JEFF WATSON: When you have bears, there's no vacation. These are wild animals; they are apex
carnivores and they rule the roost.
JEFF WATSON: I’ve had an interest in bears since I was a boy.
JEFF WATSON: I’d never thought I’d get a bear. 30 years ago I’d been sick, had a neurological disease, was
paralysed at a young age. And when I got back on my feet and I had this opportunity to get a bear, I thought
you know, “It’ll just be my therapy, I’ll hang out with it in the woods” and that’s how it all began.
I started off with one bear ‘Brody’; he would take nine half-gallon calf bottles at a time. Started off at 8lbs.
At a year old, he was 400lbs. Year and a half, he was 550lbs so I bottle fed him for three years.
JEFF WATSON: When you raise a bear, you become the surrogate mother and they won’t leave your side,
they go through a lot of separation anxiety. This is a lot like a human being.
Most definitely when they’re young, they see you as their mother.
JEFF WATSON: I clearly remember the first time I realized that a bear isn’t a dog; it was a 60lb bear cub.
That may sound silly but most people think that they take a wild animal and they love it and they treat it just
right that somehow they will get it to surrender it's natural instincts, that’ll never happen.
You can never tame a bear, you can train one, but you can never tame one.
JEFF WATSON: The two bears I currently have are Bob and Screech, they are littermate brothers, around seven
years of age and they came from a park in Georgia. It was a tourist attraction and they went out of business.
And prior to going out of business a friend of mine had called me and said, “Hey they’ve got a couple of bear
cubs they don’t want.” I didn’t pay for them, they were given to me. People asked me if I rescued them and to
me, that’s kind of an overplayed word. I took them, I’ve raised them, and I’ve loved them, and I try to give them
the best life that you can give a captive bear. When I started handling bears, it was just to interact with them,
nothing commercial. But I realised it's going to take a lot of money to facilitate this hobby. So, I tried to marriage a
hobby with a profession. I started doing commercial work, TV shows, live appearances.
JEFF WATSON: And it evolved into the educational presentations where the animal itself can benefit and
people can benefit so I can hopefully save the lives of the people and of bears. That’s where I’m at now.
JEFF WATSON: I’ve always been reluctant to tell people that they are pets because they don’t meet the
traditional definition of a pet. Most people don’t have pets that can kill them, but it comes with the territory.
These are wild animals, they are apex carnivores and they rule the roost.
JEFF WATSON: I feel my main focus right now with Bob and Screech is to use them to educate people on how to
behave in their country to save the lives of the people and the bears. As habitat is shrinking, there’s less area
for the bears. My main focus is just trying to keep people alive and keep bears alive. When you have bears, they
take up all your time, there’s no vacations. I’ve had bears 30 years and you’re always thinking of, you know,
whether it's getting food, building new enclosures, there’s no down time. This isn’t an animal that’s a
low maintenance animal.
JEFF WATSON: I worked on a program called ‘Project Grizzly.’ I was trying to take Bob and Screech to captive
born captive raised bears to see if it was possible to release them into the wild. The problem with a bear in the
wild is if it loses his fear of people, becomes habituated or if it associates people with food and becomes
food conditioned; it's usually marked for death. The question was, “Can you take these captive born animals
and make them afraid of people and get them to stay away from people?” And the experts that we had
involved, some said that unless you use aversive conditioning with pain like, often times they’ll use water
bullets, and rubber bullets, and pepper spray, and bear dogs, and lots of different things to just make them
scared to death of human beings but I wouldn’t do it. My bears are well cared for and protected but what we pretty
much determined was unless you implement that type of aversive conditioning,
you’re not going to get these guys to fear humans.
JEFF WATSON: I love them, but I watch them. I make sure that I keep my mind where it should be.
Knowing these animals, I wouldn’t say would turn on me. Turning on me, in my opinion, would be it coming out of
left field. A bear attacking me for absolutely no reason, can't put your finger on it whatsoever. But I know darn
good well, if I go in there with a hamburger I better bring enough for the whole class or I’m going to get hurt.
There’s no surprises to that.
JEFF WATSON: People ask me, “What does the future hold for Bob and Screech?” I’ve made arrangements if
something were to happen to me that they could go somewhere.
JEFF WATSON: But their future at this time is just to stay with me. I know some people would think that that’s not
healthy for them. But once they build a bond with somebody, it's kind of hard to break that bond.