The photo exists of a bear in a basement and it was taken in the Highland Lakes section of Vernon. That is about as far as the tale told Monday by an anti-hunting group meets the reality of how the "bear in the basement" actually came about.

The photo exists of a bear in a basement and it was taken in the Highland Lakes section of Vernon.

That is about as far as the tale told Monday by an anti-hunting group meets the reality of how the "bear in the basement" actually came about.

The real story involves a vacant house, a prospective owner, a police photo and rock music.

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During a protest rally held Monday against New Jersey's bear hunt -- the archery season opened Monday -- Angi Metler, director of the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, made a shocking statement that hunters were keeping a bear in a basement, intending to shoot it on opening day and pass it off as a lawfully taken bear.

Asked for proof, Metler said she had Facebook posts of the bear and the accompanying comments and would provide them to the New Jersey Herald.

On Tuesday, she emailed a screen shot of the photo and accompanying comments.

The photo was posted by Vernon resident Henry J. Gales Jr., who was contacted late Tuesday afternoon about how the photo came to be.

Here is Gales' story:

A house next to his had been abandoned for several years in a foreclosure proceeding. A neighbor across the street, seeing a possibility to "flip" the house, went inside to do an inspection.

The date was right after Thanksgiving 2017. As the prospective buyer went into the basement to inspect the furnace and water system, he heard a noise and came face-to-face with a bear estimated at 650 pounds that had found itself a cozy spot for the winter.

"I had been watching over the property," Gales said, "and had noticed a 12-by-12 vent had been torn off. I thought maybe someone had broken in to steal copper so called the police. They came, but found nothing else."

That was a few days before the neighbor's inspection of the cellar.

Bears, like many smaller animals, have the ability to squeeze into very tight places if they can get their head through the opening. It is not uncommon in this area, even in dense residential areas, for bears to crawl under a porch or a shed to find shelter from the winter weather.

Gales said he had seen "a lot of bear crap" around the house, but Highland Lakes is adjacent to lots of forests owned by the state and by the Newark watershed.

"We're deep in bear country, so the idea of a bear in the house didn't really cross my mind," he said, explaining further that bear scat and tracks are commonly found in the neighborhood.

With the neighbor's discovery of the bear in the basement, Gales said they again called the Vernon police and his son, John Gales, a member of the police department, answered the call.

With no owner present -- and no immediate threat to humans -- the police said there was nothing they could do, and after documenting the bear's presence with a photo, they left.

So, how do you get a 650-pound bear out of the basement?

Well, in 1989, the U.S. Army used heavy metal music, at deafening levels, to force Manuel Noriega out of his Panamanian hideout after cutting all power to the building.

Gales said that's what the neighbor decided to do with the basement-dwelling bruin.

"They blasted rock music into the basement," he said with a chuckle. "After about a half-hour the bear comes out the vent."

Gales said his son later gave him a copy of the photo, and there it sat in his computer until early last week.

As a hunter, Gales goes onto hunting blogs, and one of the sites had seen a running tale of the coming bear hunt.

"They were talking about nuisance bears, and I remembered the picture, so I posted it with the comment about my nuisance bear," he said.

The following comments were friendly banter with lots of "lol" (laugh out loud) and smiley faces; comments about "keep him safe until season lol" and making it "an easy drag to the truck! lol."

Turning serious, Gales said he isn't a bear hunter, but both he and his wife enjoy bow hunting for deer.

He said the big bruin survived the winter and "he's still around here."

He said the neighborhood considers the bears a nuisance, getting into garbage cans or attempting to open them.

"Mine has a hasp on it," he said of his garbage can, "but that doesn't stop them from knocking it over and trying to get in it. I gotta chase mine down the road almost every week."

Asked for a comment about Metler's accusations, Cody McLaughlin, a spokesman for the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance, said, "It is disingenuous at best to take the word of an obvious joke between friends online as gospel. The idea that there is a vast conspiracy of hunters trapping 600-plus pound black bears in their basements is pretty laughable. If Ms. Metler wants to give it a try and show us how it's done, we'd invite her to teach a class on it at our fall fundraiser."

An email sent early Tuesday evening asking Metler for comment did not get a response by press time.