On the evening of July 5th, just outside Deltona, milling along a hog wire fence on the edge of the I-4 right-of-way, I spotted a young black bear. Cool to see, and I nearly caused a four-car pile-up while scrambling for a camera, but I also wondered if and when the good folks of Florida would be free to hunt the state’s bears again.

Black bear hunting — if you recall the 2015 event — tends to rile up some folks. The general public around here doesn’t regard them as game animals in the same manner as deer or turkeys, which I find silly as man has been hunting bear — and often times, bear has hunted man — since the two species first crossed paths.

Having personally bagged a couple now in North Carolina and played parts in other hunts, I will testify that bear hunting is a challenging pursuit. Their sense of smell is second to none, and for an animal of their size, they creep around silently. There’s also a primal awe involved with bears that is strictly adrenaline driven and wholly different from Buck Fever.

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Finally, they’re excellent table fare; my “QuesaBear-ia” Tacos are crowd favorites for even my non-hunting friends who’ve put aside preconceived notions about eating bear. Bear bratwurst with Guinness Gravy is another hit.

Aside from the dinner table and trophy room, when viewing hunting at a macro-level, black bear hunting serves other purposes. The Florida subspecies is no longer listed as threatened, their numbers having rebounded significantly over the last 30 years. In some areas, such as Ocala National Forest, there have reportedly been signs that the biological carrying capacity has been reached.

For instance, mature male bears are tough on cubs which makes a population top-heavy, age-wise. This is then unhealthy as the older generation eventually dies off without replacements. Bear populations are considered healthy and growing when the number of young bears attaining adulthood exceeds the number of bears that perish in any given year, a concept known as recruitment. Populations are stable when these figures are equalized, hence the use of hunting in bear management plans.

In 2015, with these indicators and bear complaints reaching all-time highs, FWC determined at least a 20% total annual mortality rate would be needed for the bear population to begin to stabilize, and the agency set their harvest objectives accordingly. The revenue generated from the sale of licenses that year helped fund the cost of bear-resistant equipment with local governments to reduce human-bear conflicts. The outcry from that hunt extinguished bear seasons after 2015, though, and the mere mention of reviving one became a political football.

As you might suspect, I didn’t see the trouble; FWC set a goal of reducing black bear populations, and it was accomplished. The rapidity in which their quota was hit, admittedly, was astonishing and really underscored how many bears there are. As I said, they’re not easy animals to hunt.

But again, bear hunting is poorly understood in this state. FWC made a call in the years following the hunt that rather than risk ruining the public’s perception of hunting in general, they’d focus on other bear management strategies designed to reduce conflicts with folks in the suburbs and curb any more hunts.

In 2019, however, they did adopt a Bear Management Plan that is “a comprehensive, science-based approach to managing the Florida black bear.” While hunting is discussed in the Plan, the ball is in the FWC Commissioners’ court as to whether another season is on the horizon, which is why I bring this up today.

As I do every few months right before the Commissioners hold their meeting (July 13-14 in Jacksonville), I scour the agenda in hopes of seeing this subject listed, though I remain dubious that I’ll find satisfaction with our current political climate.

Yet, as it states on FWC’s website, “It is a scientifically supported fact that bear hunting is biologically sustainable and the most effective tool for maintaining proper balance of bear populations relative to available habitat. Of the 41 states with resident bear populations, 33 of them conduct hunts and all have stable to increasing bear populations. Until the 2015 hunt, Florida was the only state with an estimated bear population of over 600 bears that did not have a bear hunt.”