Officials trying to lure hunters as bears get too close
NEWTON, N.J. — State wildlife officials here are trying to get the word out: Bear tastes good.
Hunters who bring in a bear to be weighed when the season starts in December will even receive a cookbook with recipes like “bear satay on a stick” and “grilled bear loin with brown sugar paste.”
“It’s tasty,” Kelcey Burguess, the bear project leader and principal biologist for the state’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, said of the meat. “It tastes like beef. I like cooking the ribs slowly.”
The object is not really to get more people to cook bear; it is to get more people to shoot one.
In 2010, in an effort to deal with its growing bear population, and over the objections of animal rights activists, New Jersey reintroduced bear hunting, with a six-day season to run for five consecutive years. Wildlife officials estimated in 2010 that there were 3,400 bears living north of Interstate 80, which divides the state.
But hunting has proved a thorny management tool. That first year, 592 black bears were killed and taken to weigh stations like the one here at the Whittingham Wildlife Management Area in Sussex County. But each year since, the number has dropped, and in 2013, just 251 bears were brought in.
ONE-TIME EVENT
Unlike deer hunting, which many sportsmen make an annual ritual, bear hunting tends to be a one-time event — a hunter gets his or her trophy and does not return for another one. The process is expensive, whether having the animal butchered for meat or enlisting the services of a taxidermist. And dragging a 400-pound bear out of the woods is no small task. (In 2011, a hunter hauled in an 829-pound black bear, the largest on record in the state.)
“The first year we had people from South Jersey come up for the novelty of it, and then they realized that it’s not that easy,” said Larry Herrighty, assistant director of the Division of Fish and Wildlife, part of the Department of Environmental Protection.
In New York, the state issued a 10-year black bear management plan in May that extended the firearms season in the Catskills and the western Hudson Valley by 16 days in September and also opened up new areas for bear hunting upstate. The plan seeks to keep the Adirondack bear population stable, while reducing the population of the Catskills.
The number of bears killed annually has grown slightly, rising to 1,358 in 2013, from 1,117 in 2007. And like New Jersey, New York limits hunters to one bear per season.
The New Jersey bear hunts, which are allowed in four zones that cover six northern counties, have reduced the population, now estimated at 2,500 north of Interstate 80. And over the years, the incidence of Category 1 incidents, involving home break-ins and agricultural damage, has trended downward.
BEAR-HUMAN ENCOUNTERS
But the state’s bear problem was brought into sharp relief last month when a 299-pound black bear killed a Rutgers student who had been hiking with friends in West Milford, in Passaic County. It was the first fatal bear mauling ever recorded in New Jersey.
“This is clearly an aberration,” said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Department.
“Black bears are curious and opportunistic and will certainly go after trash cans and livestock,” he said. “But in terms of people, the numbers speak for themselves. Typically they don’t want to have an encounter with you.”
But this year New Jersey has seen a rise overall in human-bear encounters. Officials are now fielding 50 to 60 calls a week about bear sightings and nuisance bears.
In West Milford, the same township where the Rutgers student was killed, a bear entered a house in August by lifting a window. It then managed to open the refrigerator.
“The homeowner was sleeping upstairs,” Burguess said. “He woke up in time to see the bear’s butt going out the window.”
State officials have euthanized more than 75 bears this year, most of them in the past two months, after the animals broke into houses or destroyed livestock and crops. That is more than double the number for any year in the past decade.
“We never hit more than 32 in a single year,” Burguess said.
A drop in acorns this fall is most likely responsible for the more aggressive behavior, Burguess said. Usually, bears subsist entirely on acorns this time of year and can add 2 pounds of weight a day. But the acorn crop is highly variable and this year there has been a low yield, which has the bears seeking other food.
“They’re really liking the corn this year,” Burguess said.
The shortage has also pushed bears farther afield. On Sept. 30, a 301-pound bear appeared near an elementary school in Ridgewood, a Bergen County suburb. It took the local police, wildlife officials and specially trained dogs several hours to capture the bear, which ran up three trees in a two-block area.