Inuvik (Sep 03/04) - Margaret Nazon knows she makes good dryfish, but was surprised several weeks ago when a black bear nearly took down her smoke house pilfering five of her recently smoked delicacies.

"He's been lurking around all summer," said Nazon of the bear that has been an unwelcome guest at her Tsiigehtchic fish camp. "It was early in the morning when I heard the dogs barking and looked outside. (The bear) knocked a corner out of the smokehouse and took some fish."

After the dogs she borrowed from a friend didn't prove enough of a deterrent, she called Resources Wildlife and Economic Development.

A renewable resources officer arrived with a trap on wheels to try and catch the bear. Unfortunately, the thieving bear is still at large.

"In my experience, the live traps work on juvenile bears," said Doug Villeneuve. "The older ones are harder to catch."

As Villeneuve was not the officer who set the trap, he couldn't comment on the problem bear in Tsiigehtchic. However, Villeneuve says that three bears scavenging at the Inuvik dump this summer kept him pretty busy.

"Two had to be put down and the other seems to have been deterred (from coming to the dump)," Villeneuve said

He said it was only after four attempts to scare the bears from the dump that the decision was made to put the two loiterers down.

"The problem is that once they get habituated to a ready source of food then it's hard to keep them away."

Villeneuve said that when any animal has to be put down, every effort is made to use as much of it as possible.

Though black bears, which can weigh in excess of 170kg, tend to stay at the periphery of town, Villeneuve says the bigger challenge is dealing with foxes, particularly in the winter months.

"They are more adventurous and harder to scare out of town," he said. "Sometimes we try to catch them, but they are a little more concerning as they can carry rabies."

Villeneuve says it is very rare for a bear to become infected with rabies.