PAYSON, Ariz. - One of the three bears the Arizona Game and Fish Department called public safety threats and euthanized this week, was pushing on the front door of a home in the Tonto National Forest while searching for food and water.
Joseph Stapp appreciates his quiet home in the middle of the woods. The man works the graveyard shift, but his peaceful slumber was disturbed Tuesday afternoon by his dog Blue’s barking.
“I was actually asleep, dog making a ruckus, then all of a sudden I heard a lot of crash,” Stapp said.
He was surprised when he came upstairs from the basement to find a bear sitting outside his front door.
“I turn around and I go back down and I grab the 30 aught six,” Stapp said.
After reinforcing his door with a chair, Stapp tried scaring the furry intruder by banging on the door and yelling, “Hey, get out of here!”
The animal was too busy eating Blue’s dog food, drinking her water and making a mess of Stapp’s deck, currently under construction.
Stapp called 911, but knew help was at least a half-an-hour wait out here.
The dispatcher told Stapp he couldn’t shoot the bear.
“I said well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to shoot it because I’m not going to sit there face-to-face with a bear without protecting myself,” Stapp said.
Stapp described himself as “an animal guy” who looked at killing the bear as his last resort.
Luckily, the animal wandered off, but paid Stapp another five visits. It shook things up over the next couple of days—and Stapp himself, when he heard the door to the trap set up by AZGFD shut one night, but found it empty.
“I turn around real quick with my flashlight, make sure there’s no bear behind me,” Stapp said.
The AZGFD eventually trapped the bear Thursday morning and euthanized it, saying in a press release it was necessary “because of the bear’s aggressive behavior and lack of fear toward humans.”
The agency blames encounters like this one on drought conditions in the state.
Stapp, who has lived off Control Road in the Tonto National for more than a decade, said this was the worst he had seen the area—“dry, no berries, no water, no spring,”—forcing bears to come dangerously close to homes and humans to scavenge for nutrition and hydration.