This past weekend when we were out at our place and gathering up game cams, I noticed this tree that had been broken. It wasn't broken on Saturday, but was when I went back out to that particular feeder late Sunday morning. Not only is the tree broken, but there are all kinds of what look like claw marks, some hair clinging to branches, and lots of small broken limbs on the ground underneath and around the tree. The break occurred at eye level for me, and I'm 5'2" so about 5 feet off the ground. The marks, though, go all the way down to the ground.

Our land is in Val Verde County, just north of Comstock off of 1024.

The entire tree, standing in between it and the feeder:



Sorry it's sideways, but a close up of the main break:
















Hair clinging to the tree:





[img]http://aubreygross.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_2120.jpg[/img]

Do you have a bull on the place? Our neighbor's Angus bull took one apart that was twice that size. You'd have thought he used a dozer on it.

However, the break appears to have been initiated by weight from above. Bear, maybe? Big fat bear ran up the tree and it gave out?

Looks like an elk rub to me, any in your area? They will leave either dark colored hairs or some buffy colored ones.
What other big game is around there? Maybe an exotic rub.

No bulls. And we're fenced, so we haven't seen any wild hogs, either (although I think the damage would be a little high up for a wild hog).

Some neighbors have caught axis and aoudad on their game cams, and there are a couple of herds of wild goats that will make the rounds. That being said, we've never seen any of the above on our game cams. We're also low fenced, which I know doesn't matter for a lot of things, but does for some.

I think there might be some elk in the general vicinity (like, within 50 miles or so), but I have yet to see or hear about any in our particular area.

That's what I was thinking about the break, too, that it was caused by weight on it. I suspect bear (we know there's at least one in the area because several neighbors have caught it on game cams), but have yet to catch it on the game cam. When we were out there about a month ago I noticed a lot of rocks that had been overturned, enough that I commented on it to my husband because it looked like something had just picked them up and moved them. And for the past couple of months I've been noticing a lot of sotol dug up, but figured that could have been many different animals.

back in me caveman days, came apone sign like that quite often... check area for bigfoot prints... no not sasquatch that theary been beat ta death...








woolymammoth rub...

I've seen goats climb trees?

Maybe the wind ???

Looks like a big cat was using it for a scratching post and it broke due to his weight.

Lightning then after it was down animals rubbed on it.

Whatever it was I would be wearing a side arm going out to the area

Manbearpig.

We're always armed when we're out and about on the ranch. Between snakes and the possibility of running into other things (mountain lions, illegals), our guns are like American Express--we don't leave home without them.

Gather some of the hairs and show them to your biologist in the area. Bears will mark trees with scratches up here and haven't seen them break them off like that. The hair will be the key.
Bears will definitely turn over rocks and logs looking for food. They usually leave distinct claw marks on trees.
The marks look like antler rubbing but hard to say, no tracks on the ground?

Bigfoot!

http://www.bear-tracker.com/blackbearscentmarkingttrees.html

Chicklitter the neighbor to the west of us saw the black bear a few weeks ago. Hopefully he doesn't destroy any of yours or our feeders. We were out there this weekend doing dozer work but no signs of the bear on our place. We did have our bbq pit destroyed a few months ago but we blamed it on the wind blowing it off the porch. Maybe bear but not for sure so going with wind. oh and the windwill is not working by us. Just a heads up if you need water. They should be fixing it soon

txhunter1, thanks for the windmill update. We tried to get water from the electric pump on Saturday but it kept losing pressure. Hopefully they have the windmill fixed soon (that thing breaks far too often, just a heads up, but Bill's usually pretty good about getting it fixed). One of the guys that lives off of Ward Ranch saw the bear on his trail cam a few weeks back, and so did someone that has a place across the road from them. From what he was saying, it looks like the bear might have crossed over to our side of the canyon. Either that, or there's more than one bear out there (which wouldn't surprise me...VWR covers a lot of land and the Pecos isn't exactly far away). Our feeders are fine, other than the stupid raccoons spinning all the corn out of one of them. This tree, on the other hand, isn't doing so great.

There's a crazy mishmash of tracks around that tree, and they've all been stepped on so that they're pretty much indistinguishable unfortunately.

Ive been using duke dog proof traps for the raccoons. Work great with just small marshmallows. Caught 3 the first time but havent set them again. No pics of coons at that location for a month.

I'm going to have to look into those. The raccoons have gotten ridiculous. Granted, it probably doesn't help that the deer have also figured out how to spin the feeders and make corn come out (we keep them low enough for me to be able to fill them, which means they're not incredibly high off the ground).

Do you have any illegals in your area?

I need some eye bleach now.

set up a cam & let us know the results ... that one pic looks like lightning hit it...