Bear vs a Flock of Chickens - One Hen Left
A West Redding resident's real-life encounter with California black bears on this rural ranch. What a single Shasta County case shows about the West’s surge in human-bear conflict.
On a 20-acre ranch in the Centerville area west of Redding, a family kept twenty
organically fed hens — no hormones, no drugs — for eggs they could trace to their own yard.
The coop was closed at night. Fences enclosed the run. For two months this summer the
owners were out of state visiting family in Colorado. A Ring camera remained pointed at the
coop.
The footage showed no raccoon or coyote. It was a black bear that scaled the fences, opened the coop door, and killed three or four hens at a time. It returned on a weekly cycle and repeated the raid.
When the owners came home, one hen remained.
The case is local and specific. It is also typical of a pattern now documented from the Cascades to the southern Rockies: more bears, more households in bear habitat, a poor year for natural forage, and an agency response that rarely includes catching the animal that learned the coop.
Case file: what Fish and Wildlife would and would not do
The owners contacted the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Region 1 is based in Redding. The department declined to trap or relocate the bear. Staff said several animals in the area are already causing problems, and CDFW does not relocate every bear that has learned to take poultry. A depredation permit to hunt the animal was described as unlikely. State policy favors nonlethal tools first. Staff issue lethal permits only after they find that rigid legal and biological criteria have been met.
What the department did confirm is already in statute. A livestock owner may shoot a bear
caught in the act. Fish and Game Code section 4181.1 provides that any bear encountered while inflicting injury to, molesting, or killing livestock may be taken immediately by the owner of the livestock or the owner’s employee, if the taking is reported no later than the next working day and the carcass is made available to the department. That section treats poultry as livestock.
In 2024, a San Bernardino County homeowner who shot a bear inside a chicken coop was found justified under the same law.
The Redding residents installed a high-powered 7000-volt electric fence around the run, the measure wildlife agencies recommend.
The same season, recorded in numbers
While that camera ran in Shasta County, Colorado was logging the highest volume of human-
bear incidents since it began systematic reporting. A RedState column published September 12 argued the cause is demographic, not climatic: more bears, more people living in bear country, more contact. Climate change is not required to explain the trend.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife recorded 8,672 bear reports through August 31, compared with
3,680 in the same period of 2025 — about 3.6 times the recent five-year average. Colorado Officers euthanized 294 black bears through August, up from 83 a year earlier, and relocated 98. At least six people were attacked. Bears entered homes, a fire station, commercial buildings, and vehicles. Security video from Colorado Springs showed a bear walking through an open back door, feeding in a kitchen, and dragging a trash can into the yard. Separate footage from Montana showed a bear opening a car door and climbing inside.
New Mexico killed 187 bears this year, the most since 2011, and recorded its first fatal attack in 25 years. Utah euthanized 39, already a record for any full year, after 168 agency responses. In Montana, grizzlies appeared in country unused for decades. Twenty-four grizzlies have died there this year. A man was killed in Glacier National Park in May.
Northern California belongs on the same list. A bear family raided a residence near Mount
Shasta and entered an unlocked vehicle. In August, an Auburn property owner relocated farm
animals after a sow and cubs repeatedly tore into a chicken coop. Across the Oregon line,
Ashland documented a bear killing backyard poultry and walking a fence rail. Shasta County is the same kind of ground: timber, oak woodland, small livestock, and houses set into habitat that still functions as bear range.
Why the encounters are rising
California’s black bear population is among the largest in the Lower 48. CDFW’s integrated
population model estimates a statewide average near 60,000 animals, with a range of roughly 49,000 to 71,000. About half live in the North Coast and Cascade regions, which include Shasta County. Colorado estimates 17,000 to 20,000, up from about 4,900 in 1940 and 12,000 in the early 1990s.
Those population increases followed legal protection, tighter hunting rules, and habitat recovery. Bears proved they can live near people. In the same decades, people moved into the foothills and the timber. Colorado’s population more than doubled in fifty years. In that same timeframe, in California people filled mountain towns, ranchettes, and the wildland-urban edge. A dry winter and a failed crop of berries and acorns then pushed this year’s animals toward the nearest calories — garbage, pet food, birdseed, and livestock.
What the case recommends
A bear that has learned to feed on human food or livestock is rarely a clean candidate for
relocation. Once the association is set, the animal is more likely to return, to teach offspring the same behavior, and, if it threatens livestock and people, to be killed. Euthanasia counts rise because the alternative is a habituated bear.
The measures that reduce the next loss are local and unglamorous:
Secure buildings and vehicles. Doors, garage doors, freezers, and coop latches. An open door is an invitation.
Remove attractants. Trash in a bear-resistant container, not left overnight at the curb.
Pet food stored inside. Take down bird feeders from spring through fall. Grills cleaned.
Electrify poultry runs. A charged multi-wire fence is the standard recommendation. In
the Centerville case, the installed system is 7000 volts.
Know the law before it is needed. Section 4181.1 governs take in the act. A formal
depredation permit under section 4181 is a separate process and is not guaranteed. A
shooting must be reported the next working day. The carcass must be made available to CDFW.
None of that restores nineteen hens. It may keep the last one and the new flock safe. It may spare the next household from learning the same lesson on a camera while the owners are somewhere else.
What the record actually shows
It is a mistake to treat every bear as a villain and every wildlife agency as useless. Black bears are doing what the species does. They are effective at it. CDFW is responsible for a state of forty million people and tens of thousands of bears.
It is also a mistake to recast the pattern as a planetary emergency that only further regulation of human industry can correct. The West has more bears than it did two generations ago. It has more houses in the oaks and the pines. This year natural food failed across large parts of that range. The animals moved toward calories. In West Redding, they moved toward a chicken coop.
The fence on that ranch is now charged. The camera is still running. If the bear returns, the
owners know what the statute allows and what it requires. That was not the intended outcome of a twenty-bird flock. It is the outcome of population counts, housing patterns, and a bad forage year that had already made it likely.
Shasta Unfiltered is collecting comparable local accounts — coops, trash, vehicles, livestock.
Call (530) 209-8999 or email contact@shastaunfiltered.com.
