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All Hunting Articles
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has drafted a bear management plan that attempts to grapple with all the issues raised by the resurgence of a species that can reach 600 pounds and has a taste for garbage.
The plan calls for setting up local resident groups to work out bear issues; reducing those killed on roads; establishing wilderness corridors to reconnect shrinking, genetically isolated bear populations along the Gulf coast with larger ones inland; and — most controversially — considering whether Florida should reopen bear hunting, banned in 1994.
Police and conservation officers are investigating an incident involving the death of a bear at the hands of a Pemberton resident who admitted shooting it with a crossbow within municipal boundaries.
Police were called to a home on Dogwood Street in the Pemberton Benchlands on Saturday (Aug. 21) at around 9 p.m., Whistler RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve LeClair said. A resident had heard a “strange cry” and then spotted a dead bear in her backyard, he said.
Whistler following a personal anti-hunting agenda, PWF president says
Council's proposed ban on crossbows has little to do with improving safety and everything to do with impeding hunters' rights, says one advocate.
Clarke Gatehouse, president of the Pemberton Wildlife Federation (PWF) said that bow hunting within RMOW limits hasn't been a safety issue in the past because no one in Whistler has ever been hit with a crossbow.
Re: Bowhunting within the RMOW boundaries
On behalf of Whistler Residents Opposed to Urban Hunting, we would like to ask that mayor and council regulate bow hunting within municipal boundaries; or at minimum in areas that are used recreationally.
According to the B.C. Hunting Regulations, most municipalities have local bylaws restricting and controlling the use of weapons, firearms and bows within their boundaries. And Whistler does in fact have a bylaw that makes it unlawful to discharge a firearm within our municipal limits (Firearms Regulation Bylaw No. 874, 1991). Provincial regulations do, however, stipulate "No Hunting" areas making it illegal to bow hunt within 100 metres of a dwelling or playground within the RMOW.
A resident of Whistler, B.C., wants crossbow hunting banned in the municipality after learning that it's legal to use the weapons to hunt bears within the resort community's boundaries.
Sylvia Dolson opposes bear hunting and says it's just a matter of time before a person becomes a victim of a crossbow.
"Safety is a major concern," Dolson told CBC News. "We have all kinds of parks, hiking trails, biking trails."
NEW JERSEY'S latest bear-management plan is a well-researched and reasoned document. It has the right primary goal: maintaining a robust, healthy black bear population.
But we disagree with its conclusion, which state environmental officials formalized last week: to hold a six-day hunt this December.
The 45-page document lays out a variety of bear-management approaches, including trash management and sterilization. Some of the latest population statistics — which always seem to buttress the policy preference of whoever is in charge of state environmental policy — estimate the number of black bears in New Jersey at 3,400. That is triple the estimate in 2006, when then-Gov. Jon Corzine canceled a hunt and demanded that the state draft a new management plan. The plan by the state's Fish and Game Council now recommends regular hunts — no surprise, since the council is sympathetic to hunters.
Dolson leading effort to ban bow hunting within RMOW after bear killed with crossbow
True or false: it is legal to shoot a bear with a crossbow in Lost Lake Park during hunting season.
Answer: true.
That is also the case in the Callaghan Valley and the Interpretive Forest, any logging and hiking trail or anywhere within the RMOW, so long as the hunter is licensed and, according to a hole the Firearms Regulation Bylaw, is 15 metres away from the centre line on the road, and/or is 100 metres away from a playground or building occupied by people or domestic animals.
Miriam Mcdougall has a theory about bears.
It has something to do with what might be referred to as the rise of man.
Our story begins in 1933, when Miriam was born on a 45-acre spread near Dewdney. It was what she called a "stump ranch," farmland so raw it still had uncleared stumps on it.
TRENTON — Before the state approved its last bear hunt in 2005, hundreds of farmers, homeowners, animal rights protesters and hunters voiced their opinions in a final, raucous hearing that had to be moved to the State Museum auditorium in Trenton to accommodate the crowd.
The scene was far different today, when the state Fish and Game Council voted unanimously — and with considerably less fanfare — to recommend a six-day bear hunt for northwest New Jersey in December.
The Wisconsin bear-hunting season did not show clear evidence of reducing nuisance complaints during 1995-2004, probably because hunting was not effectively designed for that goal. We call for additional research on hunter and bear behavior, including experimental tests of hunting individuals with different levels of involvement in property damage. At the statewide scale, complaints about agricultural damage, other property damage, or human safety concerns did not correlate with each other or with number of bears taken by hunters in the preceding 1-2 years.
The Wisconsin bear-hunting season did not show clear evidence of reducing nuisance complaints during 1995-2004, probably because hunting was not effectively designed for that goal. We call for additional research on hunter and bear behavior, including experimental tests of hunting individuals with different levels of involvement in property damage. At the statewide scale, complaints about agricultural damage, other property damage, or human safety concerns did not correlate with each other or with number of bears taken by hunters in the preceding 1-2 years.
Two men reported with rifles in Callaghan Valley. Charges are pending against two Vancouver men after a black bear was shot and killed on Callaghan Valley Road Tuesday, June 15.
Conservation Officer Dave Jevons said he couldn't comment on specifics of the case, such as the men's identities or whether they were aware that they were in a no-shooting zone, because the case is still being investigated by the Conservation Officer Service, but he did say that the men were licensed hunters and that charges will be laid.
A multi-decades long study of Maine's black bears indicates that the state's bear population is thriving. Bear hunting was suspended in 1980 because officials weren't sure if hutners were killing too many of the bruins.
But the study indicates that the state's bear population is now numbers about 23,000, and hunters aren't shooting as many bears as the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife would like, the Bangor Daily News reports.
The killing of large carnivores in North America by means of trophy hunting, whether for "sport" or "management," has been and continues to be a source of noteworthy and unrelenting controversy.
Interestingly, most of the furor appears to have little to do with the conventional battlefield of left or right ideology as the intensity of emotion attached to top predators like bears, wolves, cougars and coyotes often transcends the simplistic bifurcated politics that can mark such disputes.
The spring grizzly bear hunt ended Saturday but the debate rages on as to whether continued hunting of ursus arctos horribilis is sustainable or should be bagged altogether.
In the Kootenay region alone 298 limited entry draws were awarded for the 2010 spring grizzly hunt. While stats aren't yet available for this year, in 2009, hunters killed 61 grizzlies during the same period.
EDMONTON - The Alberta government has declared the province's grizzly bears to be a threatened species.
The immediate effect of the designation is that the province's suspension of its controversial licensed grizzly hunt will continue for now.
Sustainable Resource Development Minister Mel Knight made the announcement Thursday.
The meaning of a recent court case in Wyoming is clear: you can't kill a grizzly just because you're frightened. 41-year-old Stephen Westmoreland shot a female grizzly last fall in Grand Teton National Park that showed no sign of aggression. He'd been gutting a deer and was "covered in animal blood," according to an OregonLive story, when he came across the bear feeding on a gut pile he'd seen earlier in the day. He shot it from 40 yards, afraid the griz might decide to attack him.
Two southwestern Oregon men have been banned from hunting for life because of multiple poaching violations.
Terry E. Clearwater, 42, of Butte Falls, and Brody J. Gerke, 37, of Shady Cove, were convicted of working together to use bait and hounds to kill black bear and cougar.
ULUKHAKTOK/HOLMAN - Robert Kuptana has been hunting polar bears for decades but last Tuesday was the first time he saw a brown bear running across the sea ice.
"Why would a grizzly bear be hunting seals?" he said. "It's a land animal. They wait for fish in rivers."
The Inuvialuit elder was Ski-Dooing outside of Minto Inlet hunting for polar bears when he spotted the brownish-coloured bear in the midst of a group of a couple hundred seals half a kilometre ahead of him.
A public hearing on the Department of Environmental Protection's proposed black bear management policy, a scientifically designed, common sense mix of hunting, education, research and non-lethal bear management tools, is set for tomorrow night at the State Museum in Trenton.'
Commissioner Bob Martin in March approved the New Jersey Fish and Game Council's 2010 Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy, which will be under consideration at the public hearing, which starts at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 11. If the proposed policy is approved, it would allow the first bear hunt in the state since 2005.
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