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I've read where actually FEWER bears will be killed with a limited season than are killed now -- because now, most of the bears are killed by G&F ... quite a few, actually.

Not that I'm against a season -- I'm not. But let's not think it will "put fear into the bears."

Odd, because both hunters and anti-hunters both get the biology wrong. Open a season and everyone can get what they want: Hunters get to hunt, and antis get fewer bears killed.

Again, I don't know all the details, but from what is known, it seems some level of grizz country common sense was missing.

Truth is this - if you live in a house, you are more than likely living in a place where an animal once called "home".

So from the comfort of your home (that was taken from an animal) we sit and tell others out West that they ought to stay out of the animal's homes or just live with the consequences of invading the animal's homes - sounds a little hypocritical to me.

Better idea - let those in the west deal with the issue at hand. None of us in the midwest have to deal with this grizzly and or wolf issue day in and day out (thankfully). It's not up to us to manage them and the wildlife in their state.

--Mitch

I once heard this was an area where they relocate the problem Yellowstone bears, not sure of the validity of that. but I heard it from more than one source.

Hope for his speedy recovery.

Even though I live in Virginia I voiced my opinion to my elected officials to support the delisting of the griz from the endangered species list. I can't remember now which government officials but I took Randy Newberg's advice and went to the link that he suggested.

To those of you outside of WY and MT: how would you feel if people in other states told you that you could no longer shoot/trap coyotes in your state?

There was a guy that got attacked in the early part of archery and got out of the hospital right as we got there. It was the talk of the town. Then another guy got nailed right as I left. The 3rd was in MT.

The grizz are out of control in the Dubois area. Remember, there was a guy who was killed there in 2014. I talked with a local who had a friend on the recovery team and he said they brought him out in a 5 gallon bucket.

It's also true that F&G is killing problem bears. For a while, many bears were relocated into this area out of ease of getting them far from people. Many bears were taken from the Pinedale area and moved to the Dubois area since it has large non-wilderness areas where a truck with a bear in it can be driven far from population centers and released. A local told me that just prior to the archery season, F&G killed 4 grizz south of Dubois in 69. Everyone I spoke to said they never were able to catch up to the bear that killed the guy in 2014, nor the bear that put the local bowhunter in the hospital this year. There's at least one man-eater out there.

The entire south fork of the Shoshone and Wind river basins are over-run with grizz. We need a season badly. What a season will provide, is to take out the more aggressive and visible bears. The bears that are way up in the wilderness are not as much of a problem. Also, F&G needs to continue to kill bears that are a problem.

That being said, people are going to be in bear woods. If anti's think it's only hunters, that it pretty typical for their (lack of)knowledge.

Wolves changed their tactics and interactions with humans significantly since they became hunted. I hope bears do also, over time anyway.

I've read the statistics about bear spray and agree it is generally an effective deterrent, but folks are spraying bears and it isn't working. Mr. Orr did what he was supposed to, and is a tough cookie and lucky to be alive. I bet in the future he has the pistol out and is ready to use it.

There are tons of brown/grizzly bears in Alaska and I don't think they have the same mentality as the GYE bears. In areas where bears are hunted, the most aggressive, most visible would be culled.

Without considering the safety aspect grizzlies in the GYE are well beyond population objectives. Their numbers should have been lowered long before now. I would like to see a very controlled hunting season but more importantly I would like to see the numbers of grizz lowered to a much safer level by whatever means is most effective.

It is an interesting question if hunting will cause them to fear humans. I wonder if anyone has studied that? A quick look at the list above shows quite a few deaths in Canada and Alaska where there has been hunting all along.

You have a top predator that hasn't had much to fear in its recent evolutionary history (10,000+ years). On the other hand, they appear very intelligent and able to pass behavior to their young.

All the anecdotal evidence I have says that black and grizzly bears are fearful of humans (i.e. the ones that I have seen while fly fishing all ran a significant distance once they spotted/smelled me). Both of the grizzly spotted ran more than 1/4 mile across meadows - but, maybe that was the smell of uncontrolled fecal matter...

The GYE has 600 bears and there's been 3 maulings in 3 years (one of which resulted in death) in just the southwest 1/9th of the GYE.

There was also a guy killed in Yellowstone this year.

Any animal, that has been conditioned to certain circumstances, is going to react differently than if it were exposed to different variables. Bears with nothing to fear from humans become conditioned to such behavior. However, if you start hunting and killing them, they will act appropriately. Which is what is needed. God Bless

If your canada/alaska numbers are right, then there are about 100 times more bears than in GYE, but there are 35 million people in Canada (3.8 million mi**2) and 4 million visitors yearly to Yellowstone (3.4 thousand mi**2). As WV likes to point out, a lot of variables. Best number would be the number of human/grizz interactions in each.

Don't be blue, WV - cheer up. Maybe the Yellowstone grizzly are attacking more people because there are less cutthroat trout... (ahhh - you are getting blue again).

"However, if you start hunting and killing them, they will act appropriately."

How do we know that - and what is 'appropriate' for a grizzly? (That is all I was asking above.) If we kill 50% of the grizz, we will create less human/grizzly interaction (i.e. maybe less deaths), but will the 50% that remain somehow learn from that (or will the small % of them still kill and eat a human if given the chance)?

And another interesting question is "If we start hunting grizzly again in the US, will there be fewer or more human deaths?" If you look at the deaths over the last 180 years, a portion of them are hunters heading into thickets trying to find their wounded bear. It wouldn't take a lot of deaths caused by wounded grizzly to overtake the historical average of < 1/year.

But, I like Deertick's post above most of all (including my own).

Still, when you have 3 attacks in 3 years in an area that's less than 500 square miles, I don't see how that math compares to AK and Canada. Alaska is 663,300 square miles and has a death about every other year from its 30,000 grizz.

I spoke with a local last week who said he'd been charged 4 times in the last 3 years in the same area and repelled all 4 attacks with bear spray. Four charges. And he said that wasn't including bluff charges. The 4 charges were repelled at 10 yards or less.

Just like people, every animal has its own personality and much of that depends on socialization from its mother. Canada and AK grizz are taught to run from humans because they are predators; because humans kill grizz. Lower 48 bears are taught that humans are food sources and/or not to be feared. It's getting worse every year. And hunters are taking the brunt of it because the greenies can just go hike and mountain bike in areas where there's no grizz. Elk hunters are the only ones crazy enough to hike into grizz country.

What would stop the state agencies from simply announcing that during the month of October they will be unable to spend state resources enforcing the federal ban in specific areas where griz have become a problem?

Fish learn not to bite certain lures after a short while. The coyotes learn to avoid my traps. Elk learn to be shy coming in to elk calls. Do you doubt these animal behaviors too?

“He did get to the site of where his elk carcass was and noticed it had been moved or cached,” Hunter says.

The victim turned around to leave and was immediately attacked, according to Hunter.

“He had no time to react,” Hunter says. The department says no shots were fired during the attack.

Since the dog ban the bears in Co are not afraid of dogs at all. In fact there has been some evidence that when they hear a dog bark they approach due to the likely hood of a dog food bowl. In some of the mountain resort towns they have had certain bears target only camps and site where dogs are allowed.

If a bear can learn how to find certain items they can surely learn how to avoid as well.

At the very least fewer bears will mean fewer issues.

There are 1500 grizzly in the U.S. 500 in Yellowstone. So, 1000 huntable bears. What would be the number of bear tags that would be biologically (and politically) allowed? 50? 100? The number is going to be pretty low because females don't breed until 5, only have cubs every other year, etc. Wiki reports that the grizzly has the lowest reproduction rate of any terrestrial mammal in NA. In other words, it will be small because shooting too many will take a long time to correct.

My guess is it would be closer to 50,maybe less. Hunters would get 30-40 of those and scare another 10-20. That leaves 1450 bears that wouldn't 'learn' anything from a hunt. If hunters target the bold bears, those are probably the same ones that are getting killed now by officials.

How exactly would a hunt smarten up the bears?

Idyll - I like your comments. I still think the bear interactions are probably similar in Yellowstone verses Canada/Alaska but haven't run the numbers. Maybe tonight...

really?

Now we have a season and the geese are wild animals again. If I drive a quad into the field 500 yards from them, they are gone. The geese are also scattered over a larger area instead of being so concentrated.

I know a bear is not a goose, but if a goose learns I think it is safe to say a bear is smarter than a goose!

Gotta love those who criticize when they are on the outside looking in. Its like "I don't care if all the elk are gone, I don't like the taste". "I don't live in grizz country, but who cares if a bear acts like a bear and kills some people in the process, you're in his woods".

What I am talking about is more like natural selection. Through hunting or other population controls the most visible, most aggressive bears would be the easiest to remove.

Grizzlies are smart animals. My friend who is a rancher on the fringe of grizzly country has told me numerous stories about them. Often times a grizz that kills cattle will be trapped. They are caught by FWS setting up traps near their recent kill. Once that animal is caught and taken to the other end of the grizzly area they start killing cattle again. Only now....they kill a cow and don't return to the kill site. They eat their fill and then kill another one when they feel like it. They quickly associate returning to the kill site and being trapped.

I don't even care if grizzlies are ever hunted. I only care that they are controlled and their numbers are kept at objective. I only care that they are managed by sound biological practice and not through a failed government bureaucracy that cowers to the whims of activists.

It'd be a slow process, but I'm sure it'd help.

Idyll - "He said they were looking at starting with 5 grizz tags once they're off the ESL"

It looks like I have overestimated the amount of tags they might issue for the 1000 huntable bears.

Bullbound - how would 5 or 10 tags change the behavior of the rest of the population? There are probably that many nuisance bears killed each year already and the others don't seem to be getting the message (aren't acting appropriately)? We aren't talking about deer/geese/most game species where a significant portion of the population sees hunters or gets shot at.

Time to step away from the magazines Bowfreak! That comment is a joke right? So if I was rifle hunting Brown bears on Kodiak all I need to do to bait one in is fire my rifle and they will come running? Ha!

Lets not have these idiots that write some of these hyped up articles overrule your common sense.

If you want to get laughed at to your face....ask an F&G warden in Ak that question.

But it shows how dangerous these situations can be.

But overall, I think Striker's post has the most realistic view of the world. You just don't approach 500 pounds of bear attractant without some bear repellent in hand (literally!) and a buddy or two to back you up. Not in Griz Country...

I wonder if there are stats out there on what % of Griz attacks occur at the kill site? Just seems to me that if you're going to see one, that would be the place with the greatest probability of a run-in... especially next day, when they've had time to find it. With numbers on the rise, the competition for carcasses is probably getting tighter, too...

Lets not have these idiots that write some of these hyped up articles overrule your common sense.

If you want to get laughed at to your face....ask an F&G warden in Ak that question."

Haha... comments coming from the guy living in California. A rifle shot is a dinner bell in Wyoming. Something needs to be done, and a hunting season is the only answer that will work.

"So attuned to the movements of hunters are the bears that scientists believe they may even listen for the sound of gunshots, knowing that they signal a meal to be scavenged."

I have killed deer with my bow a few times just before last light. By the time I found the deer it was well after dark and there are plenty of black bears in my area. Needless to say, I gutted those deer in record time, had my pistol handy and every time I thought I heard something in the brush I stopped what I was doing, grabbed the pistol and turned the spotlight in that direction. Luckily, there were no "incidents" to report!