How do you know you are sharing the woods with a bear?

[caption id="attachment_64" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="The Lure of the Blackberry"][/caption] It is the end of the blackberry season in the North and we headed off for one last afternoon to pick for Jam. We did not get many rasberries this year so we were eager to fill the freezer with Blackberries. How eager? Eager enough to share the patch with a bear [caption id="attachment_65" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="How do you know you are sharing a patch with a bear?"][/caption] There are advantages of sharing a patch with a bear. They leave trails through the pricker bushes that are rather wide. Without this help it would be a miserable experience wading through pricker bushes for berries [caption id="attachment_66" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Bumps in the trail"][/caption] Sure way to know you are sharing a patch with a bear is the bombs they leave through the patch. [caption id="attachment_67" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="The reason to head into the woods with a bear"][/caption] We happily headed out of the woods without seeing the bear and with another 2 batches of berries for jam.