesota Ditch

Poor bear was just trying to get some winter sleep but got washed out of his slumber chamber which happened to be a culvert.

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According to inforum.com with all the recent warmer temps, Monday morning, this sleeping bear got washed out of the culvert he was residing in for the duration of the winter in Roseau County, Minnesota and got stuck in the combination of snow and ice in the ditch.

DNR bear expert, Andy Tri, “He tried to push himself out and kind of got wedged on some frozen water that had frozen and thawed, frozen and thawed and got stuck in place and tired,” Tri said late Monday morning.

Tri and a couple of DNR conservation officers drugged the bear and with the help of 3 other men pulled him out with a rope. The bear appeared to be in good shape except for a few scrapes from trying to escape the ice and snow.

Once the bear was drugged, it took the five men about 20 minutes to free the close to 400 pound bear. “I got there (Monday) morning, Ben (Huener) was with it just to make sure nothing happened to it. I came in and it was just one of those standard druggings,” Tri said. “He went right down in 10 minutes, and it took about five guys to haul him up and out of the hole once we dug him out. We just had to free his leg out of the hole of the culvert.”

It's fortunate that the bear was found and able to be saved. “He’s in the back of a pickup truck now, and we’ll make him a new den,” Tri said. “He probably won’t stay, but at least it will give him some protection from the elements after that.”