In honor of Vince....

Born in 1913, Vince Shute was the youngest of 6 children. Poor guy, he had 5 older sisters!

His parents were dairy farmers and the family had to live off of what their land could provide.

In 1927, Vince’s father suffered a debilitating stroke. And although he was only 14 years of age he had to quit school and take on a second job as a logger in order to keep the farm running and his sisters in school.
The onset of the depression and drop in milk prices forced him to sell the cows, leave the dairy business and take up logging full time.

By the time Vince turned 25 he had his own company.

The observation deck is located on the site of his original logging camp.



To start, Vince employed roughly 40 loggers. That meant forty mouths to feed. He would get up around 4 o’clock in the morning, start his work and then come back in to make the men breakfast.

Vince was known for his sourdough pancakes and besides his pancakes, he would be frying up bacon and sausages and brewing coffee... and all those wonderful aromas would go wafting through the woods.

Well, who besides the loggers do you think smelled the breakfast? Yep, the bears.

And who besides the loggers do you think came to breakfast? Yep, the bears….

They would use their big old claws to rip open the door down and help themselves.

Vince’s solution to this problem was to shoot the bears. The more bears that came in, the more he would shoot.

Years went by and WWII came around. Vince wanted to join the Service, but they wouldn’t let him. He was much too valuable as a logger. The wood harvested from this forest was sent to the local sawmill and made into wooden shipping crates to send supplies to our servicemen over seas.

Vince became an excellent businessman and was one of the first loggers to bring a chainsaw down from Canada to Minnesota. It had a three-foot blade and weighed fifty pounds. Rumor has it that Vince was the only one brave enough to actually use it.

As business increased, Vince employed around 100 loggers… More loggers, more mouths to feed, more breakfast, more….. bears…. More shooting.

At one point, Vince had shot a bear, went into town and announced to the town square that he had just shot the last black bear in Minnesota. That’s like me saying, “I just slapped the last mosquito in Minnesota” Yep, not going to happen. Vince came home and found three more bears in his kitchen!!!

It was at this point that Vince realized that bears weren’t harmful, they were just hungry. So he decided to take some of the scraps and food and take it far from the camp into the woods and leave it there for the bears to eat. He hoped that by feeding them they would leave the camp alone. And sure enough they did. So every day, Vince would take food out, away from the camp to feed the bears.

Should Vince have actually started feeding the bears? That’s debatable. But it was the best solution at the time. For years they lived harmoniously in the woods.

In 1990 Vince’s health started to fail him and he was worried about what would happen to his bears if he were to stop feeding them. Some people thought the bears would seek out other humans for food, some though they might get hit by cars due to the high density. So Vince got together with his friends and professionals in the field and decided that the best thing to do would be to open the sanctuary and start the American Bear Association.

Because of this unique place we are able to educate the public about black bears, dispel myths, observe behaviors that we wouldn’t normally get to see, collect data and conduct research.

Soon we’re going to pass a gold sign that says “Stop negative conditioning” that means you have just entered “The Magic Circle”. What that means is that inside this two acre area the bears have the right of way. If they cross the road in front of us, we will stop and wait for them to pass. When we walk near them to feed them, we talk softly to them so as to not startle them.



However, on the way out, on the flip side of that sign it says, “Start negative conditioning” What that means is that if we come across a bear we beep our horns, clap our hands and shoo them off. We don’t want them to associate humans with food, we want them to associate the Magic Circle with food.



As we approach the observation deck you need to realize that tonight it is you that is the animal locked in the cage and they get to roam free.

Look up, look down, look all around... cubbies like to play in the trees.




Vince Shute passed away July 4th, 2000. He was cremated and some of his ashes were laid to rest with those of one of his favorite bears. May he rest in peace knowing that his bears are cared for quite well and that he made a difference.

For more information on the Sanctuary... check out americanbears.org