tedmielczarek
New member
Hi there,
In the course of battling both black bears and squirrels over the years I wound up stringing wire rope between two trees in my yard 15 feet off the ground, with a pulley on one end so I can lower it to refill the feeders. This has mostly kept the bears at bay, although the squirrels are still a bit of a problem (it's actually pretty impressive to watch the acrobatic feats they will perform to get to the feeders).
One thing I haven't found a good solution to is keeping feeders from sliding around or even falling off when hung from a wire like this. When raising and lowering the line with the pulley it dips quite a bit and they tend to slide towards the low point. Additionally the squirrels sometimes knock the feeders off the line (I can't tell if it's intentional or accidental). I've also found feeders on the ground in the morning, which I suspect is due to a bear climbing the tree and pawing at the line until something falls. I've tried attaching blobs of Sugru to the line at a few places to act as stops and that works reasonably well, although it doesn't hold up to the weather as well as I had hoped so it does eventually crumble and fall off. I've also tried replacing the hooks that the feeders come with using a variety of things but I have yet to find something that actually works well.
Does anyone have suggestions for something they've used in this situation that has worked well for them? Attached are a few photos of my current setup.
In the course of battling both black bears and squirrels over the years I wound up stringing wire rope between two trees in my yard 15 feet off the ground, with a pulley on one end so I can lower it to refill the feeders. This has mostly kept the bears at bay, although the squirrels are still a bit of a problem (it's actually pretty impressive to watch the acrobatic feats they will perform to get to the feeders).
One thing I haven't found a good solution to is keeping feeders from sliding around or even falling off when hung from a wire like this. When raising and lowering the line with the pulley it dips quite a bit and they tend to slide towards the low point. Additionally the squirrels sometimes knock the feeders off the line (I can't tell if it's intentional or accidental). I've also found feeders on the ground in the morning, which I suspect is due to a bear climbing the tree and pawing at the line until something falls. I've tried attaching blobs of Sugru to the line at a few places to act as stops and that works reasonably well, although it doesn't hold up to the weather as well as I had hoped so it does eventually crumble and fall off. I've also tried replacing the hooks that the feeders come with using a variety of things but I have yet to find something that actually works well.
Does anyone have suggestions for something they've used in this situation that has worked well for them? Attached are a few photos of my current setup.