Crazycat: Please be asured that I am not passing judgement on your good judgement to shoot a bear that had gotten too used to your property. I am certain that in that instance you did the right thing. However, in my experience I really do think you are going to see more bears and I was just trying to give an alternative because I thought that you already had an electric fence controller, which is the most expensive part. The major problem with your setup is that the electric fence is too close to the coop. The bear gets that close and he can not help himself but to get at your chickens. In fact a normal bear could just take one swipe and knock the whole thing down. My suggestion was to use the same controller but put the wires around the perimeter using posts. And I am also sorry if you thought I indicated that you considered shooting every bear that came around. From your story I would believe the contrary. It seemed you were quite reluctant for a long time and only did what you felt was necessary in the end. From the posts that I read here there are quite a lot of us who have bears in our areas and was am really hopeful that others would consider using a bear deterent fence because, in my experience, they work. Good luck in the future and believe me, I know how you feel because I would hate to lose any one of my chickens for any reason.
