I don't know about bears and if they can understand the difference between a stick and a rifle, but I can tell you about crows.

You can whittle a detailed rifle out of wood, color it gunmetal blue, slop RIG gun grease and bore cleaner on it so that it smells like a real rifle, put it in a gun case, go to the woods near a stand of trees and pull it out of its case, and they won't so much as blink, let alone fly away. You can park the car a football field away from a stand of trees that have a large group of crows in it, start to pull a real rifle out of its case, and before the barrel clears the case, they are all gone far away. I truly believe that if I could find a hunting area where I could park the car a mile or more from crows in a tree & start walking toward them, they would fly off just before I got into shooting range and not a step further.

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />