RENO, Nev. (AP) - You'd be hungry too if you couldn't find any food and were used to eating the equivalent of more than 80 cheeseburgers a day.
An already busy bear season has exploded in the Sierra Nevada with 10 hungry bruins captured in a single day this week near Reno and Lake Tahoe as an ongoing drought continues to make food scarce in the mountains.
Since July 1, Nevada Department of Wildlife officials have caught 42 black bears and released all but two back into the wild. They said two repeat offenders had to be killed - one so bold it was rummaging through picnic baskets in July on a busy Tahoe beach.
Cars have killed an additional 10 bears as the animals move into more populated areas from the parched foothills on the Sierra's eastern front, where streams are down to a trickle and the usual supply of berries and insects is lacking.
A surge in activity is expected with cooler temperatures this time of year, when a typical bear's food intake jumps from 3,000 to 25,000 calories a day, said Chris Healy, Department of Wildlife spokesman. That's the human equivalent of 83 McDonald's cheeseburgers.
The animals are going through hyperphagia, a physiological change in which they eat as much as they can to store fat for winter hibernation.
"Nothing much gets in the bear's way when they are this hungry," said Carl Lackey, the agency's chief wildlife biologist. "Nature's dinner bell is ringing."
He noted a third consecutive year of drought has acerbated bear encounters with humans.
On Thursday, game wardens and wildlife biologists were back on the trail of nuisance bears raiding garbage cans and climbing trees near residential areas in search of fruit.
"It's pretty wild," Healy said after they trapped another bruin near Carson City. The group also was looking for another mother and cub that were spotted earlier in the day "literally at the exact same spot" where the mother and two cubs were caught the day before on Reno's western edge.
"We know they are not the same ones because we haven't released the other one yet," Healy said.