Since late July, readers have been sending me bear reports from the Meadows golf course side of the zip clear over to Grant Ranch, and they haven't let up. They came with questions, and this page answers them: is this normal, what do you actually do when one's in your yard, and who do you call. The short version is that this year is different, the drought is why, and the most useful thing any of us can do is make our yards boring.
No. This year is the outlier, and the counts below come from Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
As of early August, CPW had taken 179 bear reports in Jefferson County for 2026. The same stretch of 2025 produced 97, and 2024 produced 96. That's two flat years and then a near doubling, and the counts come straight from Kara Van Hoose, the agency's northeast region spokesperson, who pulled them from CPW's records when I asked in August. Her agency's explanation is the drought: the natural food crop failed, so bears are finding their calories in neighborhoods and trash cans across the metro instead. And there are multiple bears doing it around Littleton, not one busy celebrity.
It's not winding down yet, either. When I asked again in September, Van Hoose put the county's 2026 count at 314 as of September 22. In an August 22 news release, CPW said bear reports had reached a record number and that bears are entering hyperphagia, the weeks-long eating marathon that fattens them up before winter denning, all of it against a historic drought. Most bears in Colorado are active from mid-March through early November, so figure on this being the neighborhood's situation into the fall.
Chase it off, loudly, from a safe distance. CPW calls this hazing, and the agency wants you doing it: making a bear feel unwelcome in human spaces with lights and sounds is how it keeps a healthy fear of people. Yell, bang pots and pans, blow an air horn, play loud music, set off the car alarm, put up motion-detecting lights. That list comes from Van Hoose herself, and her point is that scaring a bear off keeps it from finding trash and settling into human areas.
The safety rules that go with it, from CPW's Living with Bears page: never approach a bear, never corner one, and always leave it an obvious way out. If a bear walks toward you instead of running, that's usually a food-conditioned animal looking for a handout, not an aggressive one. CPW's guidance is to stand your ground, yell, throw small rocks in its direction, and if it keeps coming, use bear spray when it's about 40 feet away.
Trash, mostly, and bird feeders right behind it. CPW says leaving trash cans or bird feeders where a bear can reach them is a violation of state law.
Keep trash indoors overnight, in the house, a locked garage or a shed until pickup morning. A weekly bleach rinse kills the smells that advertise it.
Take bird feeders down while bears are active, which in Colorado runs mid-March through early November. CPW's position is that feeders belong to winter, when bears are denning. If you can't bear the empty pole, the agency's spec is a pulley that holds the feeder 10 feet off the ground and 10 feet out from anything climbable.
No pet food outside, and no feeding pets out there either.
Don't leave out water. It's on CPW's own list of attractants to remove around a home.
Startle systems help. Motion lights, noisemakers, alarms and sprinklers can all convince an exploring bear to move along.
As of August 12, 2026, knowingly luring a bear with food or edible waste is a misdemeanor on the first offense under CRS 33-6-131, with a fine of up to $200 the first time and much steeper penalties for repeats. It used to take a warning before any of that kicked in. And feeding wildlife in general, deer through bears, is illegal in Colorado regardless.
Yes, and in Ken Caryl they have been. CPW has confirmed more than 15 bear break-ins into garages in the Ken Caryl Valley, west of the Hogback, so far this year, Van Hoose says. The agency has set traps around Ken Caryl a few different times, and it evaluates any bear caught in one "for habituation to humans, health, and public safety threats."
What draws a bear into a garage is food or trash, and CPW says a bear can smell particularly pungent food or meat even if it's out for only a short time. The agency's advice for the garage: lock it, reinforce weak points or holes with plywood, and get rid of trash promptly. CPW also suggests an unwelcome mat at entry points as an extra step, and it has a video that shows how to build one.
CPW's Littleton office: 303-791-1954, Monday through Friday, 8 to 5. That's the local office for this side of Jeffco.
After hours: Colorado State Patrol, 303-239-4500. That's CPW's own published route.
A bear inside your house: call 911. CPW's instruction is to open doors and windows so it can leave the way it came in, and never block the exit or corner it.
A bear that keeps hanging around and shows no fear of people, with no emergency underway, can be reported through CPW's online habituated-bear form, linked from the report-a-sighting page at cpw.state.co.us.
Wildlife operations carry real risk for the animal. In late July, CPW attempted to relocate a bear from the area and the bear died during transport, possibly from the sedative, possibly from the extreme heat, in a summer that was cruel on both counts. I reported that story in Issue #19, and it's why prevention and hazing lead this page.
The reports that built this page, all from neighbors and their Ring feeds, none of them my own sightings. Over one late-July week, readers relayed Ring posts of a bear in a Fairway Vista backyard near the Meadows golf course at 4:30 in the morning, at the Wadsworth and Coalmine corner the same morning, and in Meadow Ranch, with more reports from Grant Ranch and Governor's Ranch just east of the zip. In mid-August a reader passed along clips from Columbine Knolls, just across the zip line in 80128, one bear on a driveway at night and a bigger one somewhere nearby. And in late August, a reader in Shadow Ridge watched a cub that looked orphaned cross her front porch and called wildlife to come help it, which is exactly the right move. CPW's read on all of it: multiple bears are working the Littleton area.
Tell me about it: [email protected]. A neighborhood name is plenty, and reader reports stay anonymous here. If you'd rather get the updates than send them, the newsletter is free every Friday.
More field guides from the Post: the trails page for where you can actually hike around here, on the public Jeffco Open Space side of the Hogback.
I'm Joey, and I write the Hogback Post, a free weekly newsletter about Littleton, Ken Caryl, and the SW Denver foothills.
Last updated October 10, 2026.
Your weekly guide to Littleton, Ken Caryl, and the SW Denver foothills. Events, restaurants, trails, development news, and the stuff your neighbors are talking about.