Bear eats deer in Utahn's yard

WOODLAND HILLS, Utah County — Delila Ann Hook was so amused when she saw a bear rooting through her trash can looking for a snack last week that she woke her visiting granddaughters to show them the "cute bear."

"It looked so funny lumbering away, dragging our garbage," said Hook, a self-declared animal lover. "We were laughing."

The Woodland Hills resident wasn't laughing the next day, however, when a bear took down a full-grown deer in her back yard and ate it alive.

Hook, 48, and her two granddaughters, 2 and 7, woke up at 5 a.m. last Saturday to the sound of the deer screaming, she said. At first the family thought the noise they heard was the bear growling but soon realized the deer was still alive.

By the time Hook got to the window, the bear had disabled the deer's hind legs, she said. The deer was trying to drag itself away using just its front legs.

"With one swipe the bear gutted it, then pushed it down using his body weight," Hook said. "When the deer fell, it hit the side of the house — we could feel the thump."

On impulse, Hook ran outside to yell at the bear to "get away from that poor deer," but her husband brought her back inside. The two took their grandchildren upstairs, hoping they wouldn't hear the ruckus.

"I was scared," she said. "That was freaky. That was a big bear."

Hook and her husband watched the bear gnaw on the deer for an hour and a half before it lost interest in the meal and wandered off, leaving the carcass to rot in her grass, she said.

Deer frequently run through Hook's back yard, which, except for a small area of lawn, grows wild. The deer have worn away the vegetation where they like to eat on the hillside, she said. But during the 10 years she's lived in Woodland Hills, Hook has never seen a bear.

It's not uncommon to see a bear this time of year, however, said Steve Gray, a wildlife specialist with the Division of Wildlife Resources, because the bears are coming out of hibernation.

In the past two weeks, there have been about 10 bear sightings reported in the region. On Friday the division received two bear-sighting calls: one in Provo Canyon and another in Woodland Hills.

If the Division of Wildlife Resources gets multiple calls about the same bear hanging around, officers will set a trap in hopes of relocating the bear, Gray said.