Adult female bears weigh any- where from 45 to 182 kilograms. Black bears can live for 20 years or more but few do. Female black bears give birth when they are about 6 to 8 years of age, and then they only reproduce every second year, at best. To a mother bear, each cub counts. One to four cubs are born in late December or early January while the female is in her den.
Cubs usually stay with their mother one and a half years.
Then female cubs may continue to have access to the mother's feeding territory and the young males disperse, travelling long distances for the next few years. This brings them into contact with people, crops, camps and garbage dumps. Black bears constantly search for food to feed young and build fat for their long winter hibernation. Twigs, leaves, shoots, buds, berries, roots, grasses and nuts make up about 75 percent of their diet. They supplement this with insects, fish, carrion, and the spring-born young of moose and deer.