Watch Man Play With Two Large Grizzly Bears He Adopted When They Were Small Cubs!
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A bear handler who lives with two large grizzly bears he adopted when they were cubs has spoken out about his unusual hobby and revealed how he handles the large mammals.
As Jeff Watson from Paoli, Indiana, explained, he’s been dedicating his entire time to work as a bear handler for the last 30 years.
“When you have bears, there’s no vacation. These are wild animals and they rule the roost,” he said in an interview with BTV.
“I’ve had an interest in bears since I was a boy, I never thought I’d get a bear. Thirty years ago I’d been sick, I had a neurological disease, was paralyzed at a young age, and when I got back on my feet I had the opportunity to get a bear.
“I thought, ‘You know what? this could 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 nine half-gallon calf bottles at a time. He started off at 8lbs, at a year old he was 400lbs, and a year and a half he was 550lbs, so I bottle fed him for three years.
“When you raise a bear, you become a surrogate mother and they won’t leave your side, they go through a lot of separation anxiety. This is a lot like a human being, most definitely when they’re young they see you as their mother.”
While Jeff forged a strong bond with the two bears he takes care of, he admitted that these are not pets but wild animals.
“I’ve always been reluctant to tell people that they’re 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, apex carnivores – and they rule the roost,” he added.
“I clearly remember the first time that I realized a bear is not a dog. It was a 60lb bear cub. That may sound silly but most people think that if they take a wild animal, and they love it and they treat it just right that somehow you will get it to surrender its natural instincts – and that will never happen. You can never tame a bear. You can train one but you can never tame one.”
Speaking of the two bears he currently owns, Jeff said:
“They’re littermate brothers around seven 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 of bear cubs they don’t want.’
“I didn’t pay for them, they were given to me. People ask me if I rescued them and to me, that’s kind of an overplayed word. I took them, I’ve raised them, and I’ve loved them, and I’ve tried to give them the best life you can give a captive bear – who knows what their fate would been.”
While Jeff does what he thinks is best for the animals, he admitted he couldn’t resort to “conditioning with pain” to make the bears see him as their master.
“My bears are well cared for and protected, but what we determined was that unless you implement that type of adverse conditioning, you’re not going to get these guys to fear humans. I love them, but I watch them. I make sure that I keep my mind where it should be,” he said.
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