- Jan 12, 2010
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"bears seem relatively harmless and friendly on most occasions".......... UGH! Not to sound mean... but are you nuts?
Bears are dangerous and not friendly at all. They have poor eye sight but great hearing and smell. If they seem friendly, it's just cause they cannot see if your lunch or not.
If I had the opportunity to hunt bear I certainly would, they are VERY tastey!
But, one of the main reasons to hunt bear, is to maintain a healthy population, not just for more hunting opportunity, but mostly for the health and survival of the bear itself. If an area of bear becomes too over populated, from excess food supplies (human generated usually), then they become desensitized to us (ie, perceived friendliness). Then, the bear, who are huge opportunists, will start helping themselves to pets, people etc. They become a pest and even more dangerous once they lose fear of man. And they end up getting killed for it.
Keeping populations down also help decrease the spread or development of diseases etc. If bear can survive in the wild, rather than human dumps, they are going to be far more healthy and produce strong offspring.
In the wild, if animals had no human interference, there would be a check and balance of the number of predator and prey. But because humans have a huge impact on everything, we sometimes have to act as the predator (for both predator and prey animals) to help keep that balance. For example, in lower MI, there are lots of deer, plenty of farm fields for food, no natural predators (except for coyotes on occasion)......... the deer thrive, and numbers can be high along with diseases. Up in the upper MI, there are too many wolves..... deer numbers are way down to the point where some hunters see only wolf and no deer. At some point, our DNR will need to open a season on the wolf because the wolves have killed off most of their own food supply. They will end up dying off naturally anyway. (being killed quickly vs slow starvation seems to me a more humane way to me.)
Bears are dangerous and not friendly at all. They have poor eye sight but great hearing and smell. If they seem friendly, it's just cause they cannot see if your lunch or not.
If I had the opportunity to hunt bear I certainly would, they are VERY tastey!
But, one of the main reasons to hunt bear, is to maintain a healthy population, not just for more hunting opportunity, but mostly for the health and survival of the bear itself. If an area of bear becomes too over populated, from excess food supplies (human generated usually), then they become desensitized to us (ie, perceived friendliness). Then, the bear, who are huge opportunists, will start helping themselves to pets, people etc. They become a pest and even more dangerous once they lose fear of man. And they end up getting killed for it.
Keeping populations down also help decrease the spread or development of diseases etc. If bear can survive in the wild, rather than human dumps, they are going to be far more healthy and produce strong offspring.
In the wild, if animals had no human interference, there would be a check and balance of the number of predator and prey. But because humans have a huge impact on everything, we sometimes have to act as the predator (for both predator and prey animals) to help keep that balance. For example, in lower MI, there are lots of deer, plenty of farm fields for food, no natural predators (except for coyotes on occasion)......... the deer thrive, and numbers can be high along with diseases. Up in the upper MI, there are too many wolves..... deer numbers are way down to the point where some hunters see only wolf and no deer. At some point, our DNR will need to open a season on the wolf because the wolves have killed off most of their own food supply. They will end up dying off naturally anyway. (being killed quickly vs slow starvation seems to me a more humane way to me.)
