May 5, 2002 By Rod Schoener 5 min read

The new Wildlife Conservation Officer for southern Fayette County, Stephen Leiendecker, has been busy since he arrived a month ago. You’re probably saying, “I guess he is because it’s turkey season.”

Yes, turkey season has been keeping him busy, but so has the county’s nuisance bears.

So far, Steve had trapped and transferred two to new locations, and he is presently trying to lure a third one into his culvert trap.

As I sat at his kitchen table and joked with Steve and Deputy WCO Mike Shipp about his bear-trapping prowess, Steve opened up and revealed his secret.

“When I trap the bears, I use all different kinds of things. I go on a shopping trip to the Shop and Save, where I get imitation vanilla extract, anise oil, some day-old donuts, grape jelly and Karo syrup – anything sweet that is aromatic. I spread it out around the trap. We’ve had a little bit of luck with it.

“Right now they are after the sweet stuff. That’s why they are raiding bee hives.”

One of the bears he trapped recently was raiding a dumpster in the state forest near Laurel Caverns. “We don’t like to take all the bears out of the state forests for raiding dumpsters, but if we get a complaint, we move them. It also provides us with an opportunity to collect all sorts of research data.”

The second bear that was relocated was trapped near Chalk Hill. Its crime was raiding bird feeders.

Both were taken to Game Lands 111 near the Fayette-Somerset County line, where they were released.

“If we get any additional bears, we will probably take them to the Quebec Wild Area. The last thing I want is for someone to shoot a bear. The problem is one guy likes bears. He likes to see them and videotape them and show all his buddies the pictures. But the next door neighbor is scared to death.

“The bear doesn’t know the difference. He goes to one house and he gets a handout. He goes to the next house and figures ‘the last house I was at they gave me donuts,’ then he’s up there scratching at the door and they come out with a shotgun and shoot him. We want to avoid that at all cost. We will drop everything when we have a bear complaint and try and get a trap there and get that bear moved.”

Currently they are trying to catch another bear along Maple Summit Road, which has also been tearing down bird feeders.

Leiendecker said, “We can’t relocate all the bears, but if there is one in particular who has made it a habit of hitting the feeders, we try and move him if we can, more for his own safety than anything else. I’ve been pretty busy with that quite a bit.

“I’ve just been trying to learn the district. I’ve been in Fulton County for three years. By two years, I knew every road in the county. Now that I’ve come here, I just have to start all over again learning the roads. I really have until October to learn my way around, but I want to learn them as soon as possible so that when I get a call, I can be there in a matter of minutes. I don’t want to have to waste time looking at a map.”

The district that I came from was very rural. There were only 14,000 people in the county. Just this district has 80,000 people, from what I understand. So it’s going to be a little different working with a larger population base, but what is going to be similar is the law enforcement aspect of it. In Fulton County, it’s a very aggressive law enforcement area like this is. Over there, it’s if you see it, and you want it, you just shoot it.”

Leiendecker noted that the one thing different in Fayette County than it was in Fulton County is small animal complaints.

He said, “In Fulton County, if you have a small animal in your yard that is acting strangely, there is a 12-gauge solution to the problem. But here, the first week I was on the job I had a call on a woodchuck, a raccoon, a possum and a skunk. All three were sick. None of them had rabies, but the callers were convinced they did. I had them all tested, and the tests were negative. That was something that was new to me.”

Leiendecker continued, “I had an injured turkey yesterday and an injured deer today (Thursday). Both were hit by cars, I think.

“Last Saturday was a big day for law enforcement, and tomorrow will be too. You hold your breath this time of year and hope there will not be any hunting accidents. If we make it through turkey season without an accident, I will consider it a success, even if we don’t make any arrests.

We saw 40 birds the first day, which were 40 about percent more than we saw turkey hunters. They were all in groups of two or three. There wasn’t 20 here and 20 there. Everywhere we went we saw turkey, and almost one third of those were gobblers.”

Learning his new area has been keeping Leiendecker busy, but he wants the public to know that he is always available and wants to respond to their needs a quickly as possible. For that reason, he asks those who need him to call the Southwest Region Office in Ligonier on the toll-free number (877-877-7137). The dispatcher can then contact him instantly, by radio, no matter where he is at the time.

Herald-Standard outdoor editor Rod Schoener can be reached on line at rschoener@herald-standard.com.