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Name This Animal

what kind of scat is this? bear?

19 years ago

We found this scat in our backyard. We live in western ny, a rural area with woods in our backyard. We have deer, foxes, racoons, woodchucks, etc. But this scat doesn't look it belongs to any of them. Bear have been spotted in this area, but it's very rare.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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Comments (5)

terrafina
19 years ago
I did research for my master's on black bears for 5 years. No. This is NOT from a bear. When deer eat moist greens, their droppings may look like that. Bear droppings resemble dog's or human's.
plf333
19 years ago
I agree, definately not bear.
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Hard to know. It doesn't look like what my cats produce, but they eat cat food. It could be fox or coyote. Where do you live? Is there enough wild area around to support wildlife such as fox, etc? Martha
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Thanks, that makes sense. The grass is always matted down right near where I found the scat. It's definitely bedding for some sort of animal, and even thought its smack dab out in the open in my back yard, I've seen deer bedding a few feet away in the winter nights. A neighbor claims to have spotted a cougar behind their house. I normally wouldn't pay that any attention living in MD, but when the called the dept of natural resources, they were told that others had spotted what they thought was a "cougar" in the same area. Someone claims that they found cougar tracks, but I'm still highly doubtful. Just thought I'd check that rather large scat out with people who knew better than me. Thanks again.
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Not to poke at you mazer, but it's not in the realm of ploopy deer scat for a ton of reasons. For one, deer are ruminants, and have a pretty complex digestive system, any pine nuts one may have eaten would have been ground in the mouth. Same would go for elk, cattle, or even a horse (which is not a ruminant). What you have there is textbook September bear poop. The "nuts" look like pinon or other pine nuts to me, but could be juniper or small acorns or some other I guess. A bear's teeth are much like a human's, and it's very common to find undigested seeds or nuts in bear poop- dead givaway. many of these specie's nuts have evolved to be passed through some digestive system or another in order to germinate. Your bear turd will make a perfect nursery for an infant connifer. The black soupy stuff that holds it all together is indicative of a good amount of protein (read M.E.A.T.) and I imagine if you'd have poked at it little more you'd have found some hair in there as a hint at what kind of critter it had been chewing on. Sound like I know a little TOO much about bear poop?? probably, I'm a game warden/ biologist and spend half my year chasing Yogi and Boo-Boo around the perifery of humanity's ever-stretching sprawl. bring in your dogfood, clean out your garbage cans, hang high your bird feeders!!
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gottagarden
Original Author
19 years ago
Thanks. Glad to hear it's not a bear.

Are you convinced it's deer? We have tons of deer, but I've never seen deer droppings like this. They're usually like pellets. Sometimes large pellets smushed in a ball, but never saw it quite like this. The snow has only just started to melt in the last 3 days, so the only thing that is possibly moist is old grass. Mostly they're eating my shrubs and young trees :-( But that is certainly the most abundant large mammal around here.

BTW, I felt somewhat foolish taking a photo of droppings. . .
terrafina
19 years ago
Well, deer is the most likely culprit. If you look closely at the dropping, and disect it a bit, you might see that it has a few pellets (though smashed together) in it. It appears that it is the right size for deer (relative to your hand), and yes, they do produce droppings like that at times.
If you felt foolish taking a picture, imagine how you'll feel when you disect it!
imjustbob
19 years ago
im no scat expert but i think i would rule out deer im not saying it couldnt be but i have spent alot of time in the woods recreational and hunting and i have cleaned many deer but i have never seen it look like that i would like to know what its from though

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