300-pound black bear captured in town

A 300-pound male black bear was found Friday afternoon in the tree of a Gardnerville home.

"I looked in the back yard and there was something wrong with one of the tree branches," said Linda Kyriakopoulos, who has been living at East Aylesbury Court in Chichester Estates for two years. "I looked up and there was a big old rear end with a face on it looking at me."

Kyriakopoulos called 911 and Douglas County sheriff's deputies arrived on the scene. According to Kyriakopoulos, deputies patrolled the street around the house making sure students just released from Gardnerville Elementary School didn't come too close.

Student Kevin Eubanks said his principal made an announcement about the bear during school.

After class ended, Kevin was walking home when he looked up and saw the bear falling from a tree.

Nevada Department of Wildlife biologists Carl Lackey and Thad Heater had tranquilized the bear. Once it was out of the tree, they transported it to the front yard.

"This is the closest I've ever gotten to a bear," said Kevin, who walked around to the front of the house after seeing the bear shot.

Sprawled out on the front lawn, Lackey and Heater examined the bear and found two holes in its left shoulder where apparently it had been shot twice.

Heater, Lackey and neighbors then loaded the bear into a trailer cage attached to the biologists' pickup truck.

Heater said there had been reports since morning of a bear roaming Chichester. He said the bear had been jumping from yard to yard, eating apples and other vegetation.

Lackey said he found no bone damage from the bullet wounds.

The bear was healthy enough to be released into the Carson Range on Monday morning, according to Lackey.

Anyone with information relating to the shooting of the bear can call Operation Game Thief at 1-800-792-4263. All calls will remain anonymous.