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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Bear season outlook positive

Improving bear numbers, less hunter competition should offer high quality hunt

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 9/8/10

Bear hunters should find more bears in the woods when the 2010 hunting season opens on Wednesday, and that should translate into a reasonable harvest, despite a strong berry crop this summer.

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Bear season outlook positive

Improving bear numbers, less hunter competition should offer high quality hunt

Posted

Bear hunters should find more bears in the woods when the 2010 hunting season opens on Wednesday, and that should translate into a reasonable harvest, despite a strong berry crop this summer.

Last year, bear hunters took 2,801 bears in Minnesota, mostly from the northern part of the state. This year, with permits down slightly, hunters would do well to meet that mark. Even so, DNR officials and local guides are reasonably optimistic that the harvest will be average or better, despite a strong summer food crop that normally means fewer bears at hunters’ baits.

“We had one fantastic berry crop out there,” said Dennis Udovich, a longtime hunting guide in the Cook and Orr area. “But everything is early, a good two to three weeks ahead of schedule. That means they may peter out early,” he said.

While Udovich said his first bait offerings attracted relatively little bear activity, more recent baits have attracted more interest as the berry crops have run their course in the past couple weeks. With fall crops, like acorns and hazelnut running a bit spottier in the area, Udovich sees a productive opener ahead.

“I think it’s going to be a pretty good year. There are a lot of bears in the area,” he said.

In fact, the latest population estimate from the Department of Natural Resources does point to an upswing, mostly as a result of lower bear permit numbers the past few years. DNR officials acknowledge that an aggressive harvest effort in the early 2000s may have reduced bear numbers a bit more than they might have intended. “We’ve backed off on the number of permits,” said Tower Area Wildlife Manager Tom Rusch. The DNR has issued 9,500 bear permits this year, the lowest number since 1994, and less than half the number of permits issued as recently as 2003.

But fewer hunters won’t necessarily mean fewer bears harvested, and less competition can make for a higher quality hunt, said Udovich. “When we were seeing the high number of permits, it created problems. There are a limited number of really good areas for bear hunting and we had a little bit of fighting going on for the best spots.”

Given a modest increase in bear numbers (the DNR puts the statewide population at about 20,000), and more limited fall foods for bears, Rusch predicts decent success for hunters. “It won’t be a record year, but I think it’s going to be a good year, depending on the weather those first few days of the season,” he said.

bear season, Minnesota