A bear was shot Sunday afternoon when it appeared in a residential area of popular tourist spot Karuizawa. No one was injured, police said.
A nearby resident called the town hall at about 1 p.m. Sunday and alerted them to the bear’s presence. The bear, estimated at about 130 centimeters tall and weighing about 70 kilograms, was considered a danger to the many people in the area, and was shot by members of a local hunting club.
The scene was near the Kyu Karuizawa Ginza strip, a road lined with shops and restaurants and is lively on the weekends.
© Wire reports
18 Comments
Login to comment
Altria
Metabo!
Youdontknow
Why do they always have to kill the bears here? Haven't these idiots heard of tranquilizers?
Alien2Japan
They want to do a study on "how they live". J is doing the same study on whales..
GW
youdontknow,
and I dont know either, good thing many people dont own guns here as the trigger seems to be pulled pretty quick, no wonder there are no more wolves in Jpn
JOKERXJOKER
..shot by members of a local hunting club.. ..now that explain it all...its hunting season folks..hahaha
notimpressed
70kg? Not very big was he. Most adult male humans are bigger than that...oh wait we are in Japan.
cleo
Any excuse. Why couldn't it be tranquillized and taken back to a safe area?
I hate these 'local hunting clubs' and their trigger-happy members.
Sarge
Altria - Har!
"was shot by members of a local hunting club"
Thank goodness for the local hunting clubs!
"bears are not allowed in residential areas"
Hey, nobody put picnic baskets in the woods for them!
Nessie
They tend to roam after that, often moving great distances to their home range.
sailwind
Lively? Seems to me the nightlife there is pretty unbearable if you ask me.
ptolemy
I bear to imagine the pain it felt. Cleo, you rock, I agree.
ReexJax
No one got hurt but the poor bear
Disillusioned
It's the normal thing to do in Japan. If something or someone is annoying you just kill it. Standard practice! At least they didn't burn the forest as well.
Nessie
Yes, bears are much easier to deal with when one is on tranquilizers.
cleo
I'm glad you're wrong. I'm sure I annoyed a lot of folk when I was in the PTA.....
Pivot
If you think a 70kg bear is "small", I'd like to see you fight one.
Betting
Extremely hard to believe that the Japanese are nature loving, which is another thing that the Japanese love to brag about. Kill stray dogs with CO2, kill some large aquatic species to study how they live, destroy wetlands, and concrete 70% of their coastline. Yep, it's easy to see how the Japanese love nature.
Hopefully things will right themselves in this country one day.
notimpressed
Pivot: give me a set of claws and sharp teeth to even out the odds and I"ll give it a go. Point is, didnt have to shoot it. One or two people could have tranquilized it and carried it out. They need a nation park service, or wildlife control or something, rather than calling in a recreational hunting club. It hadn't hurt anyone and it should have been fine to just relocate it. I'm curious weather these bears are approaching endangered in number yet? There can't be many places to live left for them.