No more cherries for the bears?

For several years, we had a small plum tree on the east end of our front lawn.  Every morning during harvest time we'd find fresh bear poop on the ground beneath it.  A couple of years ago, winter took its toll and the tree perished.  We cut away all visible remains including the tap root and filled the hole.  During the following three Falls and currently during late summer, bears still come snooping around where that tree was.  I wonder if it's bear family memory or if they are sensing some remains of the tree.  Once the tree was cut away, some bears discovered a cherry tree (above) on the western boundary of or small property and began climbing it to get at the cherries.  By mid-summer or this year, the leaves on the top 15 feet or so began to turn brown.  As you can see in this photo, there's a sharp distinction between the dead top and the very-much-alive bottom.  no more cherries, and some kind of fungus infection at the junction of dead and alive.  This weekend we're going to cut the trunk just below the infected portion and see if the tree will come back next spring as a bush.  It may or may not produce cherries again, but our neighbor has a healthy cherry tree, so we'll get see see bears in the neighborhood.