Brown bear {Bear Hunting Blog file photo]

The brown bear (Ursus arctos) can be found in North America and northern areas of Eurasia. There are sixteen recognized subspecies of the brown bear. This is the most widely distributed species of bear in the world, although its range is shrinking. Its range includes the Alaska and a few other areas of the United States, areas of Russia, and Romania and other areas of the Carpathian region, as well as Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the Balkans. The brown bear derives its common name from the coloring of its fur, and is sometimes known as bruun, bruyn, or bruin. It derives its scientific name from the Latin and Greek words for bear, ursus and arctos respectively, and this is known as a tautology.

Generally, the brown bear can reach an average body length between 4.6 and 9.2 feet, with a height between 28 to 60 inches and a tail length between 2.4 and 8.7 inches. Males can grow to be three times the size of females in many subspecies. This difference in size is shown most notably in a few subspecies, including the Eurasian brown bear and the grizzly bear. It is thought that these variations are caused by the location of each subspecies, because their genetic data does not display major differences. Inland bears are typically smaller than bears found in other areas, like the Eurasian grizzly bear, which can measure 3.3 feet in length. The largest subspecies occur in far eastern areas of Russia and in Alaska and these are the Kodiak bear and Kamchatka brown bear, although other bears from coastal Asia and western areas of North America can reach large sizes as well. Female brown bears in this area can weigh up to 700 pounds and males can reach a weight of up to 1,400 pounds. Naturally, after hibernation, brown bears will weigh considerably less than when they enter hibernation.

The fur of the brown bear is typically long, and grows longer at the neck creating a mane. The coloring of the fur can vary depending upon the location, from reddish brown in India to bi-colored in China. In North America, brown bears can vary in color from light cream to dark brown or black. The winter fur of the species is long, particularly the fur of northern subspecies, which can reach a length of five inches, and the summer fur is short and can vary in length depending upon the location. The claws of this species are long, reaching an average length between 2 and 3.9 inches. These claws can vary in color from light to dark, and are blunt. Because of this and its large size, the adult brown bear cannot climb trees.

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Source:  Red Orbit
Bear Hunting Blog

Kali arrived aboard a UPS flight at Buffalo Niagara International Airport shortly before 5:30 a.m., ending a 14-hour trip that was set in motion in March when a hunter in Alaska realized an adult female bear he’d killed was nursing.

“He followed the tracks back to the den, crawled down inside, found a cub, pulled it out, put it in his coveralls, rode it back into Point Lay and then got hold of U.S. Fish and Wildlife,” said Patrick Lampi, executive director of the Alaska Zoo, which has cared for the bear since.

Subsistence hunting is allowed in the area, but hunters aren’t allowed to shoot females with cubs, Lampi said after accompanying the cub to Buffalo.

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Source: Fremont Tribune
Bear Hunting Blog

Commissioners taking on the annual task of approving limited big game hunting license recommendations for 2013 were once again reminded that Colorado has too many bears and not nearly enough mule deer to meet wildlife management objectives. Yet the short-term approach to both issues is the same: Increase the number of hunting licenses for both species.

The 20 percent increase in bear hunting licenses over 2012 by far outpaces the boost in license numbers for any other big game animal, although the sum of 21,167 bear licenses available in 2013 can’t compare with opportunities to hunt more popular big game animals like deer and elk. But state wildlife managers have made clear their intention to continue efforts to reduce Colorado’s black bear population conservatively estimated at about 18,000, and they’re looking at hunters for help. The predicted hunter harvest from the 2013 license allocation is 1,373 bears.

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Written by: Scott Willoughby or 303-954-1993
Source: The Denver Post
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“There will be 7,906 bear hunting licenses available for the 2013 hunting seasons. Bear licenses are available for both residents and nonresidents.” [Bear Hunting Blog File Photo]

LANSING— The DNR reminds hunters that applications for Michigan bear hunting licenses are available now through June 1.

There will be 7,906 bear hunting licenses available for the 2013 hunting seasons.  Bear licenses are available for both residents and nonresidents; however, no more than 2 percent of licenses in any bear management unit will be issued to nonresidents.

Hunters can apply online at www.michigan.gov/huntdrawings, at any authorized license agent or at a DNR Customer Service Center. A nonrefundable $4 fee is charged at the time of application. Hunters may purchase just one application for each species.

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Written by: Janet Rohde
Source: Iron County Reporter
For more information on Bear Hunting in Michigan, click the active link.
Bear Hunting Blog

The two were members of a five-person black bear hunting party, all from the Lower 48. The other three hunters had dropped them off, and then taken the skiff to the head of 12 Mile Arm to hunt, and were two hours overdue to pick up the man and his son. Weather conditions were deteriorating, and the man said nobody in the group had gear to spend the night outdoors.

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Written by: KRBD Staff
Source: KRBD FM Radio
For more information on Alaska Bear Hunting, click the active link.
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“Bear Hunting in Alaska: Which Rifle to Bring?” [Bear Hunting Blog file photo]

The question is not so much what you’ll be hunting as, will you be in bear country? I have hunted caribou in Alaska with a .270, .270 WSM, and 7mm Weatherby Magnum, and all three did fine. Except that, on the hunt where I had the 7mm, I was checked out by a young boar grizzly, who seemed to find the guide, my friend, and me mildly disappointing and wandered away. If he had been a mature boar grizzly, I might have wished for a much bigger rifle.

I’ve known, personally, two guides who had to kill bears (one a brown, the other a grizzly) who were trying to do the same to them. One guide did the job himself with a .416 wildcat. The other guide had a .44 Magnum revolver, and the attack took place very suddenly over the disputed carcass of a caribou. The guide told me that if his client had not stood his ground and shot very quickly and very accurately with a .338, he might not be there to tell me the story.

So, my solution to Alaska rifle question (unless you’re way up in sheep and goat country where the chances of a bear encounter are fairly small) is to take something like a .338 loaded with 200- or 210-grain bullets for whatever you’re after, and stick a half-dozen 250-grain loads where you can get at them very quickly if you have to. This is if you’re hunting the non-dangerous stuff.

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Story by:  David E. Petzal
Source: Field & Stream
For more information on Alaska Bear Hunting, click the active link.
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The bill passed April 23 out of the House by a vote of 40-19, barely over the required two-thirds majority. It was referred to the Senate committee May 1. [Bear Hunting Blog file photo]

Oregon State Sen. Alan Bates believes a bill that would allow counties to opt out of 18-year-old bans on sport-hunting cougars and bears with hounds and baiting bears likely will get a public hearing in a Senate committee this session amid heavy lobbying both to air it and to quell it.

If so, then House Bill 2624 would become the first such House bill to get a Senate hearing since Measure 18′s passage in 1994 enacted the statewide baiting and hounding bans.

“We haven’t really decided but my sense right now is we’ll probably give it a public hearing,” said Bates, D-Medford, a member of the Senate Environment and Natural Resource Committee, where the bill currently sits.

But whether it makes it to the full Senate for a vote is “up in the air,” Bates said. “It could go either way.

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Story by: Mark Freeman
Source: Mail Tribune
Bear Hunting Blog

The two men involved have been best friends since they were young; but over the weekend they found themselves in less than ideal circumstances as they were wrapping up their hunting trip.

“We saw a black bear up on the hill and Curtis took a shot at it and hit it, and we were just going up there to get his bear and, that’s when the accident happened, he was going to get his rifle out of his pack and it accidentally went off, it just, it hit him in the leg and so from there it was just getting him out of there as fast as we could” said Carson Beattie.

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If you’d like to help out and make a donation for Curtis and his family go to http://fundly.com/curtis-jaussi.

Reported by: Sasha Zimmerman
Source: KPVI New 6
Bear Hunting Blog

The goal is to maintain a genetically diverse NCDE grizzly bear population with at least 800 grizzly bears, the plan says. The agency will take public comment for 90 days. [Bear Hunting Blog file photo]

A draft conservation plan to manage grizzly bears in northcentral and western Montana once federal protections are lifted was released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday.

The 150-page document was created by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies, the state of Montana and tribal governments, said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Servheen emphasized that the conservation plan is not a proposal to remove the grizzly bear from the list of threatened and endangered species at this time. The status of grizzlies remains “threatened.”

However, the conservation strategy, when approved, will serve as the post-delisting management plan for grizzly bears and habitat in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. And once the conservation strategy is approved, the agency plans to move forward with efforts to remove federal protections, possibly as soon as next year, Servheen said.

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Story by: Karl Puckett
Source: Great Falls Tribune
For information on Bear Hunting in Montana, click the active link.
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The statewide harvest of 1,337 black bears ranks third overall, lagging only behind the 2003 harvest of 1,864 and that of 2009 when 1,409 bears were taken. [Bear Hunting Blog file photo]

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation took a little more time than usual to release the harvest statistics from the 2012 deer season. But, they’re out there now along with the bear harvest numbers released in March.

Both sets of data come with some very informative reports and I encourage you to visit DEC’s website at http://www.dec.ny.gov for a solid look at them.

For now, here’s a glance at the New York bear hunting stats.

The statewide harvest of 1,337 black bears ranks third overall, lagging only behind the 2003 harvest of 1,864 and that of 2009 when 1,409 bears were taken.

The harvest for 2012 was slightly above 2011, which was 1,258. After a dismal 2011 harvest of only 275 black bears, things got back to normal in the Adirondack range where 606 bears were taken. That’s slightly above the five-year average of 547 and the historical average of 515.

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Story by: Dan Ladd Adirondack Hunting & Fishing Report
Source: Press Republican
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