Bear Harvest

Thanks for taking the time to post the link.

thanks . I was wondering on what the count was so far

Wow 1165 bears checked in already.

The early season really produced, I would imagine there will be a few more hundred with Archery coming in Monday.

It will be interesting to see the breakdown of males to females and cubs to adults.

It will also be interesting to see what effect this has on the total bear harvest for the year. Many of the bears harvested in these earlier seasons would have been harvested in the regular bear season so at this point it is very difficult to say what effect this season will have on the future of both bear harvests and nuisance bear complaints.

It was essential that they harvest more of our bred sows if they wanted to reduce or even stabilize the bear population. In the past the bred females were pretty much all denned before the bear season. Finding that correct breaking point of harvest on the bred sows might take a few more years of harvest management adjustments though. Time will tell.

Dick Bodenhorn

Some people thought the Saturday opener was going to desimate the bear population. That was 10 years ago and it continues to increase. As usual, the PGC was far to conservative, with bears, like they are the favored species in this state.

Thanks for posting this quick link to the bear harvest totals. I have been checking it since muzzleloader season.

813 pounder. That's a big boy.

I bet they had fun getting him out unless it was on a farm and they had a tractor.