{"id":127087,"date":"2026-01-09T20:59:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T20:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/127087\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T20:59:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T20:59:11","slug":"exclusive-inside-the-bear-league-californias-paintball-eviction-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/127087\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive | Inside The Bear League, California’s paintball eviction experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a beary tricky business \u2014 but somebody\u2019s gotta do it.<\/p>\n

If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of having an unwanted giant bear squatting underneath your home and wondering who to call \u2014 The Bear League could well be the answer. <\/p>\n

The league, which just this week chased a 550-pound black bear out from under a Los Angeles house <\/a>in just 20 minutes, is 30-year-old organization made up of 220 bear-scaring volunteers and over 2,500 members. <\/p>\n

The Bear League removes up to eight bears per day. Facebook\/BEAR League<\/p>\n

The crew boast bear removal stats of up to eight beasts per day and are headquartered in California\u2019s scenic Lake Tahoe \u2014 where bear intrusions are all too common. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the league swooped in \u2014 armed with their signature paintball guns \u2014 to save Altadena homeowner Ken Johnson from his 37-day nightmare of having a giant bear living under his home all through the holidays. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe do that all the time,\u201d Ann Bryant, league founder and executive director told The Post. \u201cOne of us crawls under the house, sometimes we shoot at the bear, sometimes we shoot the paintball behind the bear, sometimes it hits him in the rump.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dramatic footage on The Bear League\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> shows the shooters in action, as two paintball-gun toting volunteers venture underneath a condo complex to root out an unwanted bear. They take aim and fire several shots of the vegetable-oil filled pellets in rapid succession to spook the bear out.<\/p>\n

Then continue blasting it in the behind as it makes a dash for an open exit \u2014 yelling, \u201cgo, go, go!\u201d <\/p>\n

Other high-octane tactics caught on film include deploying shock mats, which give bears a zap to keep them away from crawlspace entries once extracted. More traditional tactics, like loud airhorns and clapping are also used by the team.<\/p>\n

The footage show paintball-gun toting volunteers confronting the beast. Ken J. Johnson<\/p>\n

They fire vegetable-oil filled pellets to spook the bear and drive it away. Ken J. Johnson<\/p>\n

\u201cI still get excited every time I see a bear,\u201d says league spokesperson Dave Fleishman, who helped battle the Altadena bear \u2014 nicknamed \u201cUn-Bear-a-Bill\u201d \u2014 on Tuesday. \u201cHe\u2019s in the top three of largest black bears I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fleishman says he\u2019s seen hundreds of bears in the almost three years he\u2019s been with the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nonprofit was formed 30 years ago after a trapper killed a bear named \u201cNatalie\u201d who was terrifying Lake Tahoe tourists. Residents were outraged, so they worked together on a better way to live peacefully with the local bear population, Fleishman explained.<\/p>\n

To become a member you have to have a sincere interest in protecting bears he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cLethal is the last resort. You don\u2019t kill a bear because of property damage.\u201d <\/p>\n

The tactics are different from those used by the the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the two rarely work together, Fleishman said. <\/p>\n

To work with the organization, you need to be interesting in protecting bears. Ken J. Johnson<\/p>\n

As of Friday morning, the Altadena bear\u2019s current location is unknown. Ken J. Johnson<\/p>\n

\u201cWe appreciate the opportunity to work in conjunction with them, but that doesn\u2019t always happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CDFW tried to capture the bear under Johnson\u2019s home for a month, using cherry and caramel scent spray along with a massive metal trap filled with sardines and peanut butter. Ultimately, the contraption captured the wrong bear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other videos on Facebook show mama bears nesting under homes with their cubs, some as young as five days old. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we believe it\u2019s a mother we will not move them. It\u2019s a death sentence for newborn cubs,\u201d added Fleishman, who says the videos are used to study bear behavior.<\/p>\n

And as for that giant bear scared out of Johnson\u2019s home on Tuesday?<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the moment, his bear-abouts are unknown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a beary tricky business \u2014 but somebody\u2019s gotta do it. If you ever find yourself in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11604,7,9,8,657,47,65753,3586],"class_list":["post-127087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-bears","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-exclusive","tag-los-angeles","tag-paintball","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}