Visits to bear dens have been one of the top perks available to select groups from the Pennsylvania Game Commission since the days of Gary Alt, the biologist who became world-famous for his work on Pennsylvania black bears.

Lucky participants spend quality time cuddling whatever cubs the female has with her in the den during each late-winter visit to keep them warm, while the commission's bear biologists perform a physical on the sow and retool her radio collar for another year of transmitting its telemetry.

"We had a lot of information on bears in Pennsylvania from the Pocono Region, from prior research projects," he explained. Alt lived in that part of the state and did much of his famous black bear research there.

"We didn't have a lot of information on bears in the central part of the state," said Ternent. "So, we began a study on Sproul State Forest in 2002 with the objective of learning more about bears in an area that's representative of our big bear range here in the northcentral.

"We have been capturing bear every summer on our study area in the Sproul State Forest, and every female we catch on that study area that is at least 90 pounds or more we'll put a radio-collar on."

The biologists rely on the signals from the collars to, among other things, locate the hibernating females in late winter to make their den site visits.

Ternent explained, "In the wintertime we go to the dens of those female bears to monitor reproduction. We're interested in how many cubs are being born per female bear, at what age do female bears produce their first litters, how frequently do they produce a litter after that, and what's the survival of the cubs.

To date, the study has revealed that "the average litter size is three and, on this study area, the average female produces her first litter at about age four or age five," he said.

"There are other parts of the state where they breed a little earlier. But on this study area they tend to be a little lighter in body weights, largely because bears here live off of what the forest provides. They don't know what bird feeders are. They don't know what garbage cans are. So they tend to have a little smaller body weights than in other places, where there are more people in their environment."

Body size of the female bear plays a part in the number of cubs she produces and how large they grow. The little female cub tagged and inspected during Friday's visit was the largest cub encountered in the 12-year Sproul study.

She weighed in at 6.2 pounds. To the visiting volunteers cradling her during much of the visit she felt like little more than a teddy bear, a living, breathing, sometimes crying teddy bear.