Photo: Laurielynn Bridger-Stroud

A bear cub that had been shot was found on a farm in Lumby Sunday evening.

"It really put a damper on our Thanksgiving," said Laurielynn Bridger-Stroud, whose daughter and friend found the cub.

"We had just finished Thanksgiving dinner, and the girls were bringing some scraps for the goats to eat," Bridger-Stroud said. "Then the girls came back to the house and said they saw a bear cub near the barn."

So her husband grabbed a gun, thinking the cub was alive and that the mama bear might be nearby.

When they got to the cub, they saw it had a hole in its back and its ear was torn apart.

"The bear was so small, it couldn't have been more than 30 or 40 pounds," she said. "My husband nudged it with his foot, and it was stiffened up, and that's when we definitively knew it was dead."

The couple asked neighbours if they heard a gunshot, but they said they hadn't.

Their other neighbours were out of town visiting family for Thanksgiving.

"I definitely can't see any of our neighbours doing something like this, so I don't know what to think," Bridger-Stroud said.

She called the local conservation officer, who said the cub couldn't have wandered far after sustaining those kinds of injuries.

He thinks the cub may have been dumped, but it would be strange to dump a dead cub on Bridger-Stroud's property when she lives on a dead end road.

The conservation officer also said the shooting was a blatant violation – bear cubs are protected.

Bridger-Stroud voiced her frustration on Facebook, and she got an interesting response.

"Someone in the Vernon area reached out to me and mentioned they recently found a shot bear cub on Butters Road," she said. "It is either a crazy coincidence or something is going on here."

Her husband was told by the officer to take the cub and place it on the edge of a service road, so not to attract wildlife in their yard.

She's saddened by the incident, but is most upset about having to explain the situation to her daughters.

"They were so shocked," she said. "It was a difficult thing to explain to kids that there's someone out there that would do something like this."