No bear news
Update October 30, 2010 2:35 PM CDT
No news about the bears today. This time of year we prefer to leave them alone and let them settle into hibernation. Today, we are still remembering yesterday’s feeling of privilege being briefly near Gentle Lily and Hope. Here are a couple more pictures from those moments.
Dr. Dave Garshelis was good enough to get back to us with more on wounding loss during bear seasons in Minnesota. We appreciate his candid email, as follows.
Lynn,
The wounding loss rate in Minnesota is less than 2%. Most of that is from archery hunters. That means the hunters were quite close to the bear when they shot. If they “looked twice”, like you often say – to see if it had a collar – I don’t think they would have taken a better shot. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t have good target to shoot at. Maybe they just missed. Trying to tie the collared bear protection together with wounding loss – or inadvertently shooting people – is the height of absurdity. Maybe your fans will buy this argument, but I can’t imagine that anyone who knows anything about hunting would.
I will also add that just because a bear was wounded and lost doesn’t mean – as you assert, for emotional sake – that they suffered more. In many cases they just didn’t bleed enough (because of the fat layer) for the hunter to be able to follow them. In other cases the hunter just couldn’t find them because it was raining, or because the bear wandered down into a swamp where the hunter couldn’t walk. I know of 1 case with a collared bear where it clearly died soon after being struck, very close to the hunter’s bait – but the hunter was just too scared to follow the blood trail in the dark. In a 2nd case, the bear actually lived through the winter, denned normally, then died the next spring when the arrow shifted and punctured the lung.
You should drop this ridiculous argument. It only works with very naïve people, and letters from them parroting these assertions do not play well in an agency where we know better.
Dave
Dr. Garshelis has studied bears in Minnesota since 1981 as the principal bear biologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He is now working toward legal protection for radio-collared bears in Minnesota. Dave co-chairs the Bear Specialist Group for the International Bear Association. We are very glad to learn the wounding loss in Minnesota is so low. We invite Dave to share his data with us anytime.
Again, if any of us erred related to this, please do not post comments about it. Our main goal is to learn. To do that, we need protection for radio-collared bears. Dr. Garshelis is working toward that protection. We thank him and all of you for working toward that goal.
We were touched to learn today that a 9-year-old Lily fan in Colorado asked that gifts for her birthday party be donations to the Bear Center instead of gifts for herself. She wants to become a bear biologist.
We wish we could be at the gathering of Lily fans in Hinckley, MN, today. We look forward to hearing about it and seeing the pictures.
We are touched by all you do for bear research and education.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center