Why do you hunt bears? (if you do)

[flyweed]

I hunt bear here in Wisconsin as well. Bow hunt mostly and for two main reasons.

1. I love being outdoors in the woods amongst all of the wildlife
2. I love knowing that I am providing a much valued commodity for my family to eat and live on along with the deer I hunt. Beef, pork and chicken prices are gone through the roof, and since I process my own wild game...it is very cheap for us to fill our freezer with meat by hunting

Dan

 

[mississippifarmboy]

I hunt bears because I'm the world's laziest hunter. I love going out in the woods, enjoying nature and getting away from the wife and kids for a morning. I don't like dressing, dragging, and prepairing them. Plus the gun weighs too much if it has bullets in it.

If we acually had bears here I'd probably hunt zebras instead.

 

[Herb 307]

Where I live we have a very high population of them here. When I first moved up here I was a guild for a large bear hunting camp. Since then I have shot a few but now I dont get out as much. I have 160 acres here and its all treed and I raise chickens and bronze Turkeys . I free range my turkeys and lose a few.

One year was really bad Every second day I had a bear come and help himself.... I figure the days he didnt come he was grazing on the wild cranberries ......




Herb

 

[redhen]

Quote:
If you'd seen the pics (on here), of some folks coops and torn apart chickens, then maybe you'd understand how someone would need to hunt bears.

 

[Dunkopf]

Around here people leave their garbage and their dogs out for them to eat. So they get used to easy feeding and have to be hunted down and killed. Of course I think it's usually wildlife officials that do it. Numerous reports of them coming in peoples windows and ransacking kitchens.

For those that hunt them is it for the meat or just the thrill of the kill? I can always understand killing for meat. Never understood killing just to kill though. Of course if they are killing livestock, then it's a good reason to kill them.

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:

 

[Sir Birdaholic]

A friend of mine hunts bear. He doesn't take a gun, only a camera, airhorn, & pepperspray. He doesn't get why I won't go with him. DUH!

 

[wood&feathers]

MSFarmboy, that's a good one!

Bears are a large wild animal with a mind of their own. I like the previous description of a "Hell's Angel raccoon with a hangover". My inlaws' 70+ year old neighbor was tending a cow with a breech birth and got charged by a large black bear (Greene Co Virginia). He shinnied himself quickly up a pine tree, with the bear close behind. It went back to the cow, grabbed her haunches and ripped the calf from her with its jaws. Periodically it would return to Elmer's tree and huff at him to make sure he stayed treed. Then the bruin grabbed the calf remains and lumbered off down the creek. I shudder to think what would have happened if this elderly farmer were more deaf or less agile than he is!

Though I haven't hunted bears myself, and enjoy observing them when I have the chance, I regard hunting them as a necessary part of managing them. Nothing kills a bear faster than idiots who think they look cute in their backyard eating birdseed or garbage. Nothing saves a bear from that fate like learning to fear humans chasing it with guns and especially dogs.

Black bear populations throughout the eastern US are at record levels. I live in a part of Kentucky that has contained some black bears since the 1980s. Our wildlife agencies were VERY slow to recognize and respond to the new population - they still insist the only breeding population is on the VA border on Black Mtn. I have SEEN cubs here, in Menifee and Wolfe Co. Lots of folks - hikers, hunters, tourists, farmers - here are going to need to learn some new habits.

I hear bear fat is DIVINE in baked goods.

 

[Welsummer Rancher]

I hunt em because they are available, and I enjoy everything about it, including the final result..............Bear Stew!!

 

[Organics North]

Hunting is a good way to create a balance that has been disrupted by human activity. Unless you remove the humans along with the hunting you would be asking for trouble.... Other than that I could see the satisfaction in taking a bear with the bow.. That would be quite the experience!

We have a very high but tolerable black bear population. Come spring time one can not leave a crumb of garbage, grain or for that matter anything edible outside. I find it necessary to keep a band of electric around the coop. (They seem to be after the grain not the chickens so much.) Heck last spring one went in my open tractor shed and clawed open a bag of alfalfa meal! I figured I could leave it outside..nooo. One can not even keep a hummingbird feeder stuck to the kitchen window, they come right up on the raised deck after it.

The primary danger is getting between a sow and her cubs, and then making the wrong moves. We rehearse the rules with the kids every spring, as we usually have a sow and a couple of cubs in the immediate vicinity. It's a pain, and the bear makes itself known in early spring, however we choose to coexist with them, as they are part of the natural rhythm of the season. They move off deeper into the woods come summertime anyway.

With that said..... I do not hunt bear.. They are omnivorous mammals like us... I do not like to eat mammals that eat meat, like bear. Now of course given a choice between a serving of bear or a serving of feline or canine... I will take the bear meat any day..

It is just way down at the bottom of the list below, fish, fowl, and nice 4 legged herbivorous like deer, elk, moose .. I only hunt what I enjoy eating.

The second reason I do not hunt bear, is their spiritual significance. I can see why so many cultures that were in tune with the natural world have great respect for the bear... The bear is powerful mojo, a substantial presence indeed.


ON