A bear found shot dead in a Colorado woman's front yard sparked outrage over the weekend.
KKTV reported that Cheyenne Mountain Estates resident Alice Tinder’s son spotted the black bear lying in the front yard Friday morning and told his mother to call the police.
“I looked outside, and it was lying right out there, 10 feet from the road,” Tinder told the local station.
According to CBS Denver, the black bear frequently roamed the Colorado Springs neighborhood, lurking around the residents’ properties.
“We see him here all the time,” Tinder said. “They don’t really hurt anybody. That’s terrible.”
Now, authorities are searching for the poacher.
“For somebody to take a shot at him like that, it’s disheartening that somebody would do that,” Nick Bonck, who lives across the street from where the bear was found, told KKTV. “It’s really disappointing because he was such a part of our lives up here . . . to live around the animals.”
According to the Examiner, Bronck had seen the bear hundreds of times.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife reported that the 400-pound bear was killed as early as Thursday evening, CBS reported. The shooter could face poaching charges, which is a felony in the state and could cost up to $20,000.
According to Outdoor Life, 40,000 to 50,000 black bears are hunted legally in the United States and Canada every year.
Anyone with information that could lead to the conviction of the shooter could get up to a $500 reward and should contact the CPW’s Operation Game Thief at (877) 265-6648 or email game.thief@state.co.us.
Finding a residential bear does not appear to be too strange as many Twitter users shared their stories of finding an unknowing trespasser on their property:
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