Can you believe it? Come October, Maryland will conduct its sixth bear season since kick-starting the hunt in 2004 after an absence of more than 50 years.
The folks in the state’s Wildlife Service continue to be cautious with the bear season, telling us this year that a kill of 60 to 85 bears will be allowed before the season becomes history. During the first hunt, hunters could take up to 30 bears, but the agency slammed the lid shut after 20 were bagged on the first day.
Since then, a harvest range has been in place, rising a little each year. Each time hunters have topped the lower end of the range, however, the hunt has been stopped. The hunt has never continued past day four. More caution, I suppose.
We’ll see what happens this year.
A lot of things that were around when the first hunt took place seem to have vanished or at least faded.
Anti-hunters with goofy signs lined up at Mount Nebo in 2004. Mount Nebo was then and is now, one of the places where required checking of dead bears takes place.
In the early years, attendant with the novelty of the hunt and the anti-hunter outrage was media coverage. The Sun and the Post were on site, but long distance coverage also took place such as that of the BBC. I was there as well, and have been to subsequent first-day weigh-ins at Mount Nebo, but we made the decision at the Times-News a couple years back to reduce live coverage.
The season was no longer new and was being operated in a smooth fashion by the state’s wildlife managers. Harry Spiker, who pushes the buttons on day-to-day bear management and the hunt, told me recently that Kentucky is about to conduct its first bear hunt in a long, long time and is modeling much of it after Maryland’s efforts.
Is there a lot of interest in hunting Maryland’s bears that reside in Garrett and Allegany counties? Well, in 2008 there were 3,278 people who sent in $15, knowing they wouldn’t get it back, but hoping to obtain one of the 220 hunting permits. This year, 240 will be issued.
Let’s see. At $15 a pop for 3,278 potential hunters that is, ummm, err, why uh, $49,170 coming into the agency. There are some expenses associated with the hunt, of course.
Spiker said that if you draw a permit this year or are named as a subpermitee by a person who does get one, you will not have to attend bear school the weekend before the hunt if you have already been to such a class.
Call up www.dnr.state.md.us and you will find all the information you need to apply for a permit for the season that begins Oct. 26.
This is far from being scientific, but based upon the number of calls we have received this summer at the newspaper from people who have been seeing bears it should be a pretty good bruin hunting season.
Who knows? Maybe we will bag 85.
If you go, be prepared for any sort of weather. The season has opened under bluebird and warm skies and it has opened under several inches of new snow.
Hey, it’s Western Maryland.
Contact Outdoor Editor Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
