When New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Officer Matt Pengelly opens the door of his trailer, the mound of fur inside looks more like a big, drowsy dog than a 200-pound black bear.

The woman behind Pengelly looks inside. She had flagged him down as he was driving from the Taos Ski Valley and asked to see the bear. Because the animal is tranquilized, Pengelly is happy to oblige.

The ursine snorts suddenly, and the woman takes a step back, pressing the mail she is carrying closer to her chest.

"He's harmless," Pengelly assures her.

"Ja," she says in a thick German accent, laughing nervously.

Pengelly is having another busy week in New Mexico's worst bear-kill season on record. As of Oct. 3, Game and Fish reported that 638 bears had been killed in the state so far this year, 226 of those by Game and Fish officers. The past two seasons saw totals of 427 and 409, and department kills were well below 100.

According to state bear biologist Rick Winslow, there are several reasons officers have had to put so many bears down.

"Bears that are habituated to human food will continue to come into town regardless of natural conditions such as drought," Winslow said in an email. "We also have a large bear population at the moment, due to conservative harvest strategies and good environmental conditions leading to good breeding success for the last six years."

This bear, a young male, had been sniffing around Tim's Stray Dog Cantina in Taos Ski Valley for about a month. On Sept. 30, bartender Justin Janowick found him in the cantina's crawl-space storage area beneath the building. The bear had torn the top off a metal chest freezer and ripped a solid-core door in half.

"I'm on the fence about what to do about bears," Janowick says. "On the one hand, they're a nuisance when there's no food. But hearing him yowling in that cage, you know he's just trying to survive. In that way, I guess we're all in the same boat."

Before tranquilizing the bear to tag it, Pengelly had to "treat" it with paintballs and pepper spray. The goal: to frighten the bear enough that it won't come near humans again.

Back in town, Pengelly makes a pit stop to hydrate the bear and hose it down, as tranquilized bears run a risk of dehydration. Despite the care, Pengelly isn't hopeful: He knows the odds are against this bear's long-term survival.

"There's not enough fat on his body. This time of year, a bear his size should have a lot more weight on him."

Relocation also could be a death sentence. Even without drought conditions, it takes bears time to acclimate to new surroundings and locate food and water. Relocated bears also will likely have to fight established bears for a piece of territory.

And if this bear is too accustomed to human food and trash, and returns to human areas, it will soon be finished.

"Most bears that we relocate are already habituated, and we eventually end up euthanizing them," Winslow confirms. "Most relocations are eventually unsuccessful."

Facts like these have made this season more difficult than most on officers like Pengelly, who became a game warden out of a love of wildlife.

In August, Pengelly responded to a call about a bear and her cub spotted by a wedding party at El Monte Sagrado Resort. The cub escaped and was never found; it was likely too young to survive on its own, Pengelly says. The mother stayed in his custody for a few days in the hopes the cub would turn up, but eventually he had to relocate and release the mother.

And on Sept. 27, Pengelly was forced to put a bear down after it fell 80 feet from a tree on Dolan Street in Taos, breaking its leg.

"It's always a shame. I was upset," he says of that day. "My job is to protect wildlife, so any day I have to put an animal down, it's a bad day."

Pengelly strives to find the best and most remote locations to release bears, usually somewhere in the Las Cruces Basin Wilderness Area, west of Tres Piedras. He's made the trip several times this season.

While relocation doesn't always work, Pengelly says there aren't many alternatives in the bear's best interest. "This is their best shot to survive," he says.

When Pengelly finally opens the trailer door to release the bear, the animal is wide awake and plenty annoyed. He breaks into a run at the sound of Pengelly's shotgun full of rubber buckshot, and tears toward the tree-dotted horizon — and at least momentary freedom.

Contact Chandra Johnson at cjohnson@taosnews.com.