Branch Lake Game Cam Mistaken By Bear As A Snack

It's pretty cool when you get to take a peek (sometimes up-close-and-personal and sometimes from a safe distance) at some of the amazing wildlife we have in our state. Like many folks who live in rural areas of Maine, The Heiny Family has an unusual benefit of living in a place where they're surrounded by Nature. They live at The YMCA's Camp Jordan, which sits right on Branch Pond in Ellsworth.

When not doing Camp related things, the Heiny family spends lot of their time enjoying the great outdoors, exploring the water and the wilderness. They recently put up some game-cams in an area along the lake that's usually busy with wildlife activity. But they didn't realize that as curious as they were to see what was happening in that neck of the woods, the animals out there were full of wonder, too.

Dad, and Camp Jordan Director, Steve Heiny, said his son Will noticed something strange with one of the game cams they had put out there, so they went to investigate:

"We saw a broken motion sensor and some scrapes. He thought he had somehow broken it himself. When we plugged the chip into the computer he said "WOW! It was a bear!" So much better than the squirrels and Bluejays he usually gets."

Now, this isn't the first time a bear has tried to make friends with or snack on the game cam. Turns out it's been visited at least 3 times by a little black-bear buddy. You can see for yourself in the videos below.

(Do yourself a favor, and make sure you turn your volume up--because to hear the "bear crunch" when the camera gets chomped on is really something else! And those teeth! )

So cool!

Thanks to the Heiny family for sharing these images, and letting us all get up-close-and-personal with this guy (or gal!)