Answer Woman: Hunting bears as they sleep? Is that fair?

ASHEVILLE - Today’s question is regarding our bear neighbors’ safety and population. Should hunters let sleeping bears lie?

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Question: “According to the Citizen Times the second part of bear hunting season in Western North Carolina runs from December 12 to January 2. During this time bears are most likely in their dens. How do bear hunters hunt bears during this time? I’m not anti-bear hunting but it doesn’t seem like good sport to kill a sleeping bear in its den, especially a pregnant mama bear.”

Answer: Bear hunting season for WNC is Oct. 17-Nov. 19 and Dec. 12-Jan. 2. This is when most bears are denning or expected to den for the winter. Hibernation is ideal for bear hunting season to protect the greater bear population, according to Colleen Olfenbuttel, black bear and furbearer biologist for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

“Those are the least vulnerable bears around. They’re in the den so you can’t find them nor do the hunters want to find them,” Olfenbuttel said. “When they start denning up, they’re either in a hole in the ground or up in a tree and they’re not vulnerable to any type of harvest pressure.”

Not all bears are denning right now.

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Bears begin to den in October, but it varies on conditions like weather temperature and if there are bear cubs, she said.

Male bears are likely to still be out and active, though their movement may be limited. Hunting success begins to decline at this time of the year, she said.

“For the males who are still out and active, they are vulnerable to harvest,” Olfenbuttel said.

If hunting season was outside of hibernation season, such as in the summer, bears would be much more vulnerable to harvest and the likelihood of females comprising a greater percentage of the harvest would increase, she said.

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Denning bears are safe and hunting season is a necessity for population control, she said. Bear hunting is highly regulated and monitored by the state government agency.

“Bear hunting is a way for us to manage our growing bear population,” she said. “There are different ways bears can die — vehicle mortality is one of the leading causes of death as well as disease (and) starvation. But hunting is our number one tool because we can highly regulate it.”

There are 7,000-8,000 bears estimated to be living in Western North Carolina.

The population objective for North Carolina is to stabilize bear population growth, she said. Currently, population growth is at 5%-6%, and the commission is attempting to bring it down to zero, if possible, and the way to do that is by regulated hunting.

“Bears have been restored. We expect there may be more bears now than there ever had been even before European settlement, so we’re trying to manage that population to zero percent population growth,” Olfenbuttel said.

The regulations may change depending on what the agency is seeing happening within the population, then they will act according, which may be to alter the hunting season dates or span or cancel the season if the population is low.

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Regulations include requiring hunters to have a hunting license, and a Bear Management E-Stamp, and the harvest is highly monitored.

“We now require bear hunters to submit what’s called, ‘the tooth from the bear.’ That might sound odd, but we get the tooth from the bear, and it provides a lot of information. Mainly, how old that bear is,” Olfenbuttel said. “But requiring hunters to submit that tooth we’re able to get information from the age structure of the bear population which helps us monitor the population.”

It’s also to ensure there’s a viable and sustainable bear population.

“We get a wealth of data. I like to tell folks, our ability to closely monitor the bear population has only increased over the years. That’s a really good thing,” she said. “We’ve got a really good finger on what’s going on with the bear population so that every year we can assess how things are going so we can make management recommendations.”

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Bear hunting is preferred over the other factors impacting the bear population.

“Unlike roadkill, disease and starvation, hunting is highly regulated and the bear is fully utilized,” Olfenbuttel said. “The hunters use the meat, the fat, the fur, the bones, the skull — that bear can be utilized. In some communities, they highly depend on hunting season, not just for bears but for dear and other species who pretty much provide food on the table.”

There’s a bag limit of one bear per registered hunter. Other restrictions include prohibiting hunting a bear with cubs and bears under a certain weight, she said.

“We want to make sure we have bears on the landscape hundreds of not thousands of years from now — way beyond when I am long gone, I hope there’s bears in Western North Carolina,” Olfenbuttel said. “We almost lost them and we successfully restored the bears and we want to maintain that success story of restoring the bear population, not only in Western North Carolina but statewide.”

Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow her on Twitter/Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow her on Twitter/Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Bear hunting in hibernation season in Western North Carolina