Most American black bear (Ursus americanus) population studies involving live capture have used foot-hold restraints or barrel and culvert traps, but new capture methods, including the bucket cable trap, are increasingly being used by wildlife management agencies and researchers. Although the bucket cable trap has been used to capture black bears and grizzly bears (U. arctos) in the United States and Canada, quantitative assessments of its capture efficiency, injury rates, and capture biases are lacking. We addressed this gap in knowledge using a camera-trap-based study of bucket-cable-trap capture methodology. Between 12 May and 12 August 2015, we placed remotely triggered cameras at active bucket-trap sites throughout southeastern Oklahoma, USA. During 1,285 camera-trap-nights, we recorded 711 black bear visitation events and 106 successful captures. Of the 402 visitation events in which the trap was active, 26.3% resulted in a successful capture. Incidental captures were limited to northern raccoons (Procyon lotor). Sex, previous capture, and mass characteristics appeared to affect the capture process, indicating that it is important to keep capture heterogeneity in mind when characterizing population demographics and calculating abundance using this capture method. Ó 2018 The Wildlife Society.KEY WORDS American black bear, bucket cable trap, capture heterogeneity, capture success, Oklahoma, Ursus americanus.
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