The deadliest brown bear that attacked 65 cows returned fire and escaped…! There was a cow that beat “OSO18” in Atsugishi-cho, Hokkaido!

Since the first damage was confirmed at a dairy farm in Osotsubetsu, Shibecha-cho, Hokkaido, in July ’19, OSO18 has attacked at least 65 cows in the past four and a half years. The total amount of damage exceeds 20 million yen, and ranchers in various areas are spending large sums of money to install electric fences and other countermeasures. Local efforts are underway to capture the animals, but because OSO18 is highly intelligent and wary, it continues to be difficult to catch sight of them.

OSO18 is also called the “deadliest brown bear” because of the amount of damage it causes and the fact that it is so unpredictable, but in fact, it does not always succeed in attacking cattle. In Kamiohoro, Atsugishi-cho, a neighboring town of Shibecha-cho, an attempt to attack dairy cows was reversed, as this magazine discovered.

Shoji Hisamatsu, who runs Hisamatsu Farm in Atsugishi-cho, reveals.

It was on August 20 this year. Around 6:00 in the morning, my mother (Hisamatsu’s wife) went out to the pasture as usual, and noticed that some cows had not returned at the time of milking. We searched the pasture and found one dairy cow standing still. It was a cow named Leon, 24 months old and weighing about 500 kg. Leon had sharp tusk marks etched on both shoulders and was covered in mud, probably from being dragged through the muck. We don’t know the exact time of the attack, but judging from the dried blood and mud on Leon’s body, we think it was in the middle of the night.

Mr. Hisamatsu’s dairy farm basically does not cut off the horns of dairy cows, so Leon has sharp-edged horns. Hisamatsu said the horns were covered with brown hairs with a rough texture.

He said, “It looks like an ogre’s horn. DNA analysis identified the hairs as those of OSO18. Probably, Leon resisted by shaking his head when OSO bit him from the side. Leon is a strong-minded cow by nature. If he were to fight back with that thick neck and sharp horns, his ribs would have been broken, no matter how much Oso might have been bitten.

In fact, OSO18 usually causes damage until around September, but this year, since the attack on Leon, he has stopped showing up suddenly. It must have been the first time for OSO to have been hit back. I hope he learns from this and gives up attacking cows. ……”

Hisamatsu is not only a rancher, but also a veteran hunter with 30 years of experience in the field. Hisamatsu, who has killed brown bears in the past, says of his thoughts on OSO18: “If OSO is right in front of me, I’ll be able to see it.

If an oso comes out in front of me, I want to shoot it. Now that our cattle have been attacked, that feeling is getting stronger. But the reality is that bears act in the middle of the night, so it is very difficult to find them. In the first place, it is very dangerous because you don’t know where a black bear is in the middle of the night.

Hunters are dispatched from all over the province, but we do not want strangers to catch Osuso. Rather, we want anyone to catch them. Personally, I believe that if we are serious about exterminating them, we should put a bounty on Oso. Then we would have to gather the best bear shooters from all over the country. We need to do something like that to catch a bear as smart as Oso.”

The more time that passes, Hisamatsu says, the more dangerous the situation will become, including the appearance of OSO 18 cubs. The cattle on the ranch have been living in fear of OSO18 since the attack.

Leon is fine, but his wounds still have not fully healed. The other cows have continued to huddle together and stay together as a herd when grazing. Perhaps they are scared because they know that Leon was attacked by Oso. It is the same for our family members who are also afraid. Neither mother nor son want to go to any place where Oso is believed to have appeared. If we must go there, we go there while yelling.

Naturally, the high level of stress has a variety of negative effects on the cows. Not only the 65 cows that were attacked, but the unseen damage is surely spreading. For the local people to operate their dairy farms with peace of mind, we are waiting for the problem to be solved as soon as possible.