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Big Harry is Back - UPDATE September 3, 2017

We were worried about Big Harry.  He is so late. But he’s here, skinnier than we’ve ever seen him.  Big HarryBig HarryAfter absolutely positively identifying him, a 4-wheeler drove down the driveway and scared him off.  We didn’t hear any shooting since he left, so we’re hoping for the best.

A young male was taken late last evening, but it was not one we know.  The guide would not let us see it, but the picture on his website this morning was not of a bear we recognize.  Transient young males are on the move, dispersing to find mating ranges.  We believe it was one passing through.

Unrelated to hunting, one of Lily’s male cubs was killed.  We believe it was by another bear.  We got a call a few days ago that a small bear was lying dead in a resident’s yard.  I went over and identified it and saw the tooth punctures on its head.  I delayed putting it in an update until I could learn what the DNR’s position was on the death—basically disinterest if it wasn’t due to shooting.  We’re sad for any death in the clan, but we’re glad it wasn’t Lily’s daughter and that it was a natural death.

With Labor Day coming up tomorrow, we think about all the people hiking in the woods with leaves on the trees and hunters with high powered rifles.  It seems to me that bear-hunting season should start after Labor Day.  In my original bear-hunting regulations back in 1971, I had bear-hunting starting in mid-September to give pregnant females a couple weeks to den up.  Those are the first to go into dens, and I wanted to spare them as part of regulations that would help the population recover from the years of bounties and gut-shooting that had so decimated the population.  However, a couple years into bear hunting in the early 1970’s, the DNR shifted the opener to September 1.  A decade or so ago, they shifted the opener back to mid-August, which proved to be unpopular and too much of a worry to vacationers wanting to hike when leaves obscured them but would not stop a bullet.  The DNR then returned the opener to September 1 but would not move it to after Labor Day.  That’s when the DNR was overestimating the population and advocating a higher kill.  They overdid it, according to a quote by a high official in the August 27 issue of the Duluth News Tribune, resulting in “a 40 percent decline in the bear population over about 12 years.”  This year the DNR hedged on the side of conservatism and reduced the number of bear-hunting licenses to 3,350 in the quota zone.  We hope that means fewer hunters surrounding the property.  We wish the DNR also would have delayed the opener until after Labor Day.  In addition to safety concerns and giving the population a little extra boost, a later start could make a big difference to Shadow.  She has denned as early as the last week of August, which likely is one of the reasons she has reached the unusual age of 30 years old.  We very much hope she makes it to next year to see if an extra year between litters is enough for her to reproduce again with the help of the supplemental food she gets in this community.

Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center


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