DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710250076

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  185 lines

DUTY AND THE BEASTS NORTH CAROLINA WOMAN NOT ONLY FEEDS BEARS ON HER LAND, SHE WAGES A FIGHT AGAINST UNSCRUPULOUS HUNTERS

KAY GRAYSON knew she had a special relationship with black bears the day she drove up to her northeastern North Carolina home to find one sitting on her bed eating a sweet roll, peering curiously out at her from the window.

``Highway 64,'' then a free-spirited teen, left behind paw prints on her mirror, a crumpled window screen and a mighty big impression.

``The first couple of times it was a little bit of a shock,'' Grayson remembers. ``Now they just come up to the door and knock.''

Grayson has clearly gone beyond any typical bear-human interaction. In the seven years they have shared turf, she has taught the creatures to trust her. They may occasionally raid her rations, but they've never hurt or threatened her, she says.

``These animals know pretty much they're safe here,'' Grayson says from her trailer, parked amid golden seal and rangy pine trees on 1,000 acres of rugged Tyrrell County land.

A nasty gunshot wound in Highway 64's thigh, inflicted several years ago off U.S. 64 by a poacher, set Grayson on her determined path of guardian. She began writing letters to officials, demanding relief from poachers, trespassers and unscrupulous hunters.

Local folks have taken to visiting her isolated home - ``Bearsong,'' she calls it with pride - to watch bears amble out of the twisted underbrush onto a logging road to chomp on dog food she leaves out. Her favorite, Highway 64 - today a handsome 400-pound adult - even stands on his hind legs to eat peanuts from her outstretched hand, balancing his paw gently on her arm.

``I know it's controversial - it's so controversial,'' Grayson admits with a heavy sigh while watching several of the glossy-coated animals calmly munching the food she has put out for them. ``But I don't know why 60 million people feed birds and no one kicks up about it.''

Wildlife experts frown on the practice of feeding black bears because it could encourage the shy animals to feel too daring around humans, making them a nuisance or a danger.

``They're not naturally aggressive, but sows are going to protect their young,'' says David Rowe, North Carolina District 1 wildlife biologist. ``We don't favor feeding at all, non-confrontational or not.''

Even Grayson's friend and fellow animal advocate Margaret Harrell Burke says she worries about her.

``It's wonderful. It's marvelous. But I am afraid for her,'' Burke says. ``You know, there might be a time when she won't have those goodies for them.

Currently phoneless, Grayson has, for the first time in her life, bought a gun. Three actually, she says with a defiant nod, because she feels threatened by trespassers. In between jaunts to Manteo and Columbia, she tends to her property - she plans to sell some lots on the perimeter ``to a few good people that are goofy like me.''

From her tidy trailer home, its walls plastered with photographs she has taken of bears eating, bears mating, bears playing, she listens to the hushed goings-on echoing through the wilderness. This is only a temporary phase in her life, she hints. She'll return to whatever vague place in the tropics she once lived.

``It's a great life,'' she says. ``I'll get back to it. I just have to get this problem solved.''

The problem, she says, is poachers trespassing on posted land, slaughtering bears for their claws and their valuable gallbladders, which are prized in parts of Asia as an aphrodisiac, and leaving the carcasses to rot.

``I think the root of the problem is they need tougher laws,'' she says. ``I can't fault the cops. . . . I don't know how it's going to stop, but it's going to stop somehow.

``They're obsessed with killing these animals. They don't even respect their own sport. They sneak around at night. They run their dogs.''

Though it is legal, Grayson protests the practice of training dogs in the offseason by releasing them to seek out the bears. The big animals, she says, never have the peace they need to forage, rest or mate.

``They say, `The woman's crazy out there,' '' she says with a short laugh.

Jim Schreckengost, the sole county wildlife enforcement officer, doesn't call her crazy, just a little overprotective. Poaching is a reality, he agrees, but he says he has not seen evidence of it the way Grayson describes it. At times, her complaints may be a misunderstanding of the law, he surmises.

``I have found evidence that someone has trespassed on her land,'' he says, ``but I never have been able to locate a hunter on her land. Not yet. That doesn't mean they're not there - and I have seen footprints.''

Sheriff Fred Hemilright said he's also had difficulty catching poachers in the act.

``I'm not saying she's not having a problem with it, but it seems like every time we go out there, we come out empty-handed. If she had a telephone, it would increase our response time 100 percent. I see her concern, and I want to help her.''

Hunters are not allowed on land that is posted, on or off the road, Schreckengost says. But they can park their cars on state roads, get out and shoot at game from the roadside if the land is public or they have permission from the owner.

And hunters are permitted to run their bear dogs year round. But they can't possess a gun out of season and they have to have permission to be on the land. Hunters want to train their dogs to pick up bear scent in the off-season so they're ready to go when the season opens, the wildlife officer says.

``I don't perceive that we have a real road hunting problem in our county, and we don't have a real trespassing problem in the county, really,'' Schreckengost says. ``We patrol the road in front of that place as much as we can. We're probably doing everything we can right now. We can't stay out front there and ignore the other 499 square miles in the county.''

Grayson seems to regard her recent situation as just one of the hairpin turns she chose to take in her - one would guess - colorful life.

``If you told me 15 years ago that I would be here feeding a wild bear, I'd be telling you were drinking some bad stuff.''

It wasn't long after she arrived in Tyrrell County in 1990 when she first watched, aghast, as a bear peeled the back off her old motor home and pulled out her mattress. Only a few years earlier, Grayson was living a good life ``floating on a boat'' somewhere in the Caribbean. Then she consented at the urging of a good friend from New York to caretake his Tyrell County property.

After her friend's death several years later, Grayson was awarded 970 acres in a court settlement. To her amazement, she says, she found herself establishing a magical relationship with her new neighbors, the black bears. Her naturalist leanings told her they had more of a reason to be there than she did.

Trim and shapely for her 50 years, Grayson sidesteps inquiries about her personal life, describing herself simply as a ``self-employed entrepreneur.'' Protecting the bears is what matters. She recognizes each bear, and each has a name: Trish, Spooky, Angel, Honey Bear, Betty Sue, Goober, Travis - to cite a few.

``They say if they're conditioned to humans, they'll want to be close to them,'' Grayson says. ``Humans have to learn what their signals and body language is. Humans need to educated. Not the bears. The bears are fine.''

Wide-eyed, slightly nervous visitors are instructed to wait quietly in her trailer while she calls the bears. Gliding outside with a dancer's grace, Grayson breaks into a lovely sing-song voice: a mother's all-clear signal. ``It's OK, it's OK,'' she soothes in the next breath. Slowly, one by one, the big beasts lumber out of the shadows.

Not far down the long, rutted road to her property, cars whiz by on the state highway.

U.S. Route 64 cuts a swath through the northern end of Tyrrell County, 499 square miles of woods and small towns. Unlike other regions where people have encroached on habitat, bears can roam here for miles, even days, and see nothing remotely human.

Gordon Warburton, the black bear project leader for the North Carolina Wildlife Commission, said the bear population in northeastern North Carolina and nearby areas is robust, with some adult males weighing more than 600 pounds. Thanks to wildlife management that began in the early '70s, their numbers have expanded.

In 1971, the occupied range for the black bear - the way the species' numbers are calculated - on the coastal plain from Virginia to South Carolina was estimated at 1.6 million acres. By 1996, bears occupied 6.1 million acres, Warburton says.

``Bears used to be considered vermin at the turn of the century,'' he says. ``They get a lot more respect now.''

They've proved to be adaptable and have learned to live ``in more disturbed situations,'' he says.

Hunters come from all over the country to shoot bears in North Carolina. Because of the temperate winters here, bears hibernate very little or not at all. A sportsman with a hunter's license can kill one bear a year. Bear season runs from Nov. 10 through Nov. 15, and again from Dec. 15 through Dec. 17. In 1996, 86 bears were harvested in Tyrrell County.

But wildlife enforcement officers agree with Grayson that, while most hunters are law-abiding, poaching is definitely a concern.

``Poaching has always been a problem,'' Rowe says. ``There's individuals who have no respect for the law. There's a certain segment of our population that view wildlife as something to exploit.''

Rowe says that in the 22 years he has been overseeing wildlife in his 13-county district, he's had to deal with hunters who bait bears, hunt out of season or outright slaughter bears for valuable parts. Stricter laws, he says, would probably do little to help.

``A poacher doesn't give a damn about the law anyway,'' he says. ``Hell, they hunt them out of season, what's to stop them from hunting off the road?''

As a biologist, Rowe frowns on Grayson feeding the bears, though he says he understands her frustration with the lawbreakers. But with the blurring of bear-human habitat, he says Grayson's attitude of respect is what is needed for both to coexist.

``She's in a situation where it's not going to cause a problem, so to speak. She can do what she wants on her own property. There's some things where there's danger involved, but she's not really hurting anybody,'' he says.

The sheriff also sees value in Grayson's relationship with the bears.

``I think she's done a wonderful job with them,'' Hemilright says. ``If more people could see what she does with the bears, they'd understand her better and understand bears better - and things would be a lot better.

Rowe agrees. ``We just have to educate people. We're getting a lot of bears where we didn't have them before. As soon as they see bears, they see death. But black bears are not like that . . . I always tell people, be happy you can see something like that.'' ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot

Kay Grayson fees ``Highway 64''...

A black bear looks down a logging road...

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