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CATHERINE WINTER: If you drive north from Minneapolis about four hours, the towns you pass get smaller and farther apart until it's mostly lakes and forest. Turn near the tiny town of Ore and head deep into the woods, and you come to a rough dirt road that leads to an old logging camp, a clearing with a battered outhouse and a couple cabins and trailers. The place is full of bears.

BILL LEE: There's Duffy sitting up. And here's Bert. Duffy is sitting up on this hot day, cooling his chest.

CATHERINE WINTER: Wildlife photographer Bill Lee steps around bear droppings as he walks through the clearing. At least two dozen fat black bears with cinnamon noses and stubby tails waddle out of the woods, pigeon-toed. Bears cling in trees or sit up on their haunches.

BILL LEE: Years ago, a fella by the name of Vince Shute lived out here. He was a logger. And he lived in this old wooden cabin back there, right behind the white building. And he had bears breaking in. So he was shooting the bears for a while.

And then one day he said to himself, these bears are only guilty of being hungry. But how can I live with hungry bears? So he decided he would try to feed the bears to see if it would stop the break-ins. And it did.

CATHERINE WINTER: The bear control plan worked too well. Dozens of bears came to Vince Shute's cabin. Shute spent two decades feeding them corn and cookies. Word got out, and hundreds of people came to see the bears, bringing stale donuts and marshmallows and garbage. Finally, Shute got too old to live alone in the woods.

He moved away last year. But Bill Lee and his wife teamed up with a friend to raise money to keep feeding the bears. The Lee's live in North Carolina, but they've been visiting for years to take pictures. Bill Lee knows most of the bears by name.

BILL LEE: Hello, Sam. How are you? Huh? What you doing today?

CATHERINE WINTER: Sam sniffs the microphone.

BILL LEE: He may eat that.

[SNIFFING]

He may reach out and grab it. But Sam is a bear that loves to play. And he initiates play by biting, which he might come over here and give me a little nip. And I don't want to wrestle with you, Sam. I'm not sure who this is over here. Oh, it's Mischief. He's getting a little drink there from the grease barrel.

CATHERINE WINTER: Lee says he would never start feeding bears. That's irresponsible. But these bears were already fed. He and his partners want to turn the place into an education center, where people can learn about bears. But some bear experts are skeptical about how educational it is to watch a bear eating a donut. Biologist David Garshelis studies bears for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

DAVID GARSHELIS: We have one bear on our study that has been fed by somebody for a number of years. She's had, over the course of years, 10 offspring. And of those, nine only lived a year or so because she taught these offspring that people are friendly, and the offspring all got shot by hunters or as nuisances.

CATHERINE WINTER: Garshelis says the bears at Vince Chute's place are obese, much fatter than normal bears. But feeding bears isn't illegal, so the DNR can't stop it. And Garshelis acknowledges that a lot of people get a kick out of it.

DAVID GARSHELIS: When you see them out in the woods, people get scared of them. When you see them being fed corn chips or something like that, then all of a sudden, they seem more like a pet. They're this big furry thing, and people are attracted to them. And Vince Chute's place certainly attracts lots of visitors.

CATHERINE WINTER: On a typical summer evening, dozens of people drive down the rough road to Vince Chute's place, bringing kids and video cameras. They come from nearby resorts and from as far away as Alaska.

WOMAN: If you're going to get out of your vehicle, because we do recommend you stay in, but if you're going to get out of your vehicle, you need to be aware that these bears are going to be moving in and out and around you. And they will nip. And it's a social nip. It's not an aggressive nip. But it will break the skin, and it hurts.

CATHERINE WINTER: It's a surreal scene. 100 people stand in the dirt parking lot surrounded by wild bears. A little boy counts 40 bears sitting up or eating or shambling right through the crowd. The Lees' partner, Karen Hauserman, sets out piles of bread and dog food and cookies. Hauserman lives in Saint Paul, but she regularly makes the four-hour drive to be with the bears. She says she feels a spiritual connection to them.

KAREN HAUSERMAN: I was always interested in black bears, and I used to watch them at dumps. And I had this theory that, if I was with them long enough, they would accept me. And it was kind of like a Dian Fossey type of theory, although I wasn't really thinking of her at the time. I just kind of felt that the nature of them would let me get with them. And that's when my friends really thought I was flipping out. So I came up here thinking it was somebody that gave maybe five bears table scraps at night. And I just couldn't believe all the bears here.

CATHERINE WINTER: Hauserman cut back on her work as a nurse so she could spend more time with the bears. She doesn't seem to mind what they've done to her car.

KAREN HAUSERMAN: The first year, they pulled the antenna off. The second year, they crunched the hood and the roof, another time kind of broke the grill down up by the windshield. Well, that was OK that that's broke in. But the little wiper, they snapped the cord, so I had to have that fixed.

[MOANING]

CATHERINE WINTER: The bears argue over the food, especially the cookies, hooting at each other. Hauserman walks among them unfazed. But people have gotten hurt here. A few years ago, a bear slashed a woman's face. Bill Lee says, given how close people come to the bears, it's a wonder more accidents don't happen.

BILL LEE: Well, we have heard situations, like people trying to put a child on the back of a bear and take a photograph, or asking little Johnny to run up and kiss the bear while they take a photograph, stuff that just sends shivers up our spines when we think about it.

CATHERINE WINTER: The Lees and Hauserman want to build a viewing platform so people can watch bears safely. They're seeking donations from the public and from foundations. But so far, they've only raised enough money to keep buying food for the bears. I'm Catherine Winter, Main Street Radio.