BEAR ESSENTIALS

BEAR ESSENTIALS: Detractors Use Misinformation To Forward Personal Causes

by Travis Barrett

Recently, the state’s bear hunters and trappers have come under more scrutiny.

First it was in reaction to news that a houndsman was seriously injured on a bear hunt in September, and again when an opinion piece in the Portland Press Herald misled the publicabout the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s management of the species.

Bear hunting’s detractors continue to question population estimates, fair chase standards and the “sloppy” habits of a few hunters when it comes to black bears – perhaps more so than with any other species pursued in Maine’s forests and fields.
No representative of IF&W has ever, anywhere – not in words or writing – said that Maine’s black bear population has doubled in the last 20 years. Although wildlife biologist Jennifer Vashon, the state’s bear leader since 2002 and chairperson of the Northeast Black Bear Technical Committee, acknowledged that it is certainly possible that the population “could” have doubled over that time period, she stressed the importance of completing current field surveys before providing an updated estimate.

“The actual number is not as important as monitoring the health of the Maine bear population and its impacts,” Vashon said about the state’s black bears. “What we know is that there have been more cubs each year and bears have been healthier, while at the same time there hasn’t been a significant increase in the number of negative bear interactions with people and our hunters’ success rates have stayed virtually the same.

“Maine’s bear population remains at biologically and socially accepted levels.”

Fellow wildlife biologist Randy Cross, another of Maine’s black bear experts, echoed Vashon’s sentiments, particularly in response to suggestions that IF&W willingly inflates bear population estimates as support for continued hunting and trapping of the species.

Cross – with three decades of hands-on black bear experience – is disappointed by such a suggestion.

“We are dead serious about doing the best job we can managing bears in Maine,” Cross said. “Any innuendo that we don’t take this job seriously and that there is an element of hocus pocus involved in the estimates we make is simply not true.

“An estimate is a guess by definition – but it isn’t arrived at frivolously. Rather, it is derived by impartial analysis of the best data available to us.”

But population estimates are nothing more than a clever talking point, one which aims to skirt the real issues with Maine’s black bears and instead play an age-old card. What detractors want you to believe is that bear hunting methods are derived solely for the purpose of driving up IF&W revenues through the sale of bear hunting and trapping permits.

While no one would dispute the notion that the Department is funded almost entirely through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, as well as recreational vehicle and boat registrations to a smaller extent, management of wildlife species are not managed for profit.

Instead, they are managed according to specific goals identified by a public working group. In the case of the black bear, the goal is to stabilize the bear population in Maine through the removal of some bears via hunting and trapping as a balance to the entry of new bears into the population each year.

But again, questioning the state’s population estimates or how profit-driven the hunt may (or may not) be seems to be smokescreens for what’s really at stake here. Fact is, a vocal minority simply doesn’t like bear hunting.

For whatever reason, black bears – unlike moose, partridge, woodcock, ducks or even whitetail deer – are viewed as less acceptable to pursue. It seems in no other hunting discussions does “fair chase” come up so frequently and is so misused.

“Fair chase is difficult to define,” Cross said. “Many hunters in Maine hunt deer and very few hunt bear. What seems ‘fair’ to a deer hunter doesn’t necessarily seem fair to a bear hunter, and vice versa.

“(Current) bear hunting methods allow for a harvest of about 15 percent of the bear population annually, while roughly 70 percent of hunters using each of these methods are unsuccessful in their quest to harvest a bear each year – even with the assistance of professional guides for many of them.”

A quick personal anecdote: In September, I had the chance to spend a few days hunting with a colleague and registered Maine bear hunting guide. In my first night in the tree stand – over a bait site not 50 yards away – I watched a bruiser of a bruin stealthily make his way into the area. He watched the bait, he circled in and out of the thick woods around him yet never seemed quite comfortable enough to move into shooting range. For nearly 40 minutes, I watched that bear but never had an opportunity to take my shot before he walked away just as calmly as he’d walked in.

The next day we went back to the site and saw the barrel holding the bait had been licked clean.

What’s my point?

It’s a simple one. No matter how much we try and convince ourselves it’s “unfair” to lure black bears with bait, they continue to hold every advantage. Unlike hunting them in, say, a berry patch or a beechnut ridge where they are virtually ignored by hunters, a bait site is an obvious red flag scenario for a bear.

There is human food, human contact, human scent a hundred-fold, human devices, human footsteps. When that black bear walks into that baited area, it is almost immediately put on alert. Like the hunter, the hunted is willingly playing the game – measuring risk versus reward with every step.

And only 30 percent of bear hunters are successful each year. Thirty percent.

In the same breath, opponents of bear baiting and bear trapping will tell you that it is unethical to bait bears, they will also tell you stories of wounded bears roaming the woods or trapped bears wailing all night in agony.

Unfortunately, as persuasive as arguments can be when we inappropriately tag bears with human emotions, they are not only misleading but also hypocritical. We cannot decry the unfair nature of staging close, intimate shooting scenarios from tree stands watching bait piles – and then turn around and bemoan how grotesque protracted kills from questionable shots are.
To take it a step further, blanket statements have been made about resident and non-resident “weekend hunters” – often labeling them in most general terms as unskilled and lazy marksmen.

“Our studies show that only about one out of 300 bears are shot and killed but not recovered,” Cross said. “This is a relatively low crippling loss rate when compared to other animals which are shot in less controlled situations.

“As for residence status and its correlation to hunting proficiency and marksmanship, non-resident bear hunters have a much higher success rate while hunting bear in Maine, suggesting they are able to overcome these deficiencies – if they do even exist.”

The facts are the facts: Hunting bears closely over bait gives hunters clear shooting lanes at close range in order to carry out the most humane, most effectively quick kills.

In the few instances where a bear is wounded by a shot but not recovered, or caught until a trapper arrives the next day, people should be cautioned against assuming any specific level of “suffering” by the bear.

“I’ve spent my entire career trying to figure out what goes on inside a bear’s head,” Cross said. “Some things I have learned that seem clear. First, and this should come as no surprise, bears don’t think just like we do. I also believe it takes a good deal more discomfort before I would judge a bear to be suffering in severe pain than a human in the same position.

“I have seen enough bears sleeping soundly in a foot snare to cast doubt on the level of pain that foot snares inflict… The point is, bears vocalize for a number of reasons – frustration may be a reason for an older bear to vocalize – but severe pain, even if it did exist in a situation like this, is not one of them.”

The only questionable shots in this debate aren’t being fired by hunters. Instead, they’re being taken by people stoking personal agendas. It’s time – for fairness’ sake – to put the arguing to an end.

Posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Filed under MDIF News.