WY Game Managers Drafting Grizzly Hunt
Bears
The WY G&F Wildlife Managers are drafting Grizxly Bear Hunt rules. Maybe we'll have a season shortly. One can only hope!
THey need like 20 tags in each of the Shoshone branches and about 40 between Dubois, Jackson, and 56. After 10 years, the maulings and aggressive bear encounters might start to decline.
What I heard from someone who was close to the planning, was that there was going to be 1 Pinedale/southern wind river range tag, 1 Dubois tag, one Jackson Hole tag, 1 Cody tag, and 1 North Yellowstone tag, for a total of 5 tags. If that's all they do, it won't help. Between G&F killing man-eaters/attackers and defensive kills, we're already killing 5 bears a year. Add on bears killed by cars and SSS, it's far more than that already and the numbers of bears and negative human encounters keeps going up.
There needs to be 5-10 times that amount of tags for at least 5 years, then reassessment.
I'm sure it will be by draw only and drawing odds will be terrible. I'm sure they'll be some commisoners tags. I hope it's more than one tag. One tag won't even put a dent in the population.
I wish them good luck getting it done. We can't even get a wolf hunt. Should bring in some good revenue for WGF, wonder what a non-resident tag would cost if a bison tag is now 4 grand ( I'm a resident but think it's ridiculous). Any hunt we can get should hopefully put fear of man back into the equation. We are sorely lacking that now.
Last I saw NR Grizz tag was 5 grand and that was before the price increase before this one. I know it got raised with the last price increase, but on the current price increase, it's not listed and says that anything not listed didn't get raised. So... somewhere north of 5 grand.
Sounds kind of like the wolf quotas - way too low! There are way too many griz and wolves up there and need a serious thinning. Ridiculous.
Baby steps! Lets get a season started first. For that, 1 would be fine. Then we can increase every year after the "assessment" that it wasn't enough. I am excited that it may at least get going.
I know, I know... I have little patience!
Heck, from my perspective, I would love to see hunting, trapping, snaring, aerial gunning, bang sticks, cyanide, 1080, etc. until both the wolf and grizzly population in WY, MT, and ID was at the original EIS recovery population...
600 for a resident tag, 6 grand for a NR tag................ Ouch..........
Baby steps Ike. Wolf hunting went the same way. Get our foot in the door first then afopt a plan that’s actually based on proper management.
The price is bullshit though. We already pay for game management. They aren’t going to get rich from 5 or 5 tags. So is it really necessary to rape us just because they know hunters will be all excited about an opportunity to hunt the big bears!
Agree, they probably know what they're in for, with likely legal challenges to any hunting season....thus the extremely conservative proposal for the first season. Easier to justify when you're proposing to remove less than 1% of the population.
As far as the tag cost, even if 6k for a NR (which would make it the most expensive draw tag for any species, anywhere) at least it's still only a fraction of what a grizzly hunt costs a NR anywhere else on the planet.
lake shore we canoed into and camped few days
lake shore we canoed into and camped few days
Very good points txhunter58 and sticksender. I don't wish a massive kill off of bears or wolves, but lets use some common sense on this issue. We have trained biologists that tell us the time has come for management, lets use science and not emotions to make these decisions in court. I think it's going to be a battle in the court system to get it done if the past is any indicator.
I'm excited no matter what happens. Until the day I die I will be able to reply to each post, and for once, say I have max points for something!!
Bud they quit using science long ago. It’s about liberal politics. They fudge science to their advantage. File insane expensive lawsuits to delay hunting for one more year then another. Find judges like Malloy up In Missoula who agree with their agenda and shove it down our throats. If it was based on science we would have been hunting and trapping wolves long before we did. There would be mountain lion hunting in Californica. And grizzlie hunting would be more than a dream right now.
Yup. Everyone picks the science they like and the science they don't. I'd never recommend as many tags to begin with as I outlined above - I know it'd just cause spark a lawsuit and another delay. But 5 tags statewide is ridiculous when you see 5-6 bears on a hunt where you get 2-3 miles from the truck. Killing one male bear in the Dubois area and one male bear in the Cody area will do absolutely nothing to change the bear problems those areas have. I'm not talking about decreasing the population; I'm talking about putting the fear of man back into the bear population so that they go back to being bears instead of something unnatural compared with human-bear interaction since that's been taking place.
In Alaska and Canada, grizzlies generally run from humans because that's what their mother's have been teaching them to do for thousands of years in order to maintain their survival. That's not happening anymore. Killing one bear in a population is not going to make a difference. Especially since that bear is most likely going to be a boar and the sows are actively teaching their cubs to drive hunters off of carcasses. The only sows being killed are the ones that actually kill at eat humans, as just happened in YSNP.
I agree that this shouldn't be handled ham-handedly, but there needs to be a lot more than 5 grizz tags in WY. Especially in the Wind River and Shoshone River drainages.
And even at $6k they will have thousands of non res applications. Having hunted in Shoshone, that’s not NEAR enough tags.
Many of you need to reread "bud's" comment above. It couldn't be said much better than that. The successful recovery of the grizzly bear was due to solid science, so let the wildlife biologists suggest what the right steps are to this recovery and eventual hunting season of this iconic western predator. I get the feeling that many of you who profess to know something about wildlife and love nature think we'd be better off if grizzly bears and wolves had become extinct.
I don't think we want to see the wolves and grizzlies extinct, but just under control. We would like to see real game management that looks at the deer, moose and elk as well as the bears and wolves and is not driven by people who really would like to see us hunters extinct. We are just tired of seeing our game decimated and seeing what we all cherish being taken away by lawyers and judges and people who at core want our way of life and our hunting values to just go away. Can you only imagine how good it would be if Wyoming Fish and Game could be turned loose to manage bears, wolves, deer and elk based on good game management biology? I think they would do a pretty good job and we would all be happy in the end. I hope it happens, but the other side is never happy and so the lawsuits will come. We have to just keep fighting, hope that even 5 grizzlies can be harvested and that some liberal judge does not cave under pressure. I just want my sons and grandsons to be able to hunt deer, elk, moose and bears someday. I live in that hope because hunting is a value that we must never lose.
I doubt anyone on this thread wants to see any animal extinct. And grizzly bears have a place in these ecosystems. That said, wolves and grizzly bears are in absolutely zero danger of going extinct. There are over 200,000 wolves in the world. They cover areas much larger than many many iconic animals. Same with grizzlies, which exist all over Alaska, Canada, and over large swathes of Asia.
As far as letting science dictate the season, I'm all for that too. My suspicion though, is that the season being drafted by the biologists will look nothing like what the biologists would put in place and are under intense political pressure to adjust the tag quotas down and that has nothing to do with science. That's my entire point.
If I can find 5 bears in a 2-3 square mile area, then shooting 1 bear in a 2500 square mile area is ridiculous,. Again, especially when more than that are killed by cars. We're not even talking tags to equal road kill.
Baby steps as mentioned above. If this is how we get to the right number I take it over not a season at all.
Idaho wolf season started the same way and now they are taking several 100s a year.
Patience.
"I'm excited no matter what happens. Until the day I die I will be able to reply to each post, and for once, say I have max points for something!!"
I would think it would be highly unlikely they would use a PP system when it does happen; more likely random draw as they do for mountain goat tags.
The commissioners voted to move forward with the hunt today.
Hell yeah, I'm ready to apply.
Keep that tag in your pocket while you're elk hunting, Ron. Guaranteed you'll have no grizz problems! lol
Are they going to allow bowhunting?
I've always heard that by hunting them will make them more wary of man. Can someone explain this to my dumb self. Seems like every bear that is successfully hunted is killed. This makes it impossible for the bear to spread the word to other bears to watch out for the hunters. What am I missing here.
Not against hunting bears at all, just have never figured out how hunting them makes them scared of humans.
Scrappy,
Have you ever been to a park where deer will almost eat out of your hand? Have you ever watched suburban deer casually stroll by a dog barking on a chain? It is a learned response coupled with natural selection. Bears that are too aggressive or nonchalant will be killed. Bears who learn how to avoid people will not. Just like any other game animal.
See I knew there was an actual logical answer. My dumb brain sometimes locks up. Thanks Bowfreak.
Are they using the same NR quota percentage? So for 11 tags total we NR are in for one? Something to keep in mind is that just because your awarded a tag you might not get to hunt if they close the season after a sow kill. That said there is tons of upside in this tag.
https://wgfd.wyo.gov/News/Governor-Mead-Approves-Rules-for-Grizzly-Hunt
