Bear paws found at Calif. home won't lead to criminal charges

A bear whose paws were found last month in a plastic bag on the front steps of a Riverside, Calif. home was legally killed and the hunter will not face criminal charges, a state fish and game investigation found.

In California, with a permit, it is legal to kill one bear during bear-hunting season. It is illegal to kill a bear without a permit or to sell bear parts, such as the paws. The paws are used in some Asian foods, and bear claws can be made into jewelry.

State Fish and Game Lt. Mike Stefanak, who supervises most of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said investigators determined Friday that the man who killed the bear had a permit and wasn't trying to sell the bear paws. He declined to identify the man. He said the bear was killed in northern California, near Redding.

On May 3, unnamed Riverside residents opened their door and found the bear paws, Riverside police spokesman Steven Frasher said at the time.

A man at the home initially threw away the paws, but a neighbor, fearing it might be an animal cruelty case, later called police, Frasher said. He added that the residents said a former roommate was a hunter and was there earlier in the week saying he had killed a bear.

Stefanak said there were two main reasons it took a month to investigate the case.

First, state fish and game officials had to search through about 1,700 bear permits returned to the department by hunters who killed a bear in 2007.

Second, it took a while to locate the hunter because he had moved from the Riverside home where the paws were found and didn't leave a forwarding address. Investigators eventually found he had moved to another Riverside address.

Reach Sean Nealon at snealon(at)PE.com

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)