I don't know.

But here's a page or more of sites which might

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=bear+scat&gbv=2

Here is a link that might be useful: a seach for bear (umm) stuff

Thanks Jean, I hadn't thought to look at google images. I saw several pictures that look similar. I guess I'll have disect it if I want to know what it's been eating.

Janice
in the Sierra

Looks like male mule deer. Bear poop has a very distinctive odor to it, you will know it when you smell it tho you never have smelled it before. It reeks to high heaven.

Dear pinetown,

Good deduction on the bear. That sure looks like bear scat to me. Sorry, mazer - mule deer it ain't, and not all bear scat stinks, either. At least, not here in the East.

The seeds are probably pine nuts. Do you have pinyon pine or whitebark pine in the area? I can't tell from the needles in the picture which species of pine they are from, but the seeds look like pinyon nuts.

The bear might have raided a squirrel hoard and that is why so many of them are undigested. A deer would have chewed them much more thoroughly.

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: Pinyon nuts

Well from the time of year you posted, I know that mule deer are in rut, their poops change dramtically, looking more like plops that regular deer scat. And I can not tell by the size of the undigested "nuts" but the reason I thought it might be male mule deer in rut poop is because I thought the "beans" you described might be small acorns which are hard for any animal to completely digest, they are abundant the time of year you posted and can make deer scat smell weird.

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!!