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REGIONAL— With the 2018 bear season now in the rearview mirror, it’s clear that abundant wild foods this year reduced hunter success. While the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources issued …
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REGIONAL— With the 2018 bear season now in the rearview mirror, it’s clear that abundant wild foods this year reduced hunter success. While the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources issued the same number of permits as last year, the total bear harvest was down 13 percent statewide, and 11 percent in the DNR’s Tower work area, which includes much of northern St. Louis and Lake counties.
As of this week, hunters had registered a total of 1,760 bears, compared to the 2,035 bears registered last year.
That computes to a 40-percent success rate in the quota zone, which includes all of northeastern Minnesota, which remains historically high, even though it was below the nearly 50-percent success rate in the quota zone last year.
Male bears accounted for 66 percent of the harvest statewide, and about 63 percent of the harvest in zones within the Tower work area. That put the harvest of females at about 37 percent in the local area. “That’s still too high if the goal is to increase the bear population,” said Tower Area wildlife manager Tom Rusch.
The DNR is still attempting to boost bear numbers after several seasons of generous permits and high harvests that cut the state’s bear population roughly in half, from an estimated 28,000 a little over a decade ago, to about 14,000 more recently. The DNR is currently trying to rebuild the bear population to about 20,000 animals, but progress has been slow. While the DNR has sharply lowered the number of permits it issues, relatively high hunter success in recent years has kept pressure on the bear population.
While the latest numbers represent the end of the season, they are considered preliminary until the DNR issues a final report on the season in February.